I don’t remember what
we learned in school: to weave
a net was not in our lesson plan,
nor a healing touch, nor a sense
that the wetlands and the trees
would pass away and never
flower again even in memory.
Help me: I still want to know.
Brought over a kumquat tree
to your house yesterday, you
weren’t there. The water
table won’t sustain our needs
when salt gets into everything.
I remember the heron waiting
for what I don’t understand.
Blue shading to gray beneath
the fierce car-exhaust dusk.
It is difficult to believe that
we will be cured by speaking
more clearly about our failure,
even if everyone says so.
I waited for you to call me.
Cognitive decline is already
beginning even as we reach
up into star-tangles to try
to say what is still unbounded.
For the first time unafraid, or
still afraid but rushing through.
Dirt in my nails. The crisis
means for now that no crisis
strikes me in this residence:
the emulation of an instant
of being there under a bough
with you, unrolling the years
and rolling them back up
tighter than ever, until phase
changes, blood into vapor,
carbon into gem, charged
lumps of matter we put away
in shadowy corners when we
can’t find the correct use.
In summer I was telepathic
with the possibility of red.
Down the dead train track
I went whistling, every inch
of me humming with pleasure
for how living might unfurl.
I haven’t felt so much that way
lately. There is a new insect
that covers over everything—
it has strength without joy.
I’m standing outside your house
watching the grass that has
lost its echo, wondering
if you’ll repaint the door.
My mother is already throwing
away her possessions so there
will be less mess. I have been
a good student, and it counted
for nothing. On the Fourth
I crept into the ocean at night—
it was colder than intelligence—
and watched the fireworks
that got smaller each second
even as the noise grew.