Eclogue 8: Standby

At the base of the navel

she pierces the rind of the orange

with her thumbnail,

slices out an equator

by turning the fruit and the nail

in opposite arcs, as if

she is calibrating

a sextant to measure

the music of the celestial spheres,

relative to the horizon

of her thigh, where

she leverages the citrus,

whose sweetness seeps onto

her snow-pants

in a few small beads that slide off

and fall into the snow,

leaving behind a few tiny craters

in the shadow of her leg,

a moon-colored blue like the light

from a TV screen left on a station

in the interstitial standby of programming

in the belly of the night—that light—

walking home

from a bar at close, midweek,

en route to an early flight,

the streets as empty as on Christmas Day—

assures: you are not alone

in your inability

to sleep in complete darkness.

We don't speak.

The drone of cars and trucks

traveling on a distant highway

past the tree line hangs hushfully

in the air, infused with citrus. Citrus—

this is the scent of winter,

the scent of the remote

awareness of motion,

of consciousness. I keep track

of time by counting the occasional

crow. Peripherally, I know

she eats the orange one segment at a time,

devotionally, as to make no noise.

Five crows. Six.

Her voice emerges as though

with the seventh, as though the seventh,

over the roofs of the cars and trucks, grazing

the tree line, and through the quivering

sketches of branches drawn over

the erasures of previous attempts:

"The navel of the orange

is a conjoined and underdeveloped twin

from a single mutation of a single tree

at a monastery in Brazil almost two centuries ago."

She tosses the rind,

a continuous coil, a still frame

of a corkscrewing bottle rocket

just before it hits the ground.

It begins to rain.

The rain, too, leaves behind tiny craters

in the snow, as if snowing in reverse.

Not knowing how else to say it:

"How improbable is the color orange."

The words linger in the wake of the flight

of a crow—blue standby—echoes of the spheres—

and then I understand

that I have lost count.

John K., the first few weeks of January 2010

Viaduct (Eclogue 6)

for Jon G.

There is a man

who walks across

the viaduct.

His shadow cast,

another self,

from the street lamps

at this time

when it is late enough—

but not too late.

In the distance,

church bells,

trains. While below,

the cars,

much in the way

of the river:

different, but not

different enough.

In this light enough,

his shadow

now extends

onto the highway

past the point

we can no longer

see. Listen to

the bells,

the trains,

the cars,

but hear most

the footsteps.

It is brave to be afoot.

John K., 11/9/2009, 10:06-10:18 PM

Other Gardens, Other Nights (Eclogue 5)

As to better see a moon

we defer, as bodies, to the earth

in subtle and soft folds among the stalks

of luminescent hyacinth, and near enough to

the stone of our fallen figures for the warmth

of their newly flowering flesh.

In the garden,

at night. It is a garden of bodies. Of our bodies.

Pluck the moon that bends

the hyacinth to your lips, lift

its perfume to your nose. Take in its

light—it will bring sleep.

The bats are restless in their whorls, and must be.

They mark our heads with the number.

The number of all numbers. The wilderness of numbers:

Infinity. Sleep.

I will count the passing hours in your ribs,

the days in the phases of your lunar breast

as the moon travels through your body

into the bed of your womb.

Infinite womb. The garden of gardens.

I will not fall

asleep. Your body illuminated

fends off the bats from descending into my eyes,

and the city behind us—its ghosts as restless—

will not in tenebrous shudder pulse a pulse to match the truly

beating heart's. You are to dream,

dream past the edges of all sound, through

the face of the dark and the face of the water

at the other end of the infinitely-expanding

mind of God. There, you are to receive

a message.

Your hands sink into the earth,

your spine, your ribs. The last of your lunar

breast a crescent when, from your navel, emerges

the tree, the first and the last:

the tree of trees.

Your eyes two moons in the ground,

over which flash opalescent the myths

of the beginning, which are the myths of the

end. This myth of all myths.

And your mouth, another moon in the center

of the garden, speaks in the syllables of light

from the other end of the universe:

There are other gardens,

other nights; there are other trees—

a second tree of blossoming limbs

heavy with neglected pomegranates,

in a garden, beasts of earth

and birds of sky and fish of the threatening sea

restless in condemnation to

infinity, yoked to its burden.

A third tree. They were careful to split

the fruit to spill no juice on their fingers,

the seeds for planting, the seeds for an orchard

of trees, the orchard for a forest beyond the garden

for an earth of trees that block out the sun;

fourths and fifths, each a first and a last.

