Paul Fattaruso

from VILLAGE CARVED FROM AN ELEPHANT’S TUSK

from VILLAGE CARVED FROM AN ELEPHANT’S TUSK

That man, that farmer, the one

who is nothing but a speck

in the distance, keeps a scrap of fog

in his pocket, and another in a box

on his dresser.

Also a peach waits there for him,

on the dresser,

humming like a lamp.

If you could touch it,

you would feel its insides moving.

Like an ivory bird.

A bird on a raft, orbiting.

Tomorrow we will walk to the other edge of the village.

.

The moon, the

wandering thumbprint, the

secret message printed

on an eyelid. The

eyelid itself, its secret

contours, the

sleep of the eyelid. The

path of its sleep.

.

A figment from childhood in a bit of tree,

the branch and its elbow.

A splinter lifts itself into song,

is lost to time entirely.

A quincunx of splinters like

a fragment of a roaming choir.

A glowworm crawls along, thinking

of birth.

It wants to hang from something.

.

The fog he keeps in his box is

the fog that gathers in the valleys,

curls slowly through the valley,

curls around each grass, each rock,

a cold morning fog, nearly winter,

a fog to anesthetize the valley,

it twists like a giant ghost just awaking,

a ghost of a waking giant, and he

ran into the valley and stole the sleep

from its eye and ran back,

a little of it seeping

out from between his fingers.

.

The fog he keeps in his pocket

is the fog that

gathers around his wife’s

eyelids & the slight

space

between her

lips while she sleeps.