Renunciation
“The Sailor cannot see the North—but knows the Needle can—“
The books were all torn apart, sliced along the spines
Light filled all the openings that she in her silence renounced
Still: her handwriting on the papers remembered us to her
The careful matching of the papers’ edges was a road back
One night Muhummad was borne aloft by a winged horse
Taken from the Near Mosque to the Far Mosque
Each book likens itself to lichen,
stitching softly to tree trunks, to rocks
what was given into the Prophet’s ears that night:
A changing of directions—now all the scattered tribes must pray:
Wonder well foundry, well sunborn, sundered and sound here
Well you be found here, foundered and found
Journey
The wind over open water: sharp howling.
Guitar strings breaking.
Solstice having passed days longer now.
Beach aria.
Synaptic dysfunction or syntactic exuberance.
A small figure on the deck looking out across the blue-black.
The years since then drunk and unforgiving.
Wild roses crawl through the rough plank balcony.
Drinking bitter coffee on the terrace.
Weeks after that, alone in the vast public square.
Watching the crowds board the night boat back to the mainland.
Years later another journey you won’t take.
Where will you now journey.
For a day.
Sounds of water.
You will sometime soon say: I am coming home now.
And not mean it.
What in your life have you meant.
A little inn perched in the hills above Calvi.
The cloud-sheathed cold.
Cold falling into the steep streets of the city.
You are still there.
Tissue-clouded moon swells above the blue-black.
A terse, obscene, spattering of stars.
A blue stone, fastened with a leather strap, cold against your chest.
Closing your eyes at the beach, listening to the rocks being piled, softly clacking against one another.
Another music for you.
Will you fall?
The wind presses against the portholes.
They rattle slightly in the night.
Rolling sound of rain pouring into the sea.
Wreaking the sound against sleep.
Waking with the light, the drunken year sinking.
