Moon with its most voice, size,
has called again water off the near shore,
and sea grass, all combed, points to its exit.
Gulf and green oceans beckon the blood.
And the same cool friendless planet, lonely
for fluids, calls larger on the sea masses,
after which even cupfulls incline to it, glasses
tip their meniscuses and tank cars list
slightly on their tracks.
Even the ospreys about to dive
must respond in a small way, and everything liquid,
we in our blood baths, faintly lean
to the place where water uncovers
the wishful moon, the purpose of its gravity:
a few treasures, hermits, the closest stars.
A furious-pink cyclamen
now grows in the green
ceramic cube with no
escape for water. I had
a fuzzy old brain
cactus that couldn’t
survive so long
a wet season,
although I kept it
as if it were alive
sometimes using the pot
for a doorstop in summer.
When I finally let go
and dumped the papery
body into a corner
of the garden
by the rosemary
and the woodpile,
I discovered someone
had mixed the dirt
with styrofoam peanuts.
You could almost see
how the mind works.
Yesterday in the woods behind the shed
I found one of the metal chairs mother placed
for you — every 30 feet, wasn’t it? —
so you could get out and walk. Tucked
between white pine and some old farm
equipment rusting under an A-frame.
Small as a schoolchild’s; poritic, thorn-sprung.
Nibbled by a decade of freezes and thaws.
All things revert to form if left long enough,
you used to say. Relieved of the burden
of bearing your weight, the chair
has given up bits of itself to the wild —
red hue to rust, smooth finish
to stubble; less matter, now, than negative
space — a crude outline of a chair, linocut,
the details gouged out. But see
how the steel fibers stretch
to bridge the gaps, as skin closes
around a wound. Tentative.
Stripped. Still holding.
What did I think the hectic bats
and nighthawks were doing,
swooping and skimming overhead,
if not feasting on the invisible?
Air is not nothing, and at night
thickens like soup with moths, gnats,
sticky-shelled beetles, junebugs,
mosquitoes, midges, black flies,
and the tiny specks we call no-see-ums
that flit right through a windowscreen.
Stand still long enough, and you’ll hear
the true music of the spheres:
a million tiny wingbeats, rustle
of grubs and beetles in the leaf mat,
tremble of antennae and eyelash legs,
the minuscule wind of earwigs,
spiders spinning their convolutions,
caterpillars munching grass blades,
mosquitoes with tiny engines revved.
Now, the glitter of a cattail stand
blossoms with fireflies, all those bellies
aglow with lust in this humid air,
those sudden constellations
fading and re-forming all night long —
a Morse my mind can read
all it wants while my belly glows.
Qarrtsiluni offers electronic delivery of original poetry, prose, and art, organized into regular, themed issues, with a new post every weekday. You can find us wherever you go: email and IM, iTunes, feed readers, sometimes even print. Read more...
Congrats to qarrtsiluni authors Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman @wendylvardaman for their appointment as poets laureate of Madison, WI. · 3 months ago
Yesterday the last post in our Worship issue; today we begin the Imitation issue. Follow by email & never miss a post. qarrtsiluni.com · 4 months ago
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