Perhaps I have shown too much.
Or left what matters out in the cold.
From a cold family in a cold state:
how did you tilt the seaons
so that notes slipped out of me
at your door? Words warmed me.
The world’s warnings like so much snow
covered all paths. I had to be exposed
to no direction to build a stillness
of ice, and sun, and time for your affection.
Speak honestly with me — I am no decision.
I am an acknowledgment like a leaf landing
on the reflection of what it fell from acknowledges
it is not rejoining the tree but starting a new life
afloat on the agreeable other, unreflective,
its shape an utterance spreading out, unstoppable.
What is hanging still there over the clouds and houses?
In this moment when even the crickets are pursing their lips.
I know the gravity of things keeps it all moving, that it takes
time for the light to reach me, I know on a soft quiet night
nothing is still but look up there, memory the size of the moon,
lighting the way, going nowhere, perfectly still.
The contents matter less than the request
though I didn’t know what I was asking for,
that I was licked, inside my own opacity
unaware the asking was my only honesty
Sometimes in the same way Ohio rain meanders
below Akron and Canton casually beyond Caldwell and
into West Virginia stopping in Charleston for a change
of luck and then on slowly eastward and along sharp ridges
to this Valley becoming a fine mist on my shoulder as
only a memory catching its breath can before moving
on with the ease of a spoken sentence between strangers
about the weather, one on vacation, one on the way
to work but with a moment to spare in the passing mist
for the soft vowels of hello, so before the clearing wind
I feel what moves me also moves along this way, resting
when it reaches me like a mist on my shoulder,
like the lightest part of a vast weather that decides to stay
until evaporation pulls me up too and a new entirety moves on
All grief to the ground must go
and joy, and birds, and every step
taken forward or back is the right
and wise step, and leaves and light
from the center of the moon between
us, and our lives which are air upon
air must settle in a single eventuality, and
from the ground swells always
up through my shoes this love
yearning for the sky’s response
Late to the party, but not too late.
Source: Eclipse
West coast moon madness from M.
Boardwalk arcade whirls—
Its flashing cadence of noise;
I wait for the moon.
Another fine poem!
Great poem, C!
Source: September 27
Translations from the English 