little brother

Now Nostalgia A voice within my shadow wakened me, a glowing voice: I love the dark too much— That voice was always kind; it helped me now to rest, in its long shadow: “So much we loved the dark,” it said, “that all these years apart I have been here, like this, hidden in your shade.”                                                                 William Stafford                                                                 One Night Before I remember you’re not there I bend in my chair and look for you through the window and into the sky.  It’s late April and news of you has arrived but you alone have not and now I know you never will and I’ll need to spend the rest of my life not expecting you to.  We’d made plans we never intended to cancel.  They wait now like children who have been told their mother has gone on a long trip and she won’t be back for a long long time (they never say never) and the children/plans

News of You Your word arches over the roof all day.  I know it within my bowed head, where the other sky listens. You will bring me everything when the time comes.                                                                 “Sky”                                                                 William Stafford   I’m doing my best not to make the news of you into a cliché and lately, and maybe even before the day I knew about your suddenly and without delay, dying, it’s been back into winter for me and she and me sometimes each conspiring with each                 and sometimes at odds:                 this is the time I finally realized                                 (after I’d put my gear away)                 that she'd been letting me                 slice right into her     shoulders     elbows     fists                 and lift her                 up and away                 but only heavily—with more and more w

Barometer Castle Hill--Crane Estate Kintsugi II For Pete Sheehan, my friend And when two people have loved each other see how it is like a scar between their bodies, stronger, darker, and proud; how the black chord makes of them a single fabric that nothing can tear or mend.                                                                 Jane Hirshfield                                                                 For What Binds Us Hibakusha means survivor                 in Japanese survivors of a small but growing larger ball falling above their heads to make of them ash and lit shreds, irradiated shadows—and although it didn’t come for them specifically if they stood it or even ran a little ways from it they cracked anyway, and openly most went down blind from the flash and if not that something  intimate was cast in their veins, something elemental and they waited years to see it, bending once again in their lives

within, within, within Lubec, Maine On Clover “Isn’t it odd how much more one sees in a photograph than in real life?  —VIRGINIA WOOLF It’s not far off at all and maybe only a change in temperature and then only maybe a degree to see in the fog coming up over the hill a long roll of smoke—wet as it is we can only stand it still the way anything can be stood still and even that, the blur of the unsteady hand aiming the camera is translated in the liquid bath of the chemicals she’d mix when figuring: I saw a house on fire once and somewhere inside the flames themselves were born and borne by everything it and the wind wanted, and it was a lie to say it wasn’t the most awakened lover, how it rippled and let the tongue and finger linger on the brocade, on the chenille, how the smoke of it would offer (don’t be coy or too afraid) to take the children down easy before the fire arrived.  Maybe she thought that in her dark room,

Dumb, the tip of my thumb is damaged enough to refuse to grasp anything but a gross fumble.  Even here, this pen a friend gifted to me nearly twenty years ago is tricky to grasp—it takes making an anchor, shank and bill, stick out beyond the gunwale and point up like a relic, blunt and rusted and left out in the open salt air.  It’s enough some- times to keep a balance and not stand up in the boat, although everyone knows it can’t be helped sometimes, especially if we’ve all everyone of us in it been let down into the sea after the first breach and we rub our hands raw on the anchor and let the wind bring us in closer than we’ve ever come to, and there she’ll be blowing wet air up and closing the hole on the top of her head like a third eye.  Time was I’d’ve liked to ride along beside and slip my fingers inside the coarse ribbons of blubber along that blowhole—to go in maybe up to my wrist whole hand open closed open closed like

Among them New Bedford Whaling Museum With The Living What is fidelity?  To what does it hold?  The point of departure, or the turning road that is departure and absence and the halfway home?  What we are and what we were once are far estranged.                                                 Wendell Berry                                                 The Dance I: a small whale The juvenile female humpback came through to the cove almost unnoticed and maybe it had been a foggy morning, or maybe the last of the season’s snow was falling into the water, a bitter squall. So by the time she was seen she was dead and stranded and belly up and the gulls were making their day of the castle and bastion of her fins and lip.  And by the time the first of the crew gets there by road or boat the tide is maybe ready to turn again and she’ll float some though the beach stones hold her have her good as any hook for the next few ho

Doane's Falls Royalston, Mass The Last Time: Letting Go  “Those who act will suffer, suffer into truth”— What Aeschylus omitted: those who cannot act will suffer too.                                                 Jane Hirchfield                                                 Those Who Cannot Act I’m always going or wanting to go beyond the ropes the ones that hold the crowd back from doing the real heavy looking on or from being braver than they are given to believing about themselves.  And so at the waterfall I chose going down more carefully and the edge was still, it was, believe me, feet and feet away and I lay on my back and looked beneath the stone bridge and thought of all that water that had had been brought up quiet  up stream right?  Quiet as you please and who’d even conceive this mad boil I only really see if I chance the meeting of the strength of the guy wire and my own two feet getting und

Orphrey You change a life as eating an artichoke changes the taste of whatever is eaten after.                                                                 Jane Hirchfield                                                                 “To Judgement: An Assay” This is what you did to me with your hands and lips and Cheshire face: the way your fingers brushed my loose twelve year old boob, fruit you said through your teeth, pulling it in with  your breath so it sounded like you had hot soup in your mouth and  the only thing saving you from burning your tongue was mass was set to start and the congregation waited judging their own faults and acts praying at their own stations at set places along the aisles.  And the day you pressed your cock against me and said Jesus                                 will forgive anything and I wanted to                                 open the door and yell him through the roof              

Door’s Left Open When You Lose the Combination: the Key to Memory   After Long Silence Politeness fades,… Distinctions matter.  whether a goat’s quiet face should be called noble or indifferent.  the difference between a right rigor and pride.                                                 Jane Hirshfield Forgive me if I repeat myself I think too much it is a small fault the vault door has been left to fend for itself and it is not safe to say anything that isn’t in there hasn’t already been shuffled through and given a value suffocating like it is with the others:                                 documents of birth and death                                 of divorce                                 of marriage                 and then there’s odds and ends                 we’ve saved from                 our reincarnated lives:                 like that nude photo of a woman                 I used to know but I don’t