In the infinitely-expanding

mind of God there are infinite trees.

You wake in the terror

of the muteness of a tree. On your limbs,

pendent moons, and your branches,

heavy with marmoreal ribs.

And you cannot speak until the music

of the ribs ring with the direction of the wind—

it will come from the city behind us,

the city, real because we cannot see it,

and it will deliver the ghosts to scatter

the seeds of your moons. Some will fall to the earth

of the garden, some will fall

into the orbit of the bats. Some will rise

past the horizontal twilight into the womb

of the sky. And I will not sleep

until you speak with this music

of your ribs: the song of

salamanders and philomels,

of blood and ambrosia,

of thunder and first words.

The song of songs.

Most of All, Time (Eclogue 4)

If we could account

for each raindrop,

for each hair on a lover's head,

for each scruple of dust, or

if we could account

for each scintilla of

blank noise and electric snow

adrift amid the empty

channels of our radios

and our televisions,

each pointed by their

very natures, as our

hearts and heads—

these, too, are made of

raindrops, static, dust,

and left-behind hairs—

antennae in each dimension

pointed towards the cosmic background;

in each dimension, but most

of all, in time.

Most of all, in time,

because if we could account

for these, then we must

count each second

before the heart gives out,

or the lungs; a slight twitch

unregistered in our ledgers,

not noted in our death certificates,

but registered somewhere

in blue stars, noted somehow

in the flight of birds

over red canyons;

and we must count, too,

each half-second,

each quarter, each eighth,

the subdivisions onward

towards the infinity

where the heart never

stops at all, still an infinitesimal

particle of life left behind in the lungs;

and count, too,

the second before the last,

minutes, millennia prior, and

light-years, pulled out backwards

through time as a loose thread

until we discover there is

but one thread, connected to itself

and connecting the infinities

where the edge of the universe

must be measured in the riotous haze

of a single electron, maybe the first

that tipped the scales of nothing to something.

If we account

for most of all time,

then so each final time,

each final transaction

between the eye and the world

as the eyelids, not heavy

with sleep but heavy

from life, narrow sight

to a thin sliver,

the last bar of light

between the curtains or

between the blinds

receding into an impression

of light behind the lids,

pulled over the eyes as the blanket

tucks in our chests,

and the last light

of our eyes, the thin membrane

to protect it, to seal it in

for as long as the light

can illuminate our dreams;

surely this is why

it is best to die

in our sleep,

not because of the morphine

of unconsciousness,

not because of the freedom

from pain,

but because of the thin sliver

of possibility

that we might go

in the middle of a dream,

to wander immortal

as an eye between the worlds,

seeing the beyond

that was our life

as the outlines of buildings

shrouded in mist after rain,

as silhouettes that shuffle

behind closed curtains at night;

but then we could not account

for the gamble:

the silhouette, your lover

leaving behind new hairs,

the city, hell.

To risk heaven,

if the light burns through

the mist, radiant towers;

or the silhouette, your

lover, radiant breast

and hips, in waiting, as if able

to see through to you

from the world

on the other side of the eye.

Best, then, to die

in the midst of life,

for to account

for each raindrop,

for each hair on a lover's head,

for each scruple of dust, or

each mote of static

would be to count to

infinity, stuck eternal

in the subdivisions

trying to stave off

the inevitable last twitch

of the heart, knowing not when

but knowing that it will come,

so preoccupied with the accounts

that for each raindrop

we miss the

hush of the rain.

John K., 9/20/2009

Housework, 9PM (Eclogue 3)

Could it be this time of night,

when from the kitchen window

the edges of the trees fall into the sky,

the air condenses into wood,

leaves evaporate.

Not 4AM, believable in its abject

stillness, around which dreams are spun,

stillness even of the crickets, and the last light

of the moon reflected off the eyes of the invisible

predators, off the vanishing wings of moths.

Not even of midnight, still sticky in its residues, ruffled

with agitations of the in-between, tossings, turnings,

working-outs of the wrinkles of work clothes and skins.

This time of night, it could be 9PM, when the world starts

closing in on us sooner this time of year. Housework.

