Sunday 23 September 2018

10 days of awe and then the equinox


we watch the holy beast of fall land
through double panes,
feathers dropping sickly
and storms on the horizon.

each in their room,
folding t-shirts, cutting hair--
Somerville drowses richly, thickly,
grey paved and still hungry after dinner.

when jonah turned his back on Nineveh,
he said he would rather die than change his life.
so God made his choice his world.

In the Museum of Fine Arts, there are urns which tell you
that which you must do.
But it’s historical fact now. How curious
the edges that we have rounded.

I am in Cleveland pouring lagers
in the lava room as the Brown’s win.
I am in Denver holding a hiking pole
to the sun.
I am in Philadelphia painting my lover’s bathroom
blue.
I am in a manic state, dancing naked in the attic.

the world is not holding together
the way it used to
and beneath the house, a yawning pit opens,
the structure begins to crumble.
shall we find something else to do?

we nest, we pray,
this year I ask if we are in the belly of the whale,
or already spat out.
have you learned enough from this darkness?

We throw one hundred stones into the river
after hearing the shofar run out of breath.
the river is yeasty and yellow,
overflowing its banks with a kind of
life giving death.
on the horizon, the great oil tankers loom and
a coal train dings its dingy bell.
I miss the mark, I stray, I make mistakes.
but do I forgive?
what is it the muddy moustache says?
to see what is necessary in things
as what is beautiful.

does the grass forgive the seed?
or the wind for that matter?
or the great plain of which it is only a small part?

I am throwing up my hands these days
and thinking the stars in my bones know
something I will never own.
when the weather turns and everything in us
begins to turn too, longing to relinquish itself,
to fall away fully used as the knowledge of survival settles,
when we see our own hands reaching for an answer, let us not
turn on our phones.
let us not turn to the distracting touch.
is it cuffing season?
even if we lose everything we should not lose,
let us be quite out in the open about it:

there is a mystery here which I will certainly perish on.
this new poetry was made for our blistered mouths.

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