This Life
The turnip greens are cooking, shrinking “to nothing” on the stove. This life! How it shrinks to nothing in the end.
Morning
The children are up, the house, too, feet everywhere, and my own breathing forgotten — like the name of a man in the years since his death, resurrected with his father in the schools of the dead, where they relearn the secret arts: the fine balances, the colors of love, household economy, and war and healing. I learn, too. But what is spoken here, I’ll never know. It whirls out of sight, nameless and breathless. The wind lifts the roof, like the lid of a box. Idly, without interest. I should fix it. At night, I ask myself, Did I do the things I should? Or fall on the bed with no thought for the morning, waking on sleep’s forgotten side.
Together
I want to love loneliness the way I love you. I want to enter it and twist up its hair in my fist. Its mouth open like the sea. My thoughts like bandages peeling away. Breathing together, my loneliness and I.
In The Name Of Love
The bird is exhausted. It flies through soiled skies. It curves to meet itself in reflections. It dives into pockets of its mind. From one end of the great nothing to the other its wings flap in bony salute. There, a feather, left for you in the name of love. It has no colors. Imagine! It is too heavy to lift! What love is this, you ask, shaking a fist at the sky.
Building Your Own Home
I cut the road through the darkness. I carried in the best days of my life. For windows there were faces. The doors were secrets. They swung on their hinges soundlessly. In the morning, I’d arrange my dreams like twigs, and stand like a tree in a storm. There was no place to go. Leaving, I went into myself. My heart was a room filled with hanging plants. It tilted towards the moon. Down the hall, I’d go crashing, toward the mirror at the end. Like a bird, I chased the rain. To see yourself that way, luminous, alone in space! In a house you built yourself!
