After Wallace Stevens
Cold slows me.
Still, I see what
lies beneath.
I’m always cold, I think.
Glare ice on the surface of my mind—
sparkles rising.
I do not think of the light
or the hush of the world
where bark and limb are all
and the silent sky
where, now, the wind is still,
leaving my bare mind
open, free
to melt
into that palpable emptiness.
this church full of old bones
& cold air a sleepy damp
skeleton full of silent noise & lit
candles for the dead & those still
gone & dreaming of its humid
walls & icy chills & bell breaths.
everything can rot here
& still look pretty, weathered & clean
the stale silence permeating its
stain glass windows & the light
shinning through
to muzzle us into quiet.
in every ancient or historic rotting old
& picturesque church there is
a history that numbs us into soundlessness
our mannerisms zombified &
tranquil taking everything in
at slow speed like quick sloths we slow step
from wall to wall & room to room, old relic to old relic,
tomb to tomb tiptoeing around one another like
we’ve all done this dance
before
here’s an imploration (is that a word?)
it should be, when history requires
our attention to details
we might miss
among all the screens
so – the imploration (which is a word):
atrocity and triumph
each exists a short distance
away from the other
in meaning
and in goal
like war, and peace
cold, and fire
din, and silence
at the end of the day
we must not turn the page
from the first word
we must break
the connection, because
to do otherwise
would lead us
along the stale path
ungrowing, until
we realize she was right,
the holocaust survivor
who told us,
when we really
weren’t paying attention
but should’ve been
“we cannot keep hatred”
because, if we do
we stay hateful
that’s not the life
I want
There is no time and place for grief,
until there is.
When notes of a song take you
back to laughing in the hallway between classes,
when wafts of lilacs on the breeze across the yard
conjure Mamaw’s arms wrapped around you,
when you take a bite of a hot buttered biscuit
and you remember breakfasts holding hands,
when you close your eyes just a second and
all you see are their eyes looking back.
And you never know
when those memories may come at you like a coal truck
hauling around the curved roads back home
just close enough to rock your day,
or when they may hit you head on
penning you down with sorrow as fresh as plowed dirt.
They said that thru-hiker was afraid of the dark
and maybe also something else. Even in the
daylight he would scurry and look around when
so much as a twig snapped behind him. He stomped
his boots a little too loud, tapped his hiking poles
againist every rock he found, and sung stupid songs
after passing by a cloud. Maybe it was a little
annoying when every single hiker could hear him
over a hundred yards away, but he had to make
sure to scare off any bears. That’s what he read on
the park site countless times before he set out on
his thru-hike. As the sun began to set, he would
make camp. Sometimes a little too close to the other
canpers and sometimes he would leave his lantern
on a little too long. It took him a while to fall asleep;
he only could when he felt safe. He told himself it was
just paranoia from hearing too many stories and
listening to day hikers fear mongering. In his heart
as well as his brain, he knew he was far more likey
to get hurt in a big city or even a small town for that
matter, but a part of him was afraid of vast wilderness.
He grew up in the suburbs where the closest to nature
one could get was a local park. Maybe that’s why he
seemed a little odd and was always checking everything.
He didn’t grow up in a place where one was free to
explore. It wasn’t a place where he could learn how
to dig a cathole or how to follow the white blazes along
the trees, but he still was willing to go out to the trail
and give it a try. Maybe he wasn’t what one would
usually consider a thru-hiker, but he was still out there hiking.
This elder woman
Shuffles, large black shoes
Supported, slim silver sticks
Two extra legs, aluminum
Hands grasp for support
Over those wobbly sticks
Unsure legs all around
Her garden a jungle
The path toward home, obscure
A long way to her final rest
Her friend stands back
“Her walker’s in the house – “
She proclaims, as she watches
Talking of nothing
“Slow and steady,” mutters the elder
Forward, on her own
Wish to be dew drop
perched on silky red bud leaf.
Soft bed with kind shade.
I feel the ghost of her
fingers on my waist and
I lean into the spirit.
They say you feel god
when you’re at your lowest
but heavens know I was high
in those seconds she swayed
with me to some Ed Sheeran
love song that got the words
all wrong for love between women.
And I’m not saying I’m a woman,
but if I stick to binaries,
I’m more woman than man.
But with her, I am an earthworm,
straining in the grasp on a goddess
who has lifted me from my place
on the concrete and into the sky,
and then, without warning,
onto the grass, where I wriggle
into the ground, because her light
was too much for my pink skin.
