The Goodbyes (1)
Guests that come in,
through home they are showed:
this is the heat we use. It is wood. We use wood heat.
Look up, guests, I point you to the baskets.
They say (guests they say,)
"Outline the slopes,
round the flowers—a node of leaves,
a root they are.
We twisted all summer, a couple in love. Trachis we might've
been in,
but it left us:
One to the city. Two to the sea. Still, without you there,
there was no me."
But tracks must be confronted, a biography we are always in. A free
enigma.
Come crowd with the water gazers here.
We portioned into horizontal planes,
motion translated into form.
The news angling emphasis on top the smoke is where it is.
A newspaper
calls on a newspaper,
spelling our plans,
as we wait for rain.
There are those that skim horizons for both twilights: the east's, the
west's.
A border within boundaries:
a diminished laboratory: I am trying to move away from vespers (but,
I have fear.)
Oh but now here we are!
Each our own man &
when you are lonely &
when the saltwater streets keep us open
& when Olivia says, "I am not scared of them, I am scared of their
howling."
Ahhhhhh a pin &
a haystack—something to put in the baskets (they are here too,
hanging on the beams that cross before the ceiling.)
A collection not! A pin, a locate, its echo. I know you are full of fear, but
it is not you, it is your howling.
At least there is something to share (behind this
we come together & crowd) a kind of action:
Welcome guests (see roof, see baskets (they are seriously old baskets):
a place actual, a farm: Aunt Anne is walking down the road, she is
bringing something with her, carrying it in baskets.)
Aunt Anne she is bringing lemons. A real lemon, a
live lemon, a lemon called lemons. She shows us how this lemon may
become that lemon. The scene this day. Yes sirs, a place it is going.
The Goodbyes (5)
Reminding ourselves it was a gaming table, we listened to
a long song's call. The trumpets played uprooted
trees. I wasn't there. I was on the Bowery,
not believing I am an old person whose father is dead
& whose patron is gone.
The old pines spell the end of the world, we
will go somewhere else. I am on the Battery.
The new expanse, less than a memory might've been,
an altar it is
pulling into a pattern one can trust. A mimicked wind. A tuned frame.
A gamble of strings caught in a brassy fame. Little chickadee,
is it a city we are in?
The radio, rebranded trumpets, the internet's cargo—
all motion translated into sound. Grief ridden gates closing at feet—
a withered arbors altar: remind
ourselves it is dust we are on, the angles of the roots exposed.
The meeting of streets,
what's visible of tectonic plates. It is a repeat of trees we see,
a ceremony of a forest washing ashore. Our regions. Remind me—
It is the idle weeds, growing vaguely north along the road. Not a city
but a valley we might have seen
thrown at the wind we don't notice blowing.
We do not ignore what is good. We play parts in high tragedies.
Gazers of water, the crowds, we were there. What have I missed?
It was a meager metropolis suspended, through groves
of little sun.
The picture's mist you are in, it is a haze of regular spell.
Chimes of conservatories we hoped to hear,
but in the night we stay private when we are sleeping.
Inscrutable fields,
I trust we are both in.
