The mother as a child was always moving,

who knows why.

I, said the fly.

With my little eye.

If I clean up this house here long enough,

I can leave it.

But leave the eye next to where I

put my house, this way, that way —

“As with rosy steps the morn”

in memory of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Everyone

on the other side of the earth

standing upside down, listening,

Everyone on the reverse of the picture

on the other side of the measuring eye

The five notes, slowly, over & over,

and with some light intent,

And the whole air,

no edge, no center,

And the light so thin, so fast —

Don’t listen to the words—

they’re only little shapes for what you’re saying,

they’re only cups if you’re thirsty, you aren’t thirsty.

Dear Family,

“[the chrysalises] came out with their wings packed down… like crumpled letters… Some did not get quite free… ”

REBECCA SOLNIT, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

November 1862. Dear Family,

Lying here tonight, looking into the fire, waiting for fire,

I was seeing our fire at home, in my mind’s eye:

Mother, the little girls—

but then gunfire— we took up our guns

I’d have gone forward, but

then went the right eye of my body,

Mother,

don’t read this yet,

my thoughts are still packed down

like crumpled letters, and some of us

will not get quite free —

Canoe

Listen to the crescent

Listen to

the thin old house

Black Elk

smoking with us

pulling to us

up to the late dock

the canoe

Not enough bark

It was stretched till it broke

Patched, pale colors

An old horse, almost completely blind

A map

to the end of this world or cycle

The Japanese garden

The Japanese garden

is tilting quietly uphill

—eleven wet green stones,

bamboo, and ferns—

It might be under water,

the birds be fish, colored in.      And you,

masked reader:            the glance

of your underwater lamp,

your blackwater embrace —

not bought or sold.

Ghost Elephants

In the elephant field

tall green ghost elephants

with your cargo of summer leaves

at night I heard you breathing at the window

Don’t you ever think I’m not crying

since you’re away from me

Don’t ever think I went free

At first the goodbye had a lilt to it—

maybe just a couple of months—

but it was a beheading.

Ghost elephant,

reach down,

cross me over —

On a Passenger Ferry

in memory of Grace Paley

The deck is big, and crowded. In one corner,

an old woman, sick, on chemo, not in pain, is

writing in an elementary school notebook.

Nobody else saw her, but I saw her.

I had seen her before. Her round, kind face,

smiling and still as a photograph

outside a window —

Then Abraham

Then an old man came down out of the thicket,

with an axe on his shoulder, and with him