Grace Egbert
A heavy door closes and opens all night
to let the terrible sycamores pour
ice water further from a face, to
please
or refuse, the point cannot be mere
rebirth.
In cities intricate with rebar
reconstructions
of human imagination,
a young vole turns up on the stoops
like a leaf turned awry
in an unspectered season
to sleep and to convince us
that everything is as it always has been,
because of death.
So permitting as to seclude twinges of
autumn
into an unsuspecting listening, ear to
an ear
of hardshipÕs architecture of faux logs
in the fire.
But what got us rolling, not falling
back
to enter distinguishment, was a pipe
cut
into character, into tunnels made to
circumscribe
and sound marimba (with suede thumb
against
the differing) so romantic to say
breathing
breathed into you. Also: the length of this.
I.
Turning, you were
A violet hill, a glass carafe, an
uncollapsing mine carved there—
Quelled turquoise, granite peacock
holds the place
You might run, herd
If you could.
Once, you were turning,
Eidetic, without words. You were
seared-light,
Stereopic and singular,
A hallucinatory clarity, a farmhouse
dwelled upon
Not inside.
What becomes surface, your childhood,
your praises,
What finally splits
As you would grow
Away, grow
New filaments, a knack for morning,
For carving
Pouring water, for opening the literal
atmosphere,
The blue forget-me-nots, we are
inside.
II.
Wild yams in the ground since the beginning,
Things you have never forgotten.
But then, there are the things you
have:
Once a horse ran you across a fenceless
expanse of sage.
You came back, panting and pleased.
You were inside a willing exclusion.
You were an eye, pouring.
I called you Edelweiss, I called you
lap.
Or was it you calling me?
Blind spot, sore lake.
Burning, this inversion smells of paper
whites—
III.
It splits, splits again.
Sometimes a real leaf, say an aspen,
Grows on a symbolic tree.
You, as a boy, believed
Yourself to be an animal,
A name—chasm, charm, crown.
You, purple as siblings at age five and
six.
There is something
In the contours of what does not
stay—
Salt and rice in a jar of winter.
IV.
What carves? About the earth and
backwards.
A relief: dinosaur bones
Blown by dynamite into a copper sheet.
Sometimes a body deserves a literal
window.
Sometimes the flock burns itself away,
red as hulls of nutmeg.
This is you, flammulate tulip, quail
egg.
V.
The beads and shells come loose,
unrepentant,
Cirrus cataracts of time.
Perhaps you should have been a shepherd.
But in pinch of savory, sand,
You are the melting point—
Gorgeous, improbable marbles
Binding into dark burning openings:
Umbrella birds flying up, atmosphere
ablaze—
I will take care for you, will attend
To the bower birdsÕ nest
And to marigolds on the way home.
For me, as for you, she is a black
rocking chair—
I remember her for you—black
tulip petals,
Her falling (did water fall?) Her
remaining—
Did you visit the canyons of lavender?
Did you know the suede of morning,
The firs around those bends? Were you awake
then?
In section, in cervix, in the pawing of
painted wood floors,
In wrought iron breath,
In the viscous half-light,
In would have you
confused for another.
You—split sugar shell wings, a
multiplicity of feet retracted.
Do you remember? You were water, human.