toward summit

You bring a pad of paper, of course, and the good
pen because you imagine the hike will ask for your keenest
observation, and this you take to mean words
you will lay down on that even white acreage. And so you climb
in earnest without a water bottle like some fool thing,
toward summit, pushing your knees through the bush
and eying the blond earth forming the semblance of a path.
Even from here, you can imagine yourself at the higher elevation,
the scansion that view will allow, and the lines that will
river out of you, an ode you will craft out of this mountain,
and how you might – you dare say – turn it even more beautiful,
mythic with beauty. At the first quarter-mile,
you’re already clicking the metaphors off your tongue,
dreaming up better ways to say “green” and “wide” and “wild.”
The rock where you’re heading becomes a man,
a lover, God, beckoning you close, and soon
your fingers are itchy to transcribe the conversation.
There is a poem in your mouth, its scrawny beginnings,
and you push it down against your chest with every step and
breath by breath to make it flesh.

But if you were really here, you would know
you’re not looking where you should. For instance,
there are a thousand ways to break
your leg, and there are the bees to consider,
the flicker of rattlesnake, the ground sand-dry
and near avalanche at the steepest inclines.
There is the nature of this nature.
Three quarters of the way up a thirst encroaches
on your throat. It has become so hot outside,
breezeless, the brush leaving thistly markings on your ankles.
The paper moistens and droops in your sweaty hand,
the pen slips to the ground, and so do you,
landing on the plateau from which the summit
flirts and cajoles. In front of you,
a trail of ants soldiers back and forth,
carrying invisible rations.
You don’t know about ants, if these are the ones
that will level with you with one bite
or simply industrious vegetarians. No matter.
They are ignoring you. You could sit here as long as you like,
eavesdropping. Various birds are circling – you don’t know
their names, but you know, at least, they are birds.
Maybe that is all that’s required, to recognize
what you’re looking at, because your mind is a trickle, now,
slow as summer noon. The poem slips out, unseen,
from your teeth. The word for wild is “wild,”
and the trees below are continent enough.
There can be no more green to this green.
If you could just sit here,
watching them move as they move,
still as they still, breathing your wordless breaths
until your lungs understand, you will have it.
This is the poem.
This.

witness

I wish you could see this, me hovering over a breakfast
I woke early to make, ripe mangoes and coins
of sliced banana, blueberries, the smell of shallots
sautéed in olive oil, and the eggs waiting for the guests
to arrive to be gentled into the pan, then scrambled.
I wish you could have been here for the small catastrophe
I made of the scones, confusing baking soda for powder,
but how beautiful they were, despite their bitterness.
If you had been here, I would have given you a turn
with the crepe batter, guided your wrists through the swirl
of the pan, cautioned you against waiting too long and
we would have clinked coffee cups, toasting our good fortune
or the still heat of this place, flies catatonic on the deck,
or the way summer uncoils us, softens our grip, makes a smooth
line of our previous disrepair. I would have liked to show you
the fledgling grape vines, driven you to the market and stood agape
at the price of strawberries, wondered aloud if the trail
through the woods led to a waterfall, and turned off the final light
to listen to the concert of crickets. I wish you could be here
as the day unlatches and spreads open, and see the wide green
of the back field as the man on the small tractor makes his
perfect tracks, and sit under these motionless trees, and swat
the occasional mosquito, and read our books until the heat
lays us flat.

I have to remember that solitude doesn’t make the story
less true. The sun births the same sweat from the inside
of my elbows, and the cream has turned my coffee
just as caramel. I am still in love with the thinness
and roundness of crepes and the way they hold
so much more than their own weight.
If I can hold my hands through the quiet.
If I can bless the air with my own breathing.
If I can imagine the possibility of waterfall.
If I can bite into the flesh of this mango
and still know sweetness,
perhaps that is witness enough.

exit

Maybe it was wrong to have this conversation
in the parking lot of the highest point in the city,
the view spreading out below like caramel praline,
all that coastline, all those hills, that water, those skyscrapers,
the air, pushing through this crack of mountain and radio tower
rifling the tourists’ hairdos and windbreakers
as they sat in silence on giraffe-print seat covers,
a white rose wilting between them.
Maybe the first of June was ill-timed as the day
to let go, admit defeat, cut the story
at its knees and offer the lackluster, conciliatory gesture
of a hug. Perhaps she shouldn’t have worn the blouse
with the flattering neckline, or the necklace with the circle,
green and earthy, at its center, or the cowl-hooded coat
that could easily warm two bodies on such a blustery afternoon.
Maybe she should have waited until they were both home
in their separate apartments and made the announcement
by phone, so when the call ended the retreat would not have included
the loaded silence of the car, or the movie crew cordoning off
the lot below to set up the big shot, or the rescue helicopter
karate-chopping the sky, or the golden spokes of sun
that landed on the dashboard and cast cinematic shadows of their profiles.
Maybe it was wrong to want to end on this note with their bodies
awkwardly proximate, and the sand from their nap on the beach
two days ago clinging to the caddy where the water bottle had been,
and the seagull feather that had whispered thoughts of flight
into her ear now resting comfortably in the center of the back seat.
Maybe it was wrong not to look directly in the eye and say
what needed saying, and instead have the words bubble out
into the steering column, then slant left to the change holder.
Love is never an exact science. The choreography goes
unrehearsed, its arms noodly as a teenage boy’s.
An effort at grace is attempted then thwarted. The perfume
sours, the belly bloats, the syllables sputter and halt,
and she is struck by the incongruities between them now,
the way the news slices them in two, frays them
like spent wires. There is nothing left to do, and that,
perhaps, is the saddest thing, the room of them gutted to the bone,
and an emptiness whistling through.
But this is the only way. She knows this like she knows
the far corners of a basketball court, where the sweetest
shot lives. Like the heat of a tealight in the middle
of a power outage, how the palms could cup that warmth forever.
She knows this like the sound of alley cats and rain and home.
Like that place on the back of the neck that stays
tender and forgiving, ready to arch itself up and stretch its flesh
to meet the next great kiss.