Damaged Cell

a membrane between worlds

impenetrable yet viscous

like a spider creeps across the water

I’ve barely touched the film

 

barely touching I’m trapped right-side-up

unable to sink unable to see beneath

the mirror surface of the water

 

I crawl on all fours

while the water scrapes my hands

and knees and the cell wall dividing

is breaking and cracking with

a sound not unlike a child’s whimper

 

you know the kind of cry you gave

when you woke up alone in the dark

 

as a child I sat at the lakeshore on grey mornings

throwing stones disturbing turbid waters

my feet only half submerged in doubt

Damascus

The sun has long since left the Gap; the road, pines, and ancient wrinkled houses are left together in a wind-tossed tumult of grey. Inside, the misting windshield. If a heart throbs behind these black windows, it’s muffled beneath the blanket of kudzu that the South has wrought about her, ever-mindful of winter. The only sound is that of the engine, working to demystify the windows and lead me through the Gap.

We are led to long days spent mere feet above a speeding highway, winding through the Carolinas, years ago; how the golden meadows between the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 26 inevitably turn to grey, then black, only illumined by oncoming headlights. The hum of another engine, and the popping of acorns as we pull into a driveway; Mom and Dad speak softly, so as not to wake us, the children. We pull the blanket tighter – a blanket of knowledge (or is it ignorance? How confused we are these days!) We look out over the world from an overpass, knowing all its workings; like a flea knows of the bonds and bounds of gravity.

How often do we long for that blanket now, however full of holes? Then at least could we face the night. Now, if not for heartbeats hidden in these houses, we would be lost in the blackening grey, wandering beneath the kudzu blanket.

Trance

She is the tune of a violin, exciting the air about her

like a stream pouring from hills crowned in mist –

slowly, quietly; a gentle presence like a lovely ghost.

 

She reverberates in the firelight with eyes like almonds.

Her gaze pours into me like Niagara into a cave

until the dam closes, she is gone, and I am awake.

 

She is a white moonlit gown hung on an open windowpane,

haunting me as silver rays filter through the lace.

Her shadow passes over the floorboards. I look; nothing.

 

My vision of her wavers like a meadow in autumn’s breath.

I can see the wind-waves in the bronze grass, but of her

I find only footprints and crystallized laughter in the soil.

 

She resonates the fibers binding my spirit to sinew,

like a cello played between the final second of a day,

and the first of the next. I watch the second hand,

 

entranced.

Sanctuary

I drove to the border of cloud and watched ghosts dance about its edge like waves on the sand. From here I can see the land bathed in thunderous sunlight; even from the shadows I can see that the world is filled with such beauty. There is a gossamer veil of mist, impermeable and unforgiving, that separates our world from theirs. Toeing the end of shadow, I can sometimes make out the holes in the sky where what lies behind pierces through – stars. I’ve tried to paint them, but white is hard to come by in this land between the highways.

(From the base of the clouds where the ghosts spy, we are probably only a contour cutting its way through mountainside and ocean shore, unalarmed and indiscriminating.) I asked the ghosts where white tones are found, and they indicated the cemetery. But, as I said, that veil is impenetrable; thus I stand in a meadow drenched in hues of grey so that the highway is indistinguishable from the patch of Queen Anne’s Lace to my right. I stand looking into a sun meant for a painter of white. I stand looking into a sun that whispers lines I don’t understand.

Shelter

Sept. 18: Dangerous conditions today on the Tennessee River.

The wind struggles with the current; the water churns behind the pylons.

Even the sky is in turmoil.

 

I am the surface of the water. I am broken; a fractured frame of glass,

stretched thin from shore to shore. All I can hear is the wind tearing

upstream, toward my home.

 

The furniture in the living room rearranges to accommodate the flood.

Soon we will live in an aquarium with glass walls, so all can see:

we are bent by the current.

 

(Slowly, with time)

 

5:35 pm; I can hear the blood pulsing in the veins behind my ears.

The wind has died down, and all besides that steadfast throb is quiet.

I am alive; I am a being.

Black Hole

We are the broken chain of DNA

in a double helix extending

from one end of the universe to the other.

What once was whole now dangles

between planets like a cracked tooth

long ready to be pulled. 

 

(“We don’t want to be corrected,”

we cry; “we want to be erased.”)

 

Why is it that we scream so loudly,

with only the moon to echo our cries?

