Everything Twice
Pinkened quince with potatoes, cold for breakfast.
Stones by the door I’ve pocketed the last year.
Too bright today to see the road. One blue
for the sky, one for the hills, no shadows.
The spoons and how they fit as a group, each
one becoming plural. The forks and the untangling
of one’s teeth from the rest felt in my teeth. How
the function reflects the form. And all take
fingerprints. The dog watches as I gather
fur from the floor before him, satisfied
with my work. The stuff of him woven thin,
a belly filled with meat carried over the grass at
night. I can sense the sadness. The neat mark of
what we’ve chosen to give up. After I’ve
walked gravel & taken the noise
of that. As a young girl I slap my hand
to the metal pole of the yield sign near school.
The arm is taut. Muscle bone hand pole. I teethe
on windowframes. Discover blood runs blue when
I fall and catch the vast sky above me. Have
only belief. A quilt sewn from gold
so fine it cannot be undone. The universe
forces forcelessly. Us. I call water water. Thus
we are equal. This quality meets me everywhere.
One day river stones, one day clover, the next day
shorn clover. I know the fact. Perhaps age.
Perhaps feminism. Perhaps it’s an
alienated way of noticing. In my time
I have looked to the horizon for distillation.
I have always contained. My table is wooden and
has deep wooden scars. I chose one of three shadows
from the way it fits my eye. I’d like to fix things
there without turning them into points.
I cannot unsee what I have seen. No hands
find it. Hands are doing. Hands stop. It’s terrible
to ask. Asking no hands, hands no question. My ears
catch questions as I run. Through the bigger dark.
More dark. Embellish with my eyes, move,
animals, we take our face, we work
the forward, the food the feet, the earth
under us. What you put where. What you’ve
got. Sadness opens the word. And silence connects
points further apart than words. Partly, dearly, lovely.
Partly, dearly, we were. The plural, the window,
the nights spent. We dropped it. Plurals
turned to points. Dust comes to everything,
everything twice. The line breaks and doesn’t.
Hungrier than this we go through the small openings.
Passive nothing. Everything drawn. Where thought
is claret. Our selves. Study it. Study your
language. Study your owls carved
in stone. Study anything committed.
Breath is bigger than the one breathing.
The quiet fizz. Learn more about why we cannot
breathe at night. Why we cannot find the line,
take it in. One. Onerous, generous. Arms
full. Education is the process of
taking doors off their hinges and
learning to exist in all rooms at once.
Taking everything off. Dust. By us. By stars.
Someone somewhere is taking the bus. I presume
the stars dry. I have been trying to keep parts
on both sides of the line. To what
do we point? I’ll sleep a little closer
to the running out of ink. A boat moving
further away from someone. Ink dries. Wet ink
is put. Snow falls in the mind. I look out from
behind window panes that continue
thickening at their bottoms.
