allthewordsinthenight

It’s like a model apartment, she thought. Clean and uniform, with every need supplied. But distant and devoid of individuality. Papier-mâché. It wouldn’t be very pleasant to die in a place like this. But even if you changed the backdrop to something more desirable, is there really a pleasant way to die in this world? And come to think of it, isn’t this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the time comes we say thank you and leave. All the furniture is fake. Even the moon hanging in the window may be made of paper.

Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter the loons came to our harbor and died, one by one, of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head and opened the elegant beak and cried out in the long, sweet savoring of its life which, if you have heard it, you know is a sacred thing, and for which, if you have not heard it, you had better hurry to where they still sing. And, believe me, tell no one just where that is. The next morning this loon, speckled and iridescent and with a plan to fly home to some hidden lake, was dead on the shore. I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

These days I can see us clinging to each other as we are swept along by the current I am clinging to you to keep you from being swept away and you are clinging to me to keep me from being swept away from you we see the shores blurring past as we hold each other in the rushing current the daylight rushes unheard far above us how long will we be swept along in the daylight how long will we cling together in the night and where will it carry us together

Should the years continue to press As they press now, and in their pressing. Press the sugar from my skin, let The stone that forms inside me Be amber. Should there be aching, then, For sweetness, should they Come looking and find me, let them Find in me this rock, and not My bitter carapace. This rock, And think of honey, stored away For safe-keeping. Tomorrow, who knows? Should the sun burn out, As it plans to do, and as it burns, Burn down all the trees, let My shadow be a cool thing, Reaching out to shade you.

"The balcony basil withered. My love, come back a little. There are gold finches in my mouth for you, And orchards in my chest, And deer in my lap, My love. Come back young, strong, and handsome. There are poems in my eyes for you, And moons, And dawns, in my hands. And noble babes, My love, and wheat stalks in my hair for you, And around my waist grow almonds and pears, And round my legs are steeds and anklets, A plain, and brooks. My love, come back a little, Come back for more. For you I have prepared flowers and wine, For you I have prepared the bed, On the dead pavement, A land and sky, Children and homes, My love, come back for more, for less. The balcony basil withered."

Thought of you all day, I think of you. The birds sing in the shelter of a tree. Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue, not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly. How does it happen that our lives can drift far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time, queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme we make with loss to assonance with bliss. Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss, recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words. Huge skies connect us, joining here to there. Desire and passion on the thinking air.

I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding.

We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me; just be my friend.