A sweet, soft pulp,
wrapped in the confidence of autumn,
carried in her oversized coat pocket –
all the more sacred
for its secrecy.
We passed through gates
of elms, pines tall as dinosaurs,
quiet enough to be alive.
Dry leaves crunched,
exposing us
to no one.
Sunlight flickered, daring,
through hushed,
circling cedars.
Seated at a
fallen trunk,
we consumed the pulp
bite by bite
to remember home.
the real voice, the one that haunts me.
It mimics the grind and shift. Stop.
Jerk start
cogs wheels cymbal din.
Mocks pollution of unused industry.
Gears turn full
then reverse.
Truth is not beauty unless we don’t understand what beauty is.
Studies support this.
If the word “unless” is no older than the fourteenth century,
there must have been another way to neatly explain conditionals.
Wheels lock.
Must be a feather
in the system or
a piece of string
(from the sweaters
my mother finds me).
I want to write
(but)
wheels lock
(when)
my mother finds me
Marshes stretch beyond
stone structures, weathered
arches, foundations.
Trees are short and few, spiny living
a dry life.
I take a dusty path
worn, scraped through the rolling land,
on my way to the pool, but on a tour,
in a gallery,
a neighborhood of no one.
Structures that housed people now
stand as art. Not found
art, like paint chipping from a back
gate under
weight of age and
acid rain.
Placed art, realized, praised.
Black lines frame
doorways and squares on solid
white-washed walls.
And then the pool.
Others have already found it
warm not stagnant within
high sand walls
rim lined rust brown
holding tightly against the sea beside.
Wash-over water contained,
clear enough but not domesticated
de-mineralized.
I step from the grassy border,
swim through the shallow hint
and into the deeper.
I live inside some other creature –
not a mere pelt but
a warm red inside speaking
to water pressure –
I know what it is
to be a slick-skinned swimmer
singing of the glide, the slight surface lip yield
the deaf delay below.
He says it’s the letting go I’ve read about, a fall asleep sigh
as nothing takes over.
All those times on the couch reading, the bed waiting, lids too
heavy to lift
all at once drifting
away – that was practice, I suppose.
After three weeks without food, what does the mind turn to when it
finally knows
this will be
the sleep? The nap that clings too tight.
In a vast void ornamented with stars. Within the pupils of a
startled starlet’s eyes and her deep sea diving lover who dreams
of remote caves, under water, unlit and inside, the mouths of
eels opened. The closet of an old room, cold, curtains-drawn
breathes through a door, ajar. A well, a grave, deeper than I
like to believe when light cannot reach the bottom.
There forms a new word waiting.
First Words from a Sea Bird 