THE INFINITIES I don't know when it began,
the will to sort moment
from moment, to hold
on by saying I can't
care about the red maple
stripped of color, I choose
the rain disappearing
at my feet. I choose
this friend to love, the deep
blacks of summer. Abandon
the rest. I am unable to
picture anything so whole
it doesn't crush what's
missing. Is it my body across
many seasons turning
already a little to bone,
or the slow stars precisely
set in depths so vast
the sky is just a dome
within falling domes.
How is the snowfield
scattered with dry leaves already
a pavillion of twilight. And my arms
just a motion in the great
soundlessness of sky.
I have traded childhood
exuberance for for fragile
acts. I will slip into
corner tables just to watch
people speak. I love the way
they lean into each other
or stretch back with the bluespun
languor of an evening, lights
strung up on the wood
ceiling to mimic the lift of
stars. There are no
empty hopes. But knowing
what to hope for is steady
work. What was ever
so important to you you left
your daily life to heed it?
I don't even know what
breathes in the dark hills
outside this town. Some
mornings the roads almost
float, the weeds in the fields
wiry fistfuls of sun. What
were you looking out for?
What did you dismiss along the way.
Because we live we are granted
names, streams, shocks of
heat, murmuring summers.
All the days you have
ever breathed are swallows
shooting between trees.
When the wind pushes
branches in and out of
shade it is an opening,
as every small gesture
toward another person is
incomprehensibly alive.
Will you be part of the
stoneless passage? When life
starts to take things away
will you grow very still
beneath the larch
or feel the slow flight of birds
across your body.
The bright key of morning.
The bay fanned with foam.
Copyright © 2020 by Joanna Klink. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
