Elegy 3: Closest To

The tulips bend

with the weight of their

flowers, reaching

towards the sun

at the windows

that straddle the

mantle, onto which

a few petals

have dropped

among a watercolor

of an Amsterdam canal,

a Chinese opera mask,

old editions: the Aeneid,

Wuthering Heights, an Irish Reader.

Fewer others fallen over

to the tiled hearth,

and fewest yet

fallen to the panels

of the wood floors.

These are closest to the sun.

Something more

than petals is missing

when I find them gone,

picked up and thrown away.

John K., 1/7/10, 4:50-56PM

Organ Music (Elegy 2)

The known world:

mother, thigh.

Overhead

the mystery of other

heads, strange

language of other voices.

Laughter. Shrieks.

Carnival is the organ music

that spins with

the green and white

wheels of light;

with the paper lanterns

in subtle swing on the strings

dangled between the yellow and blue

tented booths,

where the music smells of

roasted almonds, popcorn,

and hums

with the hiss of friers

and the fitful clack

of rings and buzzers,

mallets and bells;

past the games

and beyond the faces,

through this perimeter

the music

joins the swirling heart

of laughter and shrieks—

Child sees

there is another world

given

between the bodies,

opened

in the changing

direction of the laughter

and the shrieks.

Sees it is through the music

the light

spins and swings

the wheels and lanterns.

Sees a music

given to itself.

In this,

child has lost

mother, thigh,

but, given as breath,

must bear out

the absence:

to grasp at air

in which hover

the other heads,

the other voices,

thrust into

the other world

past the perimeter of bodies.

Child learns

to be lost, is—

the carousel of horses

with golden rods

through their hearts,

condemned to

the instant of terror.

If only there were saddles

for their savaged eyes,

if only there were bridles

for their mouths, pried

open in delirious

laughter and shrieks

that issue

in the quavering pitch

and unalterable

loudness

from the steaming calliopes

of their hearts.

Darwin's Finches (Elegy 1)

Come unseen

the birds, the birds

in great black clouds

over highways and rail

to eat our toes

bluejay croaks

birdsong dissonant

more of the pulse

of wings,

laughter flapping

at wax and planes

they eat our toes

and think the trees inviolate

until the saw

and great black clouds

hover and spiral

must come down

must land

we will eat their wings

eat their wings

to learn to fly

away and over unseen

to peck at worms

in apples

spit out the seeds

of pomegranates

that fall on the the floor

of cavernous womb

cannibal

suck out the marrow

the glistening fat

in chasmic mouths

spit out the cracked

bones, talons

to pick out the mud

of our creation

and we will come down

as before

naked tremulous thieves

but we have the saw

John K., 2/22/2008, greatly revised 9/25/2009