The solid floor recalls a room more merciful. It could not arrange
itself into this stack of blocks, a castle in the mind. Where triangles
sit until the end of the story in patient observance. While the rain
breeds rivers, currents, a low slung remembered slice of the inner
lapse. Where failure branched and tricks grew taller than disguise.
She fell on the stair and turned back. After that the situation worsened.
Sound of bells from the steeple. End of afternoon and the light retreating.
Green circle it was and not a backyard. Yet every day she put her foot
down once on the grass, then pulled it back until the bells began to behave.
We were ready in the day and open. As white reunion. While flowers
fill every vase where we twirl and land in the clear-eyed parenthesis.
On the other side of waiting, these rooms. How they gleam and save
us.
White language pretending to be birds gave townspeople the impression
it had never happened. They went about their business briskly and spoke
in clipped urgent voices. One of them would nod as he passed her where
she sat on the granite bench beside a pool of orange carp, their fins
wavering in the filtered light she clung to.
We set out in rain too loose to weave. An episode returned to
singe the wasted limb. Know and then describe.
A region without a horizon; this space and landscape lack the seam to
join them. She looked to the sky as if it intended to find the turf one
day. She looked to the hills. The prairie contained the frightful need
of the rippling grass.
To the fields of cornflowers stand up and say, You cannot be
this terribly blue and have no eyes to remember me.
Lights on the rhododendron wink like flirtation’s tattered dress.
Come hither glance around and around the dusty barn.
Assembling mist into a pose of what it takes to arrive and then
to be in this place, in this arrangement where dishes mend into the
first day—white plates—she holds one. Sets it before you.
And so.
Wind rises but the sky doesn’t change. No boats on the water. She
wants to laugh at something, but no old dog to roll over and over, then
jump up, tail awag,and in circles run. The light is slow. Against the
houses, no lattice and roses climbing. A woman in her green sundress walking
back and forth. The way she belonged there. What happened to the sliver
spoon, small handle curved to fit a finger. And still it’s someplace
else. Search the house, every drawer. |
