Cry of the Stars

Late June, and by my apartment porch
the scent of flowered vines sends me back
eleven years, reeling, to a riot of mowed grass
and sunshine on skin:

I’m running through shifting shadows
with you again, while your mother
cuts tomatoes in the kitchen
and the white duck wanders the backyard.

Pale pollen on fingers, clear nectar
lingering on tongue-tips, we ran, breathless
and blurry—

Somewhere beyond the clotheslines I lost you:
dark curls disappeared into billowing white,
eclipsed by heat and wind.

Did I lie down and close my eyes
in the center of that bright and whirling world?

Have I slept for eleven years, or is it now
I am dreaming?

I think of your face behind fluttering sheets,
your mother’s voice at the patio door—

I turn; the wind drifts; I breathe
again, unlocked.

He just hasn’t made my bed yet,
she used to say, when the ground grew too hard
and she’d sit on a pillow to weed the garden,
when her skin had been folding up for years
and her world had long been slipping toward silence.
It wasn’t that she wanted to leave us,
but I think she was tired.
Did she picture sheets made of stars, smooth
and tucked in like clouds, maybe
smelling like spring blossoms, or like old pine?
Did she dream of quilts crafted by
his careful hand, filled to the binding
with a century’s worth of stories—did she want to see
his gentle smile as he drew the covers to her chin,
did she imagine clean summer wind
as she slipped away to rest at last?
She left so much behind, even my house bends
to gather the pieces. My mother tends
bereaved orchids at the window and keeps
one of her blankets on the living room couch, which
I’ve been hiding under and wondering
if we got it backwards all along: could it be
we were the ones who made the bed, smoothing
sheets and trembling at the emptiness beneath,
the best our human hands could do—
we braced ourselves for night, and
maybe we were wrong,
maybe he burst into the room and threw back the curtains,
maybe he pulled her up as sunlight streamed in
and he sang in his joy, I couldn’t wait
to wake you, there is so much for us to do today,
so many birds and trees and flowers to see,
mountains to scale with your new strong knees and
rivers to splash with your new young feet,
a whole city to show you and all your friends
looking for you, my darling,
my little girl, get up!

The wind above the dried stalks—
cooled air rustling, enormous breaths
coupled to my own—and the imperceptible
heartbeat of the ground were

my bound hood and cloak as I crept forward
though the narrow lines of the field:

I began to bend into myself,
to stoop and curl like a withering leaf,
knees to chin, toes to mouth,
some tenuous feeling like a tether behind
me, a quivering cord ready
to break

And then, the sky.
That vast slate awning, softly marbled and
whispering infinity.

then, endless grass in tilted planes,
the horizon’s magnetic gravity,
Eliza’s wