-for Sr. Laurian Pieterek
1.
The elms catch
fire and color in the cold, which is almost
caught.
The elms aren’t in love
but almost sing
Lau, Lau, Lau in the
wake of wind
that is not
killing them again, though almost.
Followed a leaf
down the street
with fat bag of
grain in hands.
It’s like the
sky was never a halo
and then the
familiar stain of dream.
2.
We speak so
little now between the slightly trees:
us in this
stature of skin and sin, you
in a spirit’s
informal vestments.
For the gone
days and fullness is.
Hello, gone,
how young song the ask you now.
3.
(skies at the
cathedral gates creak
and
snap back in push and song
we walk the
least places in this new dream
thin thinking
and in moonlight
silver
power lines
cross the good earthscape
like God’s
stray hairs)
Can you suppose—
I’m thinking
of a color. Fewer. Nevermind.
Not completely,
but fully.
Find a flower and keep it
down.
Find a flower give it
a world to
raise,
a darkness
this bright
dancing cannot store.
A yesterday
thick to remark stray hen kept bobbing
its brown and
red head down to the green ground
clucking once
for each lost chick.
Poor bird,
clearly mad, counting its absences, mad.
Dogwood east of
river hungry.
The small world
clucks its losses.
4.
Your squirrels
wake daily and ricochet
from tree to
tree with their sorrow.
Yes, everything
is fine and dying and blessed
be this plunder
song of live and take.
Birds we could
never own fly again against
an otherwise
almost sky. Little
hopes, Little hopes.
It’s like
standing in the sand and crying out.
Our slingshots
full of empty sunlight, the giant
back on his
feet again. Then
song.
5.
The surge
complicated wind is back
to wondering
where is your skin to chill
and asks if I
have the time O to come and play
like you would
know how
but I don’t.
I’m still
moving, harvesting the last leaf’s worry.
I press wild
yellow between wax paper and Hopkins
and the winter
world hushes for months.
No more
hawk-weather water beating frozen
on stones, so
bones’ home the earth continues.
In the cold we
sing Hallelujah! We
found a find!—
Then, find a
flower, prop it up.
Find a sky and press the presence
this world cannot store.
6.
(magistrate
wind admits desire
for our little
bloods and brittle bones
like spilling
scared sparrows, nesting
in our
knuckles, but some wind digs
for years to
stir white guano on cave floors
and becomes the
wind of bats’ wings:
the dark wind)
When an infant’s mucus clears
in impressive
scream it’s not the first wind.
It’s only
wind, arriving as sound.
Last night,
dream of need, I put my mouth to a breast
of wind, until
it filled me, and I fled.
7.
Laurian, in
your death, little songs emerged out of time
like lilies,
white lilies, in January. How you left
your earth and other questions: a sequence rebels
like melodic
children in a book
God won’t
stop writing in funny flesh.
Friday frost
arrived on your grave, a white touch.
I waited down
on your porch steps, believing
the spirit
continues its quiet routine a life suggests.
(a wonderful
woods to inhabit dream you are
the bodiless parts the valley fog you leave behind
only seasons and many songs)
8.
I read again
your notes on old almost poems
I had forgotten
I attempted
introducing you
in new ones
seeing
your soft
purple coat still hangs
from a strong cedar
peg in your
closet
like an empty song.
There is a
brisk grief in the trees, juggling
squirrels, that
is not magic, but almost it’s wind.
9.
In a dream this
night I hide behind an elm
by your grave,
expecting for you
to spring
forth. Quite a
flower you’d make this winter
gone
taut petals flinging wet light.
A deep face the
color of the sky.
Every night is
capsized like this:
the city sky
pillared by chimney steam,
and this broken
rosary of stars that surrounds you.
