Five Poems

Dan Rosenberg

THE RITES OF SPRING

The wax of the skin of the world. The dearth
of your feeling about it. The slippage. The slouching
alone—the slouching of alone—in the house of plums,
its flesh dripping, its stones the gastroliths of crows.

The disordered cattle of your mind mind the softness
of greens and browns. The hedgerow of delight
consoles them. They eat of the hedgerow, the thick
of their lips unsettling the roots, of which you think little.

Heir of motion, ruminating the cud of roots, you are
of two trees that don’t get along. The tree of your father
is a tree of close fog. It gambols into the back of time.
The tree of your mother is a tree of discrete branches

sawing at the base of themselves. Each branch
of you is a branch of sawing. You descend
full of dark and unsure of your own sap pumping
in the dark inside of you. Unsure of the color. You have

a heart of starlings, a heart of their cacophony;
of this, you are sure. You are a feast of mobility.
The pattern of the planet dreamed of you.
You are the plant of it. The plant the planet dreamed of.

OUR ROSES

There are the roses of scarred pedals,
which we scatter along the sewers to keep
our feet from believing the muck.
The roses of forgetting that we place, silently,
under every former lover’s tongue. We look

into each other’s eyes as we place these roses,
but our eyes are silent as a kitchen
gas leak. Our eyes like ruptured pipes.
There are the roses of repair,
which we sew into the swaddles

we share among the new mothers, who whisper
with their chins down so the caverns capture
and echo only a handful of words: grass and icicles
and warm on your face. Or maybe their quiet song
is about warning and fear. It’s hard to listen

in the dark. There are the roses of pinprick light
which are rare, so rare, when we find one
we hold our breath and cup it gently in a nest
we make with our fingers, six or seven of us,
our fingers laced together. We stay that way

as the light plays across each of our fingers
for a moment’s breath. There are the roses
of moving on, everywhere. The good neighbor roses
with their blunt thorns and petals
that taste of tire smoke and wild garlic.

There are the roses that are ours alone,
that we swallowed years ago and have
grown in the dark interiors of our bodies.
We only see these when one of us dies.
They survive us, thin and frank and full of thirst.

APRIL

The days stretch and thin now, leaving
their long, dark tunnels. The crocuses

have gotten ahead of themselves, peeking
from under the duff, and the music

downtown celebrates nudity through
open windows. The dirty couple

and their well-fed dog seem peaceful
splayed around the park bench. Chain

smokers outside the halfway house
are less interested in the passersby

than they’ve been in months. The sudden
sunlight on the blue historical home markers,

on the lake now shedding its grays, loosens
that knot you’ve kept at the center

of your spine, envelope-tight and clean
as cast iron, since the leafage first began

to fade. You open your mouth wide
as a nest on the edge of winter, as if

to release something, or to let the world
inside, even though you’re alone

as a lawn square bordered by sidewalk
and already emptied of the long dark.

UPDRAFT

your walk takes you
to the roadkill side of the street

the wing tip of the starling is still
in conversation with the breeze
but nothing else

tail feathers in the tire treads mark
a muddy story of having flown
at least

when you read the signs
you always seem to start at the end
all stop-all-way and yield

you’ve been walking a pattern
on the sidewalks meaningful
only from low Earth orbit

when the weather turns impossible
it’s not that you had a bad idea
it’s just you didn’t change it

banking toward the headlights
who can say maybe this time

seen aright the world
will rise above the sun

SUNDAY MARKET

You begin in a puddle, coarse bellied
and full. Eyelashes a chorus line
that lost the beat together. A sharp
waft of lemon myrtle scrapes across

your nose, unfurls a row of farmer’s
market stalls. Beyond, the lake squats—
a shrugging curtain of indecision.
The body is a nest of aches,

but nurse one egg and this whole bustle
will flash its clockwork, wink at you.
Lift your boot to the wooden floor.
Wrap your coat tighter. Among produce,

know you could feed the stranger
leaning on the post, watching
your hands as they work the tightness
of your wedding band. The words

you had engraved inside it
etch their illegible backwards
impressions on your finger.
The stranger has never married,

dedicates his strands and scraps
to rescue dogs. Together you make
a triangle—you, him, the lake—
a wedge of market knitwear, family,

the endless blerg of commerce,
and undeniable water. Eventually
someone must walk into the lake.
The one who remains will wed

his boots to the thick of the earth.
There will be no fire, and the bones
will never catch the wind and sing.
Must the stranger be an anchor?

Must the sun shuck off the sky?
Yes, and behind it you will see
the lonely scaffolding of the cold.
So sharp is the wind. Sharp the breath.