And when the clearing ended into a thicket we heard the sounds the night was making. Such a tender hostility exists in texas hill country; how we held hands at it. A deer in the road stared at me and then leapt straight into the air as we drove in reverse. The country constellated sky (understand this as my secret language for farewell). I navigated some natural way--I could feel the water pulling me north then west. An internal compass rooted in the muddy banks. A valley and a hill, again; the temperature changing 12 degrees. There is no language for what came next. We invent:

There was a dialogue we used to share, there were words we are not allowed anymore. He has hiddens only I know. He has forgotten mine. He does not care to remember the softest stretch of skin. Maybe another—something. There is no visiting time or our stifled vocabularies and I refuse to believe because happens never stops. He is standing in the doorway now or then and I am saying don't. I feel him most in the places he won't touch. Be quiet. I am dreaming.

Here the moon is bent just so; a crook in the wrist, the little girl's softest stretch of skin. The moon is framed by nothing. I am learning something new every day. That is to say, I am learning new ways to communicate his absence. A celestial body falls formless and only place dictates shape.

The words were forming themselves in my mouth. Come home.

We thought about going back to the palmed path under fence; now only for barn cats and field mice. My knees remember the red lacing underneath skin. In the night we hear noises and know we are animals--we are not alone in the dark of the field. The ends of grass itch through cotton. The ends of grass touch me and touch you and touch other animals in the field. The moonlight erased the edges of the frame, leaving me with a yellow fading. I thought the stick was a snake. The stick jumped up and bit my leg.

The Waves, Again

(the first line in every section is taken from Virginia Woolfe's The Waves)

I hear through it far off, far away, faint and far, the chorus beginning; wheels; dogs; men shouting; church bells; the chorus beginning. A landscape perhaps; of clouds clotting the shoreline; of Texas unfolding behind us; the westward rains quieting; or synesthesia;--feeling your hands on me like the musk forrest bed, October.


Save for these, I would bury it all as I bury these ugly stones that are always scattered about this briny coast with its piers and its trippers. I would send my best homeward, heading onward, tripping all over myself. To be buried, to ask for an unearthing. To need another; to be within arm's reach; and the weight of air replacing sand.


Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I have dripped away early spring. I am puddling, I am creeking. I am bayous beyond your back gate. Once stood a tree, blushing with April. Once stood a tree blushing but it is gone now. That is to say it never stood. Each leaf fell to the muddy shores to be swallowed. To be swallowed, to be within arm's reach, to be laid side by side with my teenage hope, my skin two days dirty, the pears four days too ripe.


I have torn them off and screwed them up so that they no longer exist, save as a weight in my side. I have left you there, in peace or pieces, without a map or stones to cover your eyes. I have renamed you, replaced you, untraced my steps to the spot beneath your window where we would wait for time to favor us.


The birds sang passionate songs addressed to one ear only and then stopped. I have no home. It is what happens when you leave a place for a long time and return to something else. The trees grow taller, otherwise they are trimmed in May, otherwise they are cut down. I remember seeds from the market; seeds sitting in my entire palm; the hard of the dirt; the cold of the soil on my shins; the film under fingernails; my father's hands large and patting earth. Our house was not built; all we had was the plot and our plans.


The sun struck straight upon the house, making the white walls glare between the dark windows. The first morning I woke up in my room was bright and after that my memory is only leaf splotches; the elbows of branches reaching across the floor.


Barns and summer days in the country, rooms where we sat--all now lies in the unreal world which is gone. I read that memory and dreams can exist only in the present, again and again. Father's hand; the trenches in his palms; the scar across his thumb; my smallness felt inside his gardening gloves; my fists nesting inside the thumb. There were tulips for Easter lining the fence. Each spring we'd pick our colors. Each spring we pick our colors.


I see the pear tree through the streaked steam on the window-pane. I see the pears on the ground, surrounding the pear tree. I think of worship. I think of Sundays after church. Looking skyward, I'd tell you to watch the clouds but you would whistle grass, toss handfuls of soil into the air, exploding with green and bone-white roots like some organic fireworks display. I think of pears waiting on their branches, how I thought they wiggled before falling. I think I never saw one fall, only found them on the ground, sometimes days later, bugs freckling the soft yellow skin.


