5:52 am, Post Daylight Savings
The world is sleeping, taking advantage
Of the good fate—the extra hour of sleep.
A tiny crack of gold on the horizon has
Drawn me out of bed. But the soft darkness
Still rules.
A siren blares on the bridge. I cannot hear it, but I see
The blue and red swimming down below, against midnight ripples.
On the water, there is the occasional floating mass
Followed by the rare overhaul barge: tired, wanting to stop;
it cannot. For to do that would mean halting the world.
Eyes (inside the barrier between us)
Narrow in like a crocus past light, for the
Body is now a still stretch—now a charcoal blur—
Until a buoyant stir awakens my vision,
pen follows, outpouring jet-black ambitions:
bits of moving light interspersed
with the darkness.
But a glare—widening white—devours
The gold glow, gracefully flickering.
And so, the black calm is lifted off
The rooftops.
Call it a day.
Domestic Magic
Married for thirty years and she is still searching
for a fragment of a milky-white, perfumed flower:
domestic bliss, they call it: happiness in the home.
What a time to be a woman: standing on the bridge
between the strong and the sedentary.
It’s not that she sits around like a station wagon, silent, composed:
she leaves the office at nine for another; leaves home at eight for the other
like a football, tossed in between the children—for they
never tire. But try to say the same about her, who,
after creating the nightly meal for four others, finalizes
the business of the day while others eat and when the dishes
form a mountain on the kitchen counter, she eats her share
in the cold pot all while immersing her hands in suds to dissemble
the mountain, making room for a settlement.
She has barely lain down in bed when streets become light
and engines of cars start, and vendors unbolt their trucks,
and kids take out their basketballs and shoot a little,
and four-course breakfasts are served
in fancy hotels, and birds flock to
a river park and the curtain of dusk is drawn.
Soon the colony of alarm clocks blare, one after one
until it’s not worth her expending the energy to
put them off, nor is it worth her upsetting the sleep
cycle of her husband (or him) so she rises, holding in her breath
like a stone. Making her rock-body sheer as light, she
slips on the robe and heads to the kitchen.
She shakes out the cereal so quietly and lets
the milk flow out like a cloud spreading its softness
over a rough mass. Then she waits
until the hand of a clock reaches seven: then she protracts
her hands, holding nourishment for the others as they trickle in.
She feels as if she were a machine, only
with a heart, so her hands do not retract until each bowl is returned:
if liquid remains she pours it down the drain:
The stream forms a continuous trail of petals that elongate
as they fall and flow down the basin:
the fluid gleams copper opal for a split second
as this white translucent substance overlaps the silver metal.
She marvels:
If only this split second could mean more than a domestic chore,
Perhaps, even magic.
Resting Place
Here: a place
Decked in dust
Painted in ash,
A place with streets so wide
You could fall through them—
Here would stand the
City of the Century.
In the falling facade
Was the scheme of the scientist,
The vision of the visionary.
In that
Shaking skeleton,
Should have stood
A Corinthian column,
Under which
Wax tablets
Should have read the
Wonder of a lifetime.
But they are—
Melting—
Shot down by the sun,
Left to the
Beaks and wings
That mistake it for
Sustenance.
Never-ending walls stand
On their sides.
They fell—like the winged
Mortal Icarus, from the sky.
What difference did
The twelve hundred
Builders make
Since they couldn’t
Fly?
If such city were, in silver
Commemorated sometime
The plaque would be signed:
Here lies
the best
And worst
Of mankind.
Dimmed Light
On strolls through the lamp-lit garden,
you see the shadow of a creature,
but not the glittering passion that sits in her heart;
you feel the light of fireflies—like a thousand illuminated windows—
but only a blur is there of their
impromptu dancing of the night.
I am the wild at night:
A hundred million
words float in my head.
Sweet sensual words that aloud
are murmurs, no more than the
sound of a flickering light or a
The arch of the foot, rolling over moonlit pavement.
When you tell me to open my lips—say a word—
you are telling the wild to share to the world it’s
nocturnal secrets:
that the night is the possum’s
only sustenance,
that my words are best kept within my limits.
My words are ripples of water appearing and
dissolving into a deep darkening tide. You cannot understand.
I prefer the silence: gazing at the floating diamonds at night
and observing the blackened clouds fly.
Coming Home
The cold cannot support
you any more
than it can support
the plants.
In every dying shrub you want to see the
lively green of the dyed sheepskin
you used to sleep on:
your brain, a new fool
turns gray to green
until green melts like a ghost
into the lifeless daylight
and becomes dun.
Five thousand miles away from the kitchen, the smell of
sweet, sweet nectarine
is stronger than when you are in it.
You try to pick the fruit up and taste it:
there is
nothing.
But your mouth waters
For a juicy taste:
The taste of those old summers
When you used to play
Long after the sun was gone,
When nature’s noises were
Calm and beautiful.
So, you put down your tools,
your worries (for the day),
board a bus,
let its wheels carry
you home.
You throw a smile on your face
hoping it will stay.
You rest your foot on the sheepskin.
It is when you just
start to lean
your back on the woolen covering
and take in the orange nectarine air
that your mind wanders
away
from the fireplace:
a stark voice obscures
The warm crackles.
Then,
you know you must
lace up your boots,
put down the blanket,
and go,
hoping again you’ll come
home one day.