We don’t belong here, tethered by gravity

to a bruised Earth. We are monsters here;

we are the monsters we hear in the dark.

 

Take a handful of soil and toss it to space;

will that island of life one day house us all?

Or does the soil belong here, with us?

 

This screaming, this tethered existence –

maybe this is simply the life of a seed

waiting to sprout. Alone in the soil,

made for reaching arms and branches.

 

I’ve never been in love. I am a seed

that doesn’t believe in sprouting.

Maybe I am the broken chain of DNA;

maybe, while the world crisscrosses the universe in a grid,

I alone am dangling from the south pole,

aimless, and unfettered, and unconnected.

 

Maybe I am a mystery,

but all mysteries wish to be found out –

if only that didn’t mean ceasing to be.

Copper Symphony

A candle shines through the doorway. My fingers still hold a smoldering wick, burning my skin like a glove. “I am home,” I say, to no one in particular – maybe the bricks need to hear it. My shadow dances opposite the flame across their mason-faces. I am a mirror to the naked world.

Above my head, behind me, there is a window. Against it beats rain softly, caressing the glass and whispering of colder weather. It is still in this room, where the candle twists. The music has stopped. My piano lies dormant and expectant. I do not think sound is necessary, here.

Flame: incessant and full of mirth. It spreads beneath the carpet and behind the walls. My body feels no heat, but the candle I see bows and rises excitedly. The air changes; charged. If I were a storm, I would have lightning for arms. Rise. Stand. My feet glow with electricity. I cannot tell you whether it is my hands or the tongues of flame that bring the piano to life, but there is music with the laughter of a fiddle.

An island forms outside the window, as the rain builds up worlds on the pavement. What wonders there are in autumn! My fingers rest; my reflection stands to make amends while I admire the candle in the other room.

Sweden, Far West

Sweden, far west –

where the lines intersect as they

quilt the globe. Solitude.

Something cold, like a child

born too early,

in December.

 

I am amidst the pine forests.

Have you felt the mountains

breathing between the trunks?

They whisper, Harsh winter.

 

My sister, a February child,

drives westward home.

We are winter’s children,

frost-kissed but rosy-cheeked –

like Christmas, only younger.

 

My finger traces a line on the globe:

February’s homeward journey.

Outside, summer grows old;

I am homesick for wintertide.

Agape

There are no windows here,

or, if you prefer, all are windows.

Continuous glass, crystal walls –

airy barriers between the inside and out.

 

Telephone, in the back room, by the lamp.

A new voice in the receiver;

sounding like Christmas when he was young.

 

(I am wholly undeveloped; my arms

are still reaching for the surface.)

I am glad I am not here alone.

 

Ice has been forming on the panes.

Outside it is winter, like a postcard

from family now living abroad.

I press my cheek against the glass,

if only to remind myself of their faces.

 

What are we if not a single body?

Who are we if not a bride?

When we’ve finally stepped outside,

bare feet in the melting snow, we’ll see,

there never were windows to begin with.

Outside is all we were,

all we’ll ever be.

From the Valley

There is an ancient hum, here,

left by the grave of budding industry.

Here, where the cliffs of Signal and Lookout

are our overseers and protectors:

those mountains with degraded

nobility: now common hills on the brink

of Appalachia.

 

1994: I dreamed I would be the first man

            to see the valley from Signal’s peaks.

Insurmountable peaks. Lofty dreams.

Then came the automobile,

and today foreigners summit by way of gasoline;

I sit in quiet protest, as the hum spreads to

heights formerly unmolested.

 

Mount Everest: the top of the world!

Only a blemish on the Earth’s face,

some day will be a scar.

 

And then there is the ocean:

beautiful degrader! Eroder!

Leveler and humbler of all exalted heights!

The crashing of wave after wave after wave

and the soil falls into the depths

and the ice sheets splinter and crack,

the land is retreating, and they say

the water is warming, reefs are dying and

soon there will be no more land

and we must learn to live underwater.

War! Treachery! The flags are raised

and still the ocean swells tear

sand into the darkness.

 

Early morning: the sunrise.

Between the mountains, the leaves

produce a green glow – each a flag of peace

waving as if to say, we will not give in –

as the sun shines through into Lookout Valley.

A wood thrush is on my windowsill,

drowning out an ancient hum.