All seas are seas in the moon to these
lonely and full of light.
High above laundries and rooftops
the pinstriped silhouettes speak nightmare
as do the faces full of fire and orange peel.
Every citizen knows what’ s the trouble: America’ s longest
river is — New York; that’ s what they say, and I say so.
All middle age invisible to us, all age
passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs
and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke
some village-elder warning, some rasped-out
Remember me... Mute and grey in her city
uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE), the matron
just pointed us to our lockers, and went out.
‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen,
Now the god of rainy August hangs his mask
among the city’ s spires and balustrades
and stone clocktowers half-effaced in clouds.
On Park the first reflecting pool dims
with a thousand smelted-silver circle-rims,
while west on Fifth a modiste scatters leaves
in fall vitrines, and felt-browed mannequins
resign the world with gestures of disdain.
It’ s true we have invented quark-extraction,
and this allows our aiming gravity at will;
it’ s true also that time
can now be made to flow
backward or forward by
the same process. It may be true as well that
what is happening at the focal point,
the meristem of this process,
creates a future kind of space,
a tiny universe that has
quite different rules. In this, it seems,
whatever one may choose to do or be becomes
at once the case. In short,
we have discovered heaven and
it’ s in our grasp. However,
Live jazz at El Fresco is one guy, electric plinks,
until he turns off the switch, closes his eyes,
and warbles a boy’ s tenor, wood-flute tones,
pure séance hymns from before Christians.
Rowdies at the bar stop fighting and stare
as seawater washes through the room,
seeping through floorboards to serpent dens.
The chorus stirs spirits from family lore.
Desmond, Big Miller, James MackGehee —
all rise from steerage and sing with the lords.
Bending, I bow my head
and lay my hands upon
her hair, combing, and think
how women do this for
each other. My daughter’ s hair
curls against the comb,
wet and fragrant — orange
parings. Her face, downcast,
is quiet for one so young.
I take her place. Beneath
my mother’ s hands I feel
the braids drawn up tight
as piano wires and singing,
vinegar-rinsed. Sitting
before the oven I hear
the orange coils tick
the early hour before school.
O Ancient One,
your web hangs down from the pines.
I am of the Owl clan.
I have been to water,
my dress is of red clay.
He moves at the edge of you,
binds us with your threads.
The center of his soul shall be my soul’ s center.
Our paths shall be white forever.
Where we move the paths from every direction
shall recognize each other.
We are one never to be parted.
I am standing outside
in Minnesota
ghost wind recalling
names in winter mist
The road smells
of dogs two days dead
White photographers talk in
the house of mainstream
media
I can’ t articulate
the agony of Eagle Singer’ s
children to them.
The boy painted himself white and ran into the darkness.
We let the words “he may be dead, bury him,”
bury him.
We took his clothes to the rummage sale
in the basement of the mission
We put his photographs and drawings
in a birdcage and covered it with a starquilt.
For four nights voices carried clear to the river.
After winter so many storms moved in
strangers came among us
They danced
They shoveled in the shadows of trees
Then, somehow we all felt
all of us were of this one boy.
Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground
that’ s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.
Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light
making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.
Last snow. That’ s what we’ ll think for weeks to come.
Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.
We could head north and north and never let this season go.
Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,
knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.
