I don’t remember
Februarys so empty:
the house wrens are gone
the elk are in the white hills,
the earth so old it forgets
it misplaces things:
deer file past without stopping
the grass never wakes
there’s a hole in the pine tree
where scrub-jays used to chatter
but it is nothing.
it is nothing April can’t.
April can’t erase.
nothing April can’t erase.
nothing it can’t remember.
the snow reminds me
the apple tree is dying:
the cold, the mule deer;
but it is waiting for me
to learn to love the dry grass
I take the bow saw
to prune back the apple tree;
we both get smaller:
each year there is more dead wood
with each year, just heartwood left
She begins with a guttural moan
deep in her throat, our Russian Blue,
and leans her chin close to the pile
convulsing rhythmically
like a clock hand around a spindle,
stepping and retching
always in the center of the Turkish rug,
until she spits out a blue-gray finger of fur
and walks away untroubled.
I envy her that Catholic act / how she doesn’t
notice from the damp stain
(a dun rosette, a dark red filigree)
the whole mandala of rug
snaking out in every direction,
circles within circles within borders,
each with their own gods and gardens.
How we are moving mandalas, too —
how even in some still places:
the bullring in Ronda
(the footsteps and the blood smoothed over now),
on the parquet floor of the Palladium
polished over, the boys and girls gone
to cries of pleasure and pain, to other births
and other deaths.
We clean because we are clean animals, yes,
but also because the marks of love and loss,
the damp stains of death and desire
the pentimenti of living, if they were left,
would be too bleak
and beautiful to bear.
Copyright © 2018 Lilibug Publishing.
Too bleak and beautiful 