We learn the truth about friendship
through the death of our family & friends.
Once the punishing weight of grief winds down
we experience the presence of the dead.
They talk to us, & we talk to them.
We not only remember but feel our mutual love.
It is not that we are strong enough to do without them
but that they stay with us forever.
They appear, observe, wonder, remark, remind us
not who they were but who they are to us.
by Taha Muhammad Ali [my translation]
We didn’t cry
as we left.
We had no time
no tears
no farewell.
We had no idea
this was goodbye
the goodbye
so how would we have cried?
We didn’t lie awake
(we didn’t sleep)
the night we left.
That night
we had no night
no light
no moon.
That night we lost our star
our lamp.
We didn’t sleep
so how would we wake?
curved rumps & lowered heads
of thirty black cows crop through thin snow
to grass almost summer green
fern fronds arc, mossy boulders glow
broad-leaved weeds & perennials
unfurl soft green leaves
rivers swing from freeze to thaw
soft lake-ice clumps, low mounds of snow
melt in warmth & rain
hiking trails are frozen, saturated, puddled
pulsing winds fracture forests
soil shifts, houses tumble
this planet we’ve forced to meet our needs
bends every straight line
breaks down asphalt, concrete, steel
degree by degree, earth reverts to round
a year consists of twelve months
a month of three ten-day weeks
all honor what farm & nature bring
Véndemiaire stamps the vintage red
Brumaire fog swallows cranberry
Frimaire frost crusts the standing weeds
no more gods, death to the last king
Nivôse snow floats, flurries, drifts
Pluviôse proffers rain
Ventôse favors wind
high regard for weather, water, air
Germinal marks the rupture of seed
Floréal waves its blossoms
Prairial sheep hike to high meadow
the earth’s body, the sky’s face
Messidor farmers harvest peas
Thermidor heat hatches mosquitoes
Fructidor fruit swells, sweetens, savors
nature, people, tools, reason
finally, Les Fêtes Sansculottides
five days (in La Franciade, six)
when free citizens dance & sing
oh, January snow, how
you fall, dry & light
all morning & most of
the afternoon, as if
a being — intelligent &
rational — ran the show
not that such a being
exists, no, snow’s from
a rulebook humans are
ever learning to read
these days they claim
to “know” about gravity
pressure, temperature
& yes, the ion game —
intermolecular bonds
ergo, voila, snow
yet (I’m licking my paw)
they can’t actually see
electron pairs bond
(whisker twitch) though
certain 21st-century
wunderkind skilled in
microscopy claim
to see them — but why
go on about science?
I’d rather see a mouse
running on snow
I sit in a raised box
among eleven others
while a judge (overly
fond of the qualifying
clause) delivers
remarks about justice.
I pay attention. I try
to map his reasoning
onto Boolean logic —
IF (x AND y) OR (NOT b)
OR k, THEN q, ELSE p —
but I cannot parse.
When he asks me
if I believe I can weigh
evidence, make a judgment
based on the law
I say, I imagined I might
before you spoke
but you’ve convinced me
I cannot. He frowns.
He signals the clerk
to lead me down & out.
Had I stayed, I’d not
have played at being god.
purples, erupts, exfoliates
think & say whatever you will
the body is you & doesn’t give
a fig about you, it magnifies
& depletes you, elates & defeats you
your body makes or breaks you
you pay attention, fight back
or you pretend to pay it no mind
all this intention, much as it may
amuse you, wastes your time
whatever your body wants to do
it does, tra la la, despite you
one mouse steals traps — picture
one foot caught under the metal bar
three feet racing toward the hole
dragging the trap behind, she chews
her leg free, sad, but she’s alive
so far she’s stolen three traps
she’s down to one foot — picture her
slow hop to the hole, nestmates
helping her pull the trap home
feet the other mice might eat
another story is three mice lose
one foot each — picture the farce
oh, our world, rife with cameras & mics
but none expose this lair, how
mice view traps, the tales they share
when I neared
the fraught age of
early adolescence
my mother relayed
the legend of an infant
resplendent in white silk & lace
stowed away on an ocean liner
departing Le Havre
approaching New York
the captain pressed for
a Christian benefactor
from those traveling first class
e.g., my great-great-grandfather
an Episcopal divine
this child became
my great-grandmother Genevieve
when any woman in our family
strayed, whether they
dropped out of school or used drugs
shacked up or got knocked up
or married down or
heaven forfend, divorced
my mother hastened to blame
that foreign blood
women have more to lose
than men, she’d say
& warn me once again
about that Jezebel, a cousin
reputed to fool around
hubris not to be condoned
only men
could play Don Juan
a woodpecker
I know by sound
strobes from tree to tree
black white black white
red head — I move
it disappears
nearby a hollow cone
augers into a mossy
pine — gray bark
torn down to wine red
down to carroty orange
to ivory splinters
the cone’s tip
is a tenebrous hole
fringed by velvety shreds
at the tree’s core
a murky depth
not heartwood
as if the pine trunk
held not inner
but outer space
a macrocosm
pileated woodpecker
hammers its way to
