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Gardening is Design in the 4th Dimension
(A Rambling Elegy On the Anniversary of your Death)
More for myself, for the missing breath, the space it leaves, the listening you were,
the talking I was, all the words filling up with no place to go now. I miss the non-
ruffling of feathers, the sponge absorption.
Blame is what I call mourning. Human. The sky has no language for this. It paints
and unpaints itself all day, rearranges its hair, spruces with a few well-placed sailboats.
I would like you to take me back, but how does one ask for the ears of the dead?
I exhale shadows. Sunlight kisses the birds that chatter all morning. Nights, fish discuss
theories of harmonics, while those birds dream of places so deep inside the earth, sound
is coal, iron, beryl.
Where does it come from, this need for talk? My words wing at you like moths. Will
you cook them omelets for breakfast, send them to school on the bus? Your heart turns
a deaf ear. The ground breathes a sigh.
I do not miss you in the rain; only days where the sun is imperative. Squirrels make
fools of themselves along the fence. Humor is another shade of disgrace. I love you-grit
in the tincture.
My stomach growls its bared teeth. Memory asks how high? Regret says leave
a message, no one is available. Tears like cloudburst. These are homeless times
for my teeth and lips.
The back of my throat misses you like a diver, the sunken ship. Fly up through depths,
thoughts, bless someone, somewhere. Bless hands that lift this page, lay down a phone
without anyone to call. Bless even the phone, its silence the tongue in God's mouth.
Gardening is Design in the 4th Dimension
was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2007.
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