I ask who you are, whispering
in my ear all these years, you
to whom I've said all I can say.
I hold my two hands upward
toward the light now sifting
from the air. This is the shape
of eternity: five long fingers
and a palm broadened and carved
by use. When I looked
in my heart and found only
questions, when I walked
beside the ditch at dusk
and asked the sun,
the answer was curled
quietly in my pocket. "Look at
then both," you say, "turn them
over and place them on the table
before you. Don't be afraid.
They are you, familiar, at times
overlooked, despised. Now,
go back the way you came, down
the same old streets where you
grew to a name and a single face.
That was home, you said, and today
it is nothing, not even a closet
of unread books. Here is home.
Close your eyes. You are on
a dark plain. The hot winds
breathe in and out. You're laughing!
You asked for a home, you crossed
the earth, you sat speechless,
you questioned the closed door,
'Are you there?' No one answered
because all the time it was you."
If I called you "my soul," you'd
laugh in my face. If I went
down on my knees to you as to
a god or a beloved, you'd turn
to the window, shake your head,
and talk to the last of the garden.
At the end of September I may
ask the trees to hold still
in the west wind. I may scold
the flicker hiding in the shade
of an orange tree. His feathers
scatter and settle in the trough
of each wave. He is not
a religious object nor is
the wind sacred, smelling
as it does of cold salt
and sea life. I have been here
so long the bleached hairs
quivering on my hands remember
the years before the flood.
The whites of my eyes, no longer
white, stared into fire when fire
was mine, and I am only
so much salt, water, and stone
smelling of iron. I can talk
to you and though my answers
will scatter like feathers in wind,
you may write them down on paper
that burns even in sunlight.
Get what you can, says the flicker;
remorseless, he shoulders his way
into light and then into air.
What does he care that the year
winds down? That the west wind
smells of ice? That what went out
as lies and so much bad breath
came home as the final truth?
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