In this silence it seems as if no leaf would ever fall, or bird fly. We are weighty as we are waiting for time to favor us. Flight depends on density. Dependency is such a heavy concept; the densest idea to float; your hand folding into mine; the grass ticking all around us; this is a time of day.


I said to myself, by a lion on Trafalgar Square, by the lion seen once and for ever;--so I revisit my past life, scene by scene, there is an elm tree, and there lies Percival. His fur still soft, his eyes still open. I read that memory and dreams can only exist in the present but there lies Percival. I confuse his softness for a bitterness, the back spread of my tongue activated with each touch from ears to tail. I confuse the soil covering his body as you shovel over his grave for the waves on the muddy shores. I confuse your voice for the sound of leaving, a ticket halved on crease; a passport photo; you're past this; waiting transatlantically.


Tahiti becomes possible. The pit of your knee becomes possible. The softest stretch of my wrist becomes possible. The moss on tree trunks; the bayou beyond your back gate; the tree there, blushing; the radio static ; palms full of grass; Texas, unfolding. The years spent; the time gone; a hand folding into another becomes possible.


Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. You've grown taller, but this does not mean you are permanent. Find Father chopping down the pear tree, found the roots dead-ending into the cement foundation beneath our house. The tree is sick. The tree has no pears. The tree is gone now.

The Mountain

The climb took more than we thought and from the top we could see the breadbasket. We pushed into a place where the air spread out and our lungs shrunk--we could feel it happening. Our ribs like the birdcage under a blanket in your attic with the white bird still inside, throat sore from silent singing.

There's Alaska. Better yet, Russia--ignore the compass. We ditch our coats. We made better sons and daughters at sea level. Our hands were filmy from sorted laundry and produce purchased. A conclusion: posture does not improve with altitude. We gain nothing but yards and a walking stick.

I took a picture and on the back I wrote I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I am happy. I left you there feeling like you were in outer space. Maybe. You asked for this because everything feels easier. Your limbs were curling like the first time you came only this time I won't look.

Lions with Curls

How is it that a bird sits centered in memory, but the cage and the living room and the color of a mother's robes have faded to sepia? Remember on the shelf a mug that said Trafalgar Square in red. For nine months it was the bus stop. Now no lions can impress.

I found missing letters for green envelopes; found international polaroids. Statues blur at high speeds--a caption reads is this the only time they move? Don't send me anything more ce sera le dernier. Hear that heartbeat underwater. Through pipes I can feel the ocean just two-hundred feet away. I press my ear to the waves that are born between this island and yours and there must be millions.

An ocean between like this: I sit on the phone as the sun rises and wait as the transatlantic static collects like creeping buttercups in the alley, like Hare's foot clover in my Soho, in your Soho.

Four Flashes

Four flashes find us mislead. Haircuts locate: bangs (Coney Island) or hat (left for dead in Chicago) or dark (our time overseas.) Can you think of anything past kissing me on the cheek?

If you would turn ninety degrees you'd see the balcony's edge with cherub guarded lamp posts. A river separates the Old City from the Older. Was Florence really that white or was it the high(er) contrast? Were your hands really that cold or am I inserting something borrowed, something blue?

Let's resort to petty crimes to remember the times. I'll take the menu from Dante's cafe if you toss the spilled salt over your shoulder. I wish pockets were made to hold wine but all I can fit is the grapes. Put a penny in the fountain and hope for squarer jaw lines.

I cannot sleep under such painterly skies. This crux feels more honest when you yell into the canals and curse this sinking pit. You say you won't miss me and you won't. Please, let's close the red curtain and pick the blue background and show our veins. Hold still--I don't want to remember you moving.

