The wind that raised me
whispered
spartina alterniflora
juncus romanus
then laughed,
in wavelets holding
brackish reflections
of a blue that we called ‘sky,’
at the way we try to name things
The stories carried hints
like the underside of leaves
that had just pushed out
through the flesh of stems
in a gathering of cells
quick as lightning to open
without knowing why
into the sun that warmed
the tiny chambers of sap and cellulose
to cast a glow out into air
and radiate the simple, fervent scent
of brand new life
barely more than a breeze,
a soft exhale through the epiphyte
they called Spanish
even though it knows nothing about Spain
or anything else in the world
where things and places
have names
who I am, who I was,
the place where I am from,
which doesn’t exist anymore,
in the way that it did,
just like everything else
they come in the night
hot breath and mother’s milk,
smoke and beer,
the cold of ice on the tongue,
hollering across a blazing field,
speaking low
with the pine gathered close and quiet seeping
the sharp smell of a home
I will not see again.
glabrous shine dark red
to black, a critical mass
sweetness building slow
Beautiful people
all over the world, living
sad lives, scenic places
a chart, scatterplot
would show no going back now
too much ripe, ready
(what is it to live
the last summer of one’s life?
…asking for a friend.)
Next year’s cane reach bold
soft green, fleshy thorn, straight tall
not knowing, they’ll wait
Last week, a surprise
to find the dark half globe hid
among the blood red
Now, everywhere
more than ever,
then gone.
The look of the room
was full of New South
Palmettos in pines, sweet blessed shade
beyond the plastic lines of blinds
and brutal swathe of buffalo lawn
stucco on the outside
carpet and rush of cold,
compressed air
on the inside
all pale blue and grey
pastel accents
under khaki, sitting prim
and civilized, fur sprayed and face made
to be modern, educated,
informed behind the convex spectacles
that hide the earnest child
the one who wants to help,
the one who thinks they know the answers.
The answers were all wrong,
but she gave them anyway
because she thought they were right,
the answers.
A common mistake,
very human thing to do. To have the wrong answers, and to think they are the right answers.
“Your daughter,” she said,
“has a condition.”
On the night before the full moon
I bickered with my oldest child in the wind
About why he could not run off
to Shining Rock at sundown,
we watched the day explode
Glad for the gales that make silence
No need to talk in wind like that
light gold and purple
All across the mountains
Walking in the dark
Across the field of dry grass
Spotlight on our backs
Shadows on the road
Land rising black against the sky
Right under Venus
No lights up there on that rise
feet getting wet down here
shifting stones in the ink of the ground
I was with my children
Taller than I am
Daughter in the stream, wetting her head
her feet, like some baptism
just silliness
Silly like the geese in the river on Sunday
Reminding us
not to leave one another behind
Always,
a day full of voices
Warbled and piping
Bowed heads
and the happy, kicking feet of children
Old brows stern with the serious business
Of giving thanks
and the rituals of passing plates,
setting knives aside
with a gracious hand
Outside,
Away from talk
of games and scores,
sickness and health,
plans, a grievance,
maybe two,
wishes and a regret,
the solemn nod to the seat
now empty
owls call into the dark
roots rest in cold soil
dry leaves spin silent to the waiting ground
their arrival announced
in a whispering, settling sound
that nobody hears
While water falls across rocks
Stirring up wind
That blows branch and limb
against the windows
of warm houses,
and shudders the flames
of fires burning
all night long.
She considers the ringing in her ears
sweet lull between cars passing
Down on the street beyond
The tangle of old apple trees and privet
That hides this house
The birds settle down
when there are no cars
And the sky is beginning to have
That soft look about it
Like the inside of a blanket
Not even grey, just the white glare of down
a thunderstorm just being born
In the slight wind from the southeast
Where all those boneyard beaches are
She’d spent the morning daydreaming
Awake and smiling
In the ease of line
And in the imagining
of a quick drive from here
To there
A whole ‘nother world
Down there by the water
Now she considers the ringing in her ears
And how bothered she is by the sound
Of cars, the guttural push of a bus on the hill
She doesn’t think she wants
to go for a bike ride
To be out on the road
With the bright and the glare
The cars driving past
Loud all around her
I painted a tiny picture once
Of a woman on a table
Cut open at the chest
Blue roses spilling forth
From the cavity of herself
And what I meant to say with this
Sitting at my desk in a white painted room
With a window northwest facing
The view of the roof next door
lives underneath the tar
woman at a counter on the bottom floor
A store clerk and a seamstress
Making noodles
behind a wall of glass
While the brush painted blue
Onto blue
The curve of petal and closed lid
The movements of the city
Rushing as a breeze in the bare limbs
Of the tree that grew up between the buildings
And what I meant to say
Years ago, with that tiny figure
Blue roses spilling forth
Was that I wanted to show you
What’s inside of me
“Here, look,” she said,
leaned into the dark
disappearing into the slur of night
new moon, no moon
thick of shadow suggesting
just a little light
up there, Venus rising
sun gone, still
over past the mountain
casting dim on clouds
shimmer the leaves and slick up the water
but, fail
to show us the bark,
to show us the details
(Lenticel and the pursed mouths of blooms
not quite open
“Kalmia latifolia,” she’d told you at the car,
when she’d said,
“I am learning to learn again.”
and listed all the names she knew.)
(She didn’t tell you that the sounds of them, these names, felt uncertain in her mouth, that she felt like a child saying them. She said nothing about the strangeness of remembering that she used to be a person who knew the names of things, could say them like quicksilver, say them like music, syllables like dancing in the everyday talk of flowers. She doesn’t tell you any of this, standing beside the car with the day bright blue and Rhododendron catawbiensis mutely blooming behind you.)
At night, she leans forward
into the mass that is earth
toward the rustle of spring
and for a second she is gone,
swallowed, but you heard her push aside the branches,
hollow knock of rocks disturbed,
feet grinding stones,
licking into moss,
the damp fur of mountain
speckled with light that might be the moon,
or plain old mica.
Reaching forward, one finger, two,
bracing toward the glow
curious to see what would happen
if she touches it.
Held her breath to find
the light stayed the same,
fixed to the ground,
beaming up in pinprick smears
a scatterplot spelling out,
“There is water here.”
that place is still
there
underneath the pavement
and the tires
and the signs
with their sun-bleached messages
that said:
You Don’t Belong Here
they lied
again
this has always been your place
underneath the bones
and the branches
the moss like ghosts
and the tides like a heartbeat
as slow and steady
as your very own history
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