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in memory of Bronwen WaIlace
1. The
blue sky hovers outside
the kitchen window,
looks in at our pancakes
and fruit salad, watches us
soap our hands and mingle our fingers
under the tap. The sky, trying too hard
to fit in, cracks awful jokes on the lawn.
Sunflowers erupt in garrulous
number to sway yellow faces at us.
Look up into the sky, and tell me it isn't made
of a blue that longs to fall among us,
jealous of our handshakes and lovemaking.
We forget to see that the garden moves,
slowly and with an uncommon magic
into the obvious backyard afternoon
we miss every day—
giving up an imagined heaven, grown
heavy with absolute blue.
2. Wake up, sweet grass and lilacs,
someone has a stew in the kitchen
with a cup of java in her hand, humming
off-key and takes out the infinitesimal trash,
stomps out the window and up the invisible
stairs. The unleavened universe
steps out of her way, hushes all its brushes at once—
3. Strange how the dead take on new bones
and fingernails, creep up to us to say,
Did you forget me for a moment?
That's all right,
I forgot you briefly too—
How the dead
whom we have loved turn into myths.
In our desire to make them angels
we forget their acne and sour morning breath.
The dead become angels because
we ask them to, bending them over hokey
sawhorses in our dreams. What else can we do,
without them here to tell us to hold on, to go on
in our shaky bodies the whole night through
loving each other or not, inside a small room
the size of a world.
4. Crescendos, if you listen closely, open like
pea pods.
Some days I drop them on my tongue,
let them break down in my saliva so
I'll know small, vegetable voices, their
chiming indifferences.
A garden is an orchestra, I tape
both its ends to either side of my head
to catch the whistle it makes, stooping
over to bless a dying flower, or friend.
Listen to them, the small voices peeping
in the garden,
talking to each other about their slow growth;
taking on blossoms and fruit; talking
all night about new lovers
as fertile, succulent pasts go
shuttling past them, on into
the ground saying
there is only one
present tense
you must sing through it
and listen
listen while it forgets
and forgives you
over and
again.
by Joel Giroux
from: Larger than
Still Life, ©2003
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