Such Things As Remain

~

Seasonal
By J.A.

Though we seek always the known absolute
of all our days together, love will not occur
For us. Love is a fact 
Beyond the witches' wood of facts that is
Our sorcery's domain. And though we may
Charm lion into squirrel, push back the sea,
Love is made outlaw, set beyond all art,
The ultimate error of our reasoning. 

But when I see you walking or catch your face
Edged with the season's most erratic leaves
Love grows superfluous, and I look at you
As I would look at flowers. Our only need:
The sympathy of darkness for the seed.

~

  

Such Things As Collapse Softly

 
~

  Summer Holiday by seaworthy

~

      I had forgotten the way you looked as a child. This as I neared Seattle: the words of your most recent letter came back to me: "We wondered if you might have escaped us, like we thought we could escape you. Thirty years is a long time. I fear I've truly lost my hold on the past." You had spoken to me on the phone about the way your capacity to forgive has become indistinguishable from your imagination. This strikes you as a terrible thing, I think.
     Dark clouds hang above the city, and I imagine time punctuating our lives like a rain engulfing the void between passers-by. We see each other through years which are not so heavy as a single moment that brings us out of this lilting, airless love.

~

A Blessing In Disguise 
By J.A.

Yes, they are alive and can have those colors,
But I, in my soul, am alive too.
I feel I must sing and dance to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.

And I sing amid despair and isolation
Of the chance to know you, to sing of me
Which are you. You see,
You hold me up to the light in a way

I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps
Because you always tell me I am you,
And right. The great spruces loom.
I am yours to die with, to desire.

I cannot ever think of me, I desire you
For a room in which the chairs ever
Have their backs turned to the light
Inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees

That seem to shine at me through a lattice toward you.
If the wild light of this January day is true
I pledge me to be truthful unto you
Whom I cannot ever stop remembering.

Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day
On the wings of the secret you will never know.
Taking me from myself, in the path
Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me.

I prefer "you" in the plural, I want "you,"
You must come to me, all golden and pale
Like the dew and the air.
And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation. 

Such Things As Come In Sleep

"And so, yes..."

"That was it then?"

"In a small way. She was gone before anything came of it."

"Dead?"

"Oh, no, not in that sense I mean. Gone, a little shifted. She came out of herself."

"She lost track."

"No, not that. Just a change, something new."

~

City Afternoon

By J.A.

A veil of haze protects this 

Long-ago afternoon forgotten by everybody

In this photograph, most of them now

Sucked screaming through old age and death.

If one could seize America

Or at least a fine forgetfulness

That seeps into our outline

Defining our volumes with a stain

That is fleeting too

But commemorates

Because it does define, after all:

Gray garlands, that threesome

Waiting for the light to change,

Air lifting the hair of one

Upside down in the reflecting pool.

~