As/Is







4.15.2005


Kin

On the walk
Rochelle mentions
blue light against
a line of palm trees
in the northeast valley
that it works
a little like the French
procedure that directs
the eye

+

Charlene has been released to light
I didn't know that she was ill
or that the struggle lasted months
she has a child thirteen
a child fourteen
in cold country
motherless as she was motherless
that young

+

Rochelle and I take several fresh
white grapefruit from from the grove
for morning
we were young only a moment
before, when all pieces began
to fall in place, and now

we put together stories
previously shrink-wrapped
and then put away

it's always early in the day
regardless of the clock
we're optimistic and believe
there is a lever
to be reached and turned
for change

+

what matters is the filled place
beneath our fluency
where every language means
what no one says
we talk into the night
when daylight has already
taken shape and we will wake
to find it

gradually the days
repeat themselves
with and without
the given frame
we polished and reworked
to fit this story
any story that would come