filling sistering the moon
on its wild ride
men will march to games and wars
pursuing the bright red scarf
of courage heroes every moon
some will die while every moon
blood will enter this ordinary room
this ordinary girl will learn
to live with it
■
walking the blind dog
for wsm
then he walks the blind dog muku
named for the dark of the moon
out to the park where she can smell
the other dogs and hear their
yips their puppy dreams
her one remaining eye is star lit
though it has no sight and
in its bright blue crater
is a vision of the world
old travelers who feel the way from here
to there and back again
who follow through the deep
grass the ruff of breeze
rustling her black coat his white hair
both of them
poets
trusting the blind road home
■
hands
the snips of finger
fell from the sterile bowl
into my mind and after that
whatever i was taught they would
point toward a different learning
which i followed
i could no more ignore
the totems of my tribe
than i could close my eyes
against the light flaring
behind what has been called
the world
look hold these regulated hands
against the sky
see how they were born to more
than bone see how their shadow
steadies what i remain whole
alive twelvefingered
■
wind on the st. marys river
january 2002
it is the elders trying to return
sensing the coast is near and they
will soon be home again
they have walked under two oceans
and too many seas
the nap of their silver hair whipping
as the wind sings out to them
this way this way
and they come rising steadily not
swimming exactly toward shore
toward redemption
but the wind dies down
and they sigh and still and descend
while we watch from our porches
not remembering their names not calling out
Jeremiah Fanny Lou Geronimo but only
white caps on the water look white caps
■
the tale the shepherds tell the sheep
that some will rise
above shorn clouds of fleece
and some will feel their bodies break
but most will pass through this
into sweet clover
where all all will be sheltered safe
until the holy shearing
don’t think about the days to come
sweet meat
think of my arms
trust me
■
stop
what you are doing
stop
what you are not doing
stop
what you are seeing
stop
what you are not seeing
stop
what you are hearing
stop
what you are not hearing
stop
what you are believing
stop
what you are not believing
in the green hills
of hemingway
nkosi has died
again
and again
and again
stop
—for Nkosi Johnson
2/4/89–6/1/01
■
aunt jemima
white folks say i remind them
of home i who have been homeless
all my life except for their
kitchen cabinets
i who have made the best
of everything
pancakes batter for chicken
my life
the shelf on which i sit
between the flour and cornmeal
is thick with dreams
oh how i long for
my own syrup
rich as blood
my true nephews my nieces
my kitchen my family
my home
■
cream of wheat
sometimes at night
we stroll the market aisles
ben and jemima and me they
walk in front remembering this and that
i lag behind
trying to remove my chefs cap
wondering about what ever pictured me
then left me personless
Rastus
i read in an old paper
i was called rastus
but no mother ever
gave that to her son toward dawn
we return to our shelves
our boxes ben and jemima and me
we pose and smile i simmer what
is my name
■
sorrows
who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be
beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals
that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin
sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking
their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching
as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again
but who can distinguish
one human voice
amid such choruses
of desire
■
this is what i know
my mother went mad
in my fathers house
for want of tenderness
this is what i know
some womens days
are spooned out
in the kitchen of their lives
this is why i know
the gods
are men
■
6/27/06
pittsburgh you in white
like the ghost
of all my desires my heart
stopped and renamed itself
i was thirty-six
today i am seventy my eyes
have dimmed from looking for you
my body has swollen from swallowing
so much love
■
birth-day
today we are possible.
the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.
everything waits for us:
the snow kingdom
sparkling and silent
in its glacial cap,
the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
■
mother-tongue: the land of nod
true, this isn’t paradise
but we come at last to love it
for the sweet hay and the flowers rising,
for the corn lining up row on row,
for the mourning doves who
open the darkness with song,
for warm rains
and forgiving fields,
and for how, each day,
something that loves us
tries to save us.
■
mother-tongue: we are dying
no failure in us
that we can be hurt like this,
that we can be torn.
death is a small stone
from the mountain we were born to.
we put it in a pocket
and carry it with us
to help us find our way home.
■
some points along some of the meridians
heart
spirit path
spirit gate
blue green spirit
little rushing in
utmost source
little storehouse
lung
very great opening
crooked marsh
cloud gate
middle palace
stomach
receive tears
great welcome
people welcome
heavenly pivot
earth motivator
abundant splendor
inner courtyard
liver
walk between
great esteem
happy calm
gate of hope
kidney
bubbling spring
water spring
great mountain stream
deep valley
spirit storehouse
spirit seal
spirit burial ground
chi cottage
large intestine
joining of the valleys
1st interval
2nd interval
heavenly shoulder bone
welcome of a glance
spleen
supreme light
great enveloping
encircling glory
sea of blood
3 yin crossing
gates
stone gate
gate of life
inner frontier gate
outer frontier gate
■
new orleans
when the body floated by me
on the river it was a baby
body thin and brown
it was not my alexandra
my noah
not even my river
it was a dream
but when i woke i knew
somewhere there is a space
in a grandmother’s sleep
if she can sleep
if she is alive
and i want her to know
that the baby is not abandoned
is in grandmothers hearts
and we will remember
forever
■
after the children died she started bathing
only once in a while
started spraying herself with ginger
trying to preserve what remained of her heart
but the body insists on truth.
she did not want to be clean
in such a difficult world
but there were other children
and she would not want me
to tell you this
■
In the middle of the Eye,
not knowing whether to call it
devil or God
I asked how to be brave
and the thunder answered,
“Stand. Accept.” so I stood
and I stood and withstood
the fiery sight.
Previously Uncollected Poems
“The world has writ the letter now, writ the letter now,’twas never wrote before.”
Lucille Clifton, age 10
All Praises
Praise impossible things
Praise to hot ice
Praise flying fish
Whole numbers
Praise impossible things.
Praise all creation
Praise the presence among us
Of the unfenced Is.
■
bouquet
i have gathered my losses
into a spray of pain;
my parents, my brother,
my husband, my innocence
all clustered together
durable as
