Bourgeon

MOONDUST

after Endymion and Selene

I have watched you swing from light to shadow,
and back again. Your chariot was made of black moonstone.

Your four horses, dappled in the colors of season,
left behind a streak of chalk in their wake.

Had you a human face? I wanted to reach up and stroke
the contours of your elegant face as you stared ahead.

Was it a race? I didn’t see spectators.
Whose road were you following? I didn’t see signposts.

Constellations seemed like maps flung aside with abandon.
They seemed to float like haloes around your head.

Did you ever notice me? I was just a shepherd.
All I saw with my naked eyes was a mysterious woman

with a face that shone the way for ships lost at sea
and lonely men wondering about the stars.

Having nothing better to do, I notated your phases.
You tried to mask your face whenever you could.

Sometimes I felt you were playing hide-and-seek
behind billowing towers of cumulus.

Then one night you stopped your chariot and floated down
to me amidst my sheep sleeping and whispered a lie

so preposterous I wasn’t sure if I’d heard you correctly.
You said I was the most beautiful mortal you’d ever seen

ever since you took the reins to control the vicissitudes
of night. Not possible, I said. The glow from your face

lulled me into a sleep that I didn’t know would last
for centuries to come. You wanted me immortal

in the act of repose so you could gaze upon me
whenever you felt pangs of loneliness.

I would awaken only at dawn, wondering again
what dream I’d just imagined and lost.

Were you in it? Did we make love?
Or had you lied to me all over again?

One day we will writhe in moondust.
Our prayers will be more than stars.

CARYATIDS

We stand together, sisters of the porch,
our bodies remembering the raw scorch
of chisel hammering away
our tender marble to display
how we held the weight
of our hips, the plait
of hair down
to our gowns,
until we
stood free,
embraced by sun.
But they weren’t done.
Men with massive shoulders
of strength to move boulders
sheathed us in cloth and rope
as they dragged up the slope.
Then we were tilted up and forward,
pushed and aligned as ordered.
This took them a few days.
No one held us in praise
of our uniform bevy.
They complained how heavy
we were. If we were their mothers,
they’d have treated us like feathers,
with utmost kindness and respect.
We didn’t know what to expect,
but certainly not this beam
squelching our dreams.
Each night on this damn porch
we await the flicker of torch.

UVULAE

Our mouths are born to sin.
We should know better than to gulp

down 32 ounces of sugared water
but damn, there’s something unredeemable

about those endless highways of
nowhere paved over with bitterness

that drive us to seek solace in places
where no church can save us.

We shouldn’t be stuffing those alms
of perfectly layered potato chips

laced with the sodium of addiction
into our mouths. Asking for help is hard.

We shouldn’t be grateful for such dirty shame,
but our souls are gluttons for redemption.

AURORA BOREALIS

Spray my dream soul across the skies
up north where winters are long.

It is made of wisp, threads, grit.
Maybe there’s a stocking of coal.
But no matter.

All you see is the green of spleen,
with flares of yellow spring.

I have no words left to describe
the outline of dreamery,
many now that are black holes,
gracing the crown of sky.

We will not be long for this earth.

Scientists are sounding warning bells
about our thinning ozone layer.

We have been such fools.
We have squandered so much,
and for what?

Maybe one day dreamers
more strong-willed than I
will arch back with their bows
and shoot stars that can thread
entire lives into a single line
stitching up the holes in our lives.

Image by NGC 54, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Afterward, in Waves

I’m no longer afraid of not doing
the right thing.

I leave clothes on the drying rack
for days.

Reading, I eat chocolate,
smear the page.

It’s not that I’m lazy or decadent;
I’m shamelessly alive.

Or if I’m afraid, it’s that I’ll forget
exactly

the blue-grey carpet, water stain
on the wood table.

If I’ve learned anything
from your accident,

it’s how to tend
a half-dead lawn.

*

The bedroom we shared was blue.
The walls, the sheets, the pillows, icy blue.

And the ground cracked and froze for half a year
as your bones mended in another state.

I’d drive 12-14 hours
to visit you in the dark blue cold.

Home, one evening I dug into your closet,
clawed though your things

like a madwoman in a gothic
novel you’d never read.

I was looking for a secret life
that I could blame.

*

Your father carried the blame
for your fall,

berated himself silently
for not securing

the scaffolding that buckled
under your weight.

The roof unrepaired
for years.

While you were hooked to machines,
he visited in-

frequently. We stood in the kitchen’s blue
morning light as he sobbed

into my shoulder and said something
inarticulately.

*

On the phone, you’d ask about the mail, bills,
did I remember to turn down the heat?

I rubbed my fingers round the water stain
left from a vase as we talked.

In spring, I mowed circles on the lawn.
It was important to you that the grass

was cut into perpendicular lines,
woven like a thatched roof.

*

In the house we shared,

stacks of new doors were propped
facing a wall. Window frames stood

upright with the windows punched out
like perfectly missing teeth.

I’m convinced you’ve never finished replacing them.

The paint on the deck was peeling again.
Years ago, just after the dog died,

we painted it in silence. I imagine
the lawn is still unflawed except

for that sandy spot.

*

Your mother told me a story
of when you were young. Angry,

you cut holes in a paper bag
for your eyes, wore it over your head

at dinner, and wordlessly forked food
underneath its serrated edge.

*

Once I motioned to the instructor
on our dive “no air”
though I could breathe fine.

I fitted the secondary yellow respirator
to my mouth, just to see if I could,
save myself in case of real emergency.

I still hate diving in deep water,
can’t stand the rubber suit, gauges
to measure oxygen, depth,

can’t feel my green sponge lung,
bronchioles, aureoles. The places
you’d never go fill with salt.

*

Before we even met, I taped
a card with a waterlogged image

of a couple facing each other
on a beach to my wall.
The inside left blank.

I was waiting to write it,
to have it written.

*

I no longer remember your face,
only a vague sketch and daubs of blue

for your eyes. I fill the gaps
by tracing pictures in sand.

When I press down, the water
rushes over. What dissolves,

dissolves in waves. You’re walking now
further and further away.

*

It’s like this: happening upon
an abandoned crab shell

or this: writing a poem
in a silent room.

How churned debris
of the sea blue-deep

in the quiescent half-light
floats up.

Before & After

After the phone call about her accident, we were far away at the seashore,
& if we should go back & how (since we couldn’t see her).

after we learned the other driver was maybe drunk or high,
after our children were in bed & only the waves punctuated

the silence between us, I thought this is it, everything will change from here on out,
but for that moment, a week really, we carried on as if,

as if before & after exist simultaneously, & sometimes, even now
a year later, I still catch myself about to send a photo to her or a text

Image: Sailing Hirondelle, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons