Reclining with twine
in the scattered shade.
The field mice made notches
in the bark above the whorled
mosses¬¬–someone is
looking for you.
Aviate-names, tokens,
signs filled the old maple’s summer-
chambers. My eyes
lifted too.
There is not yet anything you believe in, dis-
criminate one, leaping
from knot to knot
with your bony hands.
*
A trace of wind in the morning snow.
The quartz forest. Tree-alphabet-tine.
Who-knows-what
called faintly out to me and
with my hands I called back.
No one else was on the path
but the snow-gulches
on either side gathered in a
strong indifferent persistent
order. Yet would not cease to love.
*
It was neither winter nor spring.
Mud fluted the field where we walked
in no discernible direction.
You parsed the streams:
temporary. Outgrown.
Bliss, loss–you closed
each coverlid. Can this be
the meaning of all the years
of my life? There is
another world–I can
think in it. Casting design
in the marl-sludge-underfoot.
Every footprint-to-be blazing
in unscathed outcomes.
Beads of snow-water
slid down the reeds. Each
surface grew looser and
meant more things.
*
Should I listen to you? Bitter mouth
of pronouncements–not a hope,
a poem.
I shook the tree and out fell
a caucus of flowers, twig-dust,
curtains of aurora.
After a few minutes, a bunting.
The ground below turned
to earth and the earth to waves
and the waves into scarp-
stones from which a wild air blew
into both our eyes–stunned us.
And who would we tell.
And for what.
-Joanna Klink
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