Tidy up the frays with washings of

water glasses, and the knives that carve out

tomorrow in leftovers, yesterdays reheated;

the coffee ground, counters wiped,

the matching of socks, the laying-outs of

blouses and uniforms and button-downs,

weather forecasts: these are preparations,

libations for ghosts. Our own. Prayers, really,

because of the certainty that tomorrow

can go on without us, will go on, if. Our hearts:

choking up, choking down, choking on all

that occupies them, the ever-expanding pericardium

to accommodate ourselves, tailored to ill-

fit our beautiful bodies, stopped for a moment

at this time of night before the kitchen window,

where outside hover golden rectangles, the outlines

of buildings without which it would be too unbearable to

see the trees. The trees, unnameable in the dark;

we thought they strain to reach the sky, to pull

themselves out of the ground and become

of the air, of the wind; to lift the burden

of the lightness of birds on their branches

heavy with envy. No, it is the trees hungry

for the sky, for the wind, for this time of night.

To pull it into themselves, breathe in its particles

as they suck up the rain, so expansive their appetite

that the surfeit films their green. Hungry for

to swell, broaden, to take in more as our

occupied hearts, to hold eternal

that which it cannot possess—certainty

that tomorrow will go on with us,

that housework is no entropy,

that our weather forecasts can approximate

against the asymptote of September, 9PM—

that, could it be, this time of night,

we can be like moons to eclipse the sun,

like buildings to eclipse the stars,

and trees to eclipse the sky as a canopy

under which we can all sleep, assured

of our waking in the morning.

John K., 9/14 & 9/15/2009

Garden, At Night (Eclogue 2)

We are in a garden, at night.

Corollas heavy with condensed 

moonlight. Maybe each is a moon,

and that seems as natural as 

the statues here. They are missing heads,

arms. Naked torsos, breasts and thighs

perfumed with hyacinth.

Their feet grafted into the soil, and 

below the whorl of bats we can just make out 

statues that have fallen over. Hands are appearing

out of the shoulders, eyes starting to grow

from the neck. We now see by the light of the corollas

they are statues of us, the hands, the eyes are ours,

emerging from stone which has emerged

from the soil. The eyes reaching, the hands seeing

past this garden—a shimmering line,

symbols improbable but just as natural

as anything else: lines, light—

where the horizontal afterglow of a twilight

caught in its own regression, and it begins

to make sense, now, surely as infinity. 

It begins to make sense of infinity. We are not

oblivious, because we can pretend

not to see these buildings at our backs.

We thought they were painted black, but that is

just the night. We thought we could even see

them if we turned around fast enough. No.

Only the fallen statues of us. And the dread

that maybe we are the buildings, too.

A city of bodies, built out of bodies, great towers

of flesh, that disappear each time we try

to see them. Left only with the afterimage,

which, of course, are ghosts. As real

as a line, as light, as real as the hyacinths

even though we can't see them, because they are

moons. And why shouldn't they be,

because there is death and

death is a body.

Not a symbol of death, but

death—the line shooting outwards at both ends

to infinity; and light, carrying with it time

outwards to make the edges of everything. 

We are lucky to be statues, buildings, and

it is miracle to be at all.

This is when we fall over, and hands, eyes

emerging from the torsos, in which

there is a heart, truly beating.

We are lucky, for the bats whorl over our heads

in this garden, at night.

John K., 9/3/2009, 10:47-11:33PM

Past the Edges (Eclogue 1)

for Jon G.

At the edges of all sound: soft

clatter of cups, saucers, a bowl

for blackberries, just picked, after

the table is cleared, by a fair girl

who bunches her white linen skirt with her 

free hand as she bends into 

the bush. There is a slight smudge of purple

on her lace hem. She cannot see it.

At the edges, sound: light

taps from a hammer in the hand 

of a farmer's son, hands that will bear

calluses, in time. He is building a ladder

in the stable, from the branches of a

willow, fallen from last rainy season.

He nicks his thumb. The wood takes in his

blood. He does not notice but he is not at work.

Edges, sound: No longer

do you need to know how far away the

edges are. When you wake

you are past the edges, still, still

among the meadow grasses, wildflowers, 

untouched but for bees, birds, wind, sun,

or the hands of a fair girl receiving

a farmer's son's gift. You can close your eyes again.

No more edges when you wake again.

Only light, for it is still,

still day. Keep your eyes 

closed. You can  tell  the passage 

of time by where the sun falls

on your face. A sun whose warmth

you can measure in the terms of a woman's body

still wet from bath water,

or still slow from sleep 

in the morning. Time, whose passage you

can feel in the direction of wind, the song it brings.

The crickets begin early. A young moon.

And beyond, the silence of knowing

there is nothing else—no more chores,

no more words. And beyond,

the silence of being at perfect rest. 

John K., 8/24/2009, 7-8PM