unknown caller [you, in the wild-thick]
you, in the wild-thick, I tell you
it, too, was order that I craved
: a governor of winds
: Agnes Martin grids on a clear day
: not the window
but the window frame
who will say why
above the ankles everything sways
why in a temperate winter, a double grief
prepares to thresh all faith
yet even now, in the shadow of the royal spoonbill
a particular shade of violet-grey
even now, a soft-edged iron ribbon gleams
inside a house of clay
forgive me the custody of the eyes
the mask that’s only ever covered half my face
: no god holds the sky aloft but mercy
is singing through the trees, unnamed
: long-stemmed coreopsis, petals yellow lashes,
grow from the dead and fill the glade
unknown caller [I remember it all]
—After Hugh Raffles
I remember it all:
the unfathomable
earth, folding in on itself.
seas in slow retreat. a marble
seam, unrepeatable,
rising along an eastern
seaboard, a limestone
coarse, porous, prone to
sugaring; too soft
to withstand winters.
a creek carved through it,
past a growing city’s peak.
three rivers joined, moved
as one. a marble hill’s southern
foot, blasted, for a ship canal
to feed large vessels swiftly
toward the open mouths
of markets in the west;
an island’s tip delivered,
briefly, an island of its own.
connections may skirt
geography and logic: landfill
excavated from the channel
buried the creek, the toy-like
bridge above it rendered
obsolete. you might think
the watercourse the lenape
called shorakapok, muscoota,
papiriniman was put to rest
that way; there is no water.
no wading place. no tussock
sedge grass grows. concrete
and the absent stream flow past
a u-haul depot, discount stores,
parking lots under ailanthus trees,
an urban oxbow inscribed into
the broad flatness of the street,
its northern bank a designated
boundary between boroughs. this
is a moment in a story. the one
in which you enter, the one
you’re passing through.
a thousand years
the invasion passed.
generations passed.
paddy fields returned.
the gold cockerel, the river
that empties into the big
river below, the mountain
a spring-green hat again.
time, a little, preserved
statues of three generals,
their coffins lost. still,
collapsed walls stood.
a gate in ruins. a ravaged
roof, untiled by rain.
memorials to snow
and frost, memorials
to wind. summer circled.
dreamed.
[in time]
in time
the mountain was written
mornings shaved
the hardships of the road
years beyond
blessings
hair still with snow a poem
my pen a house
the found words
leapt a waterfall
a hollow a dark green pool
a thousand stones
to summer
[I wanted to send word]
here the barrier began
and a formal wind straightened my hat
I wanted to send word
to the north to the trees the deutzia
the white roses
I appealed to a sprig adorned green
to the leaves’ first crimson and the snow long ago
; my uneasiness passed
I crossed I changed
my mind’s dancing eye witness
self-portrait as prelude
what hear. what
hard of hear.
here, what go; you.
you here
being being
breeze-blown
wild reed
grief-blown
hard, dear, to be
hard of hear. who
call, what help
for dear, what
sound in field
follow. what
wet syllable,
stringed word
reach your
dear ear
early, dear, this
hard of hear this
sound that go
to wind-speak
roar. it call. it
call you back,
what follow; no
sound in field,
but deer, silent,
ears pricked, dear,
pricked. it dark
-ens, dear. it darkens
apple, dust
manaháhtaan lenape for place from which we gather wood
to make bows below the sangre de cristo mountains pueblo remnants
behind the chain link fence amid the needlegrass the elk herd
descends blocks the roadway creates a hazard tall thin and given
to long work hours oppenheimer appears emaciated stares into a grove
of cotton wood smokes a cigarette and then another summer
afternoon monsoon in the jornada del muerto valley the trinity test no
longer thunderstorm-delayed he holds on to a post to steady
himself between the blistering of the light and the arrival of the roar
downwind near ruidoso new mexico teenage girls at carmadean’s
tap and ballet camp catch snow-like flakes but hot on the tongue
