Two Poems
A poem with lines stolen from my father’s obituary
The story is simple. When I touched
the handle, the blade became a cluster
of moths that scattered. Then I dreamt
of a child, irradiated. Green
light, green veins. For the love
of green, do you think you could
sit with me a moment? Do you think you
could recite the narrative lies
of my life? Like jewels lining
the vertebrae. Like architecture. I once knew
a man who was a carpenter. He loved
good times music. The story
is simple, as in, the story
is everywhere. I once picked daffodils
in a blue dress and knew the neighbors
were amused at the idea of a girl. None
of it fit—the dress, the nauseous
yellow flowers, the gaze. Most of
what I’ve inherited is made of glass
or sleeping in a cell. It took
some time to remember our bodies
proportioned to those years, the field
of hay bales we discovered in the rain,
the rotting deer
stand, the man calling over
a hill, how my sisters and I hushed
like leverets and fled. Let night
cradle the house because nothing
else would. I knew a man who
was a carpenter, he built little
cabinets for us to store things
things we loved but now
I can’t remember what they were.
.
.
.
Outside, you are planting trees
.
.
And I am inside a house inside a body
inside a house. It is early March. The flavor
.
of the rain has changed from boneroot
to mint and cedar. My mother, twice
.
my age this year, tells me she’s hopeful
as we burn old mirrors between us.
.
Outside, you are planting trees but I will
not taste what they bear. The other day
.
you said, I see now you’ll never want
to get married. There is water in the air
.
as well as the earth. Summer and winter
remember but most of a life
.
happens in between. I dreamt of my father
boring holes into a boat just to gesture
.
at repair. You never met him, which is fine,
I hardly met him. But you’re planting
.
trees and I am arcitecturting a landscape
of exits and all of this seems relevant.
.
The distance between what I said
and what I meant might be a stone in my
.
palms. When I toss it up, she will be a bird,
black-eyed, beating. She will scatter.
.
You will love me the only way you know.