The Quantumverse
Bags of mulch and fertilizer, hosing down the lounge chairs, pool cleaning, grill cleaning, filling the gas can at the pump, adjusting the mower’s choke: All around our apartment building the ingredients and tools line up that will let us put Memorial Day weekend on the grill.
Summer warms its stove –
Recipes for orange blossom
Feed the longer days
My heart tattoos
Its urgent demands
Within my chest,
Rushed beating
Enumerates the ways
I need you now,
Listing towards unbalance,
Tipping into fervor.
And afterward?
Will I be able to
Recover
This signal screed?
Standing in darkness
Before a pool of water lilies –
Lamplight shadows for company
And some coins in your hand
To toss for good luck.
One last prayer
Might be all you have
Before you go.
No promise
Of miracles.
No way to know if
Only you
Will hear.
You could finally answer
To what your life
Was made of:
How much was Love,
Or Fear,
Or Duty.
But you already
know that,
Don’t you?
It began to rain Time –
Change coming upon us hard.
We couldn’t count the months and years
Fast enough
As they came slanting down.
First pooling at our feet
Then quicksilver-slipping away,
Leaving us breathless.
The Truth stretched out before us
Almost to the breaking point,
We tried to keep faith
With that horizon —
Our hopes and fears
Rising and setting
But always in the distance,
Dreams wheeling like a Zodiac
Yearning for an end.
Words split apart
Into syllables both terrible and bright,
Their halving
Redeemable only in Confession:
Our mouths full of tumbrel,
Our tongues sharp as Guillotines –
The heads roll both Right and Left
As they are wont to do,
Unmoored as we are
In the Year Zero.
I run my finger along
That one rib
Right under your heart.
I think it is my lost one, no?
If I gently kiss it,
Will it open
Like a secret?
I would pray then that I find
I am not a Midas,
My desire leaving you gold,
That you are no Pandora,
Your nightmares swarming
While holding out hope.
If I were enough of a hero
I would enter into the mystery
Blindfolded through the maze,
Learn you by touch
Turn by turn.
I would have to swear
Never look at you directly
Unless I would spend eternity
Without you.
Because how would we live
If there was nothing to separate us?
If both our better and worse selves
Stuttered light and dark before us,
We would be as moths
Trapped in a streetlight,
Trying at once to find
A way in and a way out.
A shadow self
Half a tempo out of true,
Heartbeat and breath
Lopsided and blurred,
Dragging a shade behind.
How I am here,
But not all at once,
Like a kindred presence
That must have a different life
Than this.
Yet each possible self
Jockeys for the moment
Of truth, that test of when
I might lock eyes
My love, with you.
Because bulldozers do that –
They slice off the tap root
At ground level
As they smash aside
The trunk and branches.
But sometimes the root
Continues on,
Struggles to push deeper
Into dirt, water, darkness.
In confusion it tries
Passing its gifts upward
To phantom limbs.
No matter that something new
And maybe beautiful
Will arise in place. That
Even deeper roots
May eventually delve
And sustain.
What grew for years
Knows only its loss —
There is nothing left
To feed with dreams.
Unrepentant wind.
Sky, impervious to correction.
Winter’s crimes –
The sun incorrigible
In its hateful theft of light.
A gaping hole in the year,
Left open to the blowing snow.
The weeks like jail bars
That failed to hold
The heat.
New splits the dawn
Into before
And after.
New rends the darkness, scattering
Past and present
Like light.
Breaks the silence
Between then and now
Where I lie next to you.
Is your skin
When I kiss your shoulder
Again.
One to the other
Anew,
Uncovered in spark.
A heart endlessly elaborating
To hands,
Its voice murmuring rhythms
For weaving into the world.
Dappled with redemption
A brindled song unspools,
Its hues tangled
Light and dark.
Winding away impurities,
Bending filth and ash
into clarity and light,
Lyrics knit from love.
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