Precipitation and a Man Can Fall from any Angle and Land

Mine were the first footsteps in the snow. Your stone legs bent, your hands on waist. There was no head, only your body climbing out of the frame. Like the view, memory cuts out and is a little leaning to the left. Somewhere in the world it is summer, spoke through bare tree branches. Somewhere in the world it is night and somewhere--

As a species we have little instinct left. Feel the ground through tremble lips. Watch with your ears, hear from which direction a train is coming.

We Three

We three boys sit legs criss-crossed on the brown grass. Leaf shadows make blotches on the ground and the house and our memory's landscape. Please let's not play war Ma said with twig gun in hand, pine cone grenades shoved down pockets. If Pa were here we'd be building kites out of newspaper or touching tadpoles, screaming at the slime. If Pa were here we'd be grass stained, we'd be sulfur handed from firecrackers.

We three boys wear matching white hats and in the summer we plant gardens to honor our father, grow vegetables to feed our mother. Memory goes like this: an image piled on top of another image, different but only slightly. Is nothing still and silent? Shoot, bang, fire; shootbangfire.

We three boys lie in the grass, face down. Mother says casualties is a terrible game, but we compete to see who can stay so still, who can trick the enemy. We're not really dead, Ma: we're only practicing.

proof

It is in a candid cheek kiss, subjects still overcoated, blocking the entrance to the party. The lady wears a hat (now ladies never wear hats) and the man's white neck tie is only visible in the shadows. Ascots and feathers and molding trimmed ceilings; pearl earrings, Jacquard skirts peeking from beneath swing coats.

She asked if it was real, as her mother sat brushing the soft curls into her hair. She asked about Father and dinner parties before there were record players. Now, now.

Left going in, again (always, forever, amen), when the boy with freckles held down the shutter and lit up the room with a light unlike the soft yellow overhead. Shoved in deepest pockets, no peeks promised, a hidden message developing in the dark.

Found in the corner, in his scrawl--proof, a one-line drawing by fingernail. White as the Monday morning they met when he told her of the waves he bore into, of the spices bought on coasts with no maps.

D.

Paper provides a father, or, more accurately, a man standing in the road, almost turned away. What else could he be? A man of charity, donating red hair, green eyes, a stubborn will, a sorry stomach, and a second toe longer than the first.

Honor and valor and maps and sea journals. My mother kept a box over the doorway, next to the wreath and ornaments, labeled D. (an initial I mistook for decorations until one Thanksgiving I opened it to find the flag, folded ceremoniously). Now it could be for Dylan, as I read on your papers, or Dad, as I never got to call you, or Dead, as you have always been to me.

In history I learn all about you, the millions of you, try to find your face in the mud or the sticks. I pore over your pages from the island's jungles, read about the natives and the malaria. What was it really like when the elephants marched through your camp? Were the tusks threatening or did they gleam in the sun, like the bait you and your father used for flounder in the sound?

Did you know that the clearing you came to, described so meticulously ("A white palace glints miles ahead, but it could be footsteps for all I know. The sun keeps shooting through the branches, I miss Lydia we smell like shit we eat bugs ") would be the place a bullet would rip through your stomach, would be the place you'd lie down?

I learn that photography is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light, chemical information that develops as lines into an image we recognize. It is the art in science, in sentiment, in strangers connected by chemistry.

Victory of Samothrace

Speaking can sometimes be the most violent act between two people. Like the time you opened your mouth and my arms fell off. It was strange because you opened your mouth and my arms fell off and we were not dreaming, or I was not asleep.

There was that time in France when the front was drawing nearer and they had to empty the museums. And Winged Victory was inched down the steps from her throne, wings trembling, as if each thousand particle were a threat. Men wept, thinking Surely, we will never see her again.

And then there's you at the end of the hall, dark in between but behind you there is light-- suffusive and warm like memory. Or there's you, five hours in the future always riding buses over bridges that are older than my city. Or there's you, airport crowds parting to back turned. Or you, the creases in your palm, folding into mine like little prayers.


Greece never found her head, never found her arms. Scholars say maybe she was holding a trumpet to her mouth shouting victory. I can't see anything but the wings, trembling.