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Ornithography
sunlight alarms the room
tattered by time and the failed window
dust motes taking note of
the yellow
as it passes through the glass in bars without breaking
a difficult spill from
the blue leading to an idea
the sky is you, the bird was you, the glass was you,
are you still, though all
broken—
if you sail out on your
boat will the air unroll,
will it open into navigable paths
will you single out the
sound that lingers
a bow that shivers along the strings
a transcription of the
sight of five hundred wings
dreaming a sudden maze
whose feathered arms are
gesturing
through dust’s field of vision
when you the boat’s wake
when the rudder drifts
the surface is still
is it really still since still reaches back
threads the idea of the
boat to the idea of water
chores here are choral
the cords of your work
connect you
crouched in the shade, dustpan in hand
if lingering is the wind
if the waves of the sky-road are really wind
water is waves
if the boat sails through mist
will the island coalesce
will you coalesce
of dust and light and
broken glass
who has to sweep
who has to patch the empty frame
who is going to fly back
to blue
The Second Funeral
We will return in forty
days and the seam
of the disturbed ground won’t be visible.
Death is a miracle I do
not understand,
our life already split in half.
Five women across the
street, hold hands,
forbidden to enter the burial ground.
In forty days our prayers
will have evaporated into winter wind.
What will then stitch the
earth closed?
A thread of five cousins, forbidden to cross
and the sixth who went to
them,
warm earth in his hands.
Math
Adamant as the jade in
the window
the year carries itself into the new season.
When winter turned to
summer
I forgot it all like math,
God in the sky and God in
the water
dissolving at the horizon,
or God in the air and in
the plant condensing
on the glass, a geometry of frost-rime,
because when we went into
the ocean,
the waves were glass-green, the sky pure indigo.
In the room last winter’s
writing
can still be seen.
Who is that in the space
where your
self and your self do not meet?
In the ocean our bodies
float together
just a few feet apart.
A Century in the Garden
It is hard not to know my
death my nowhere trajectory
What is the difference
between entity and eternity
I asked him the long
syllableless afternoon
The ache a quench the
eighty-ninth question
My disappeared friend a
body I used to know
It doesn’t need to know
my death its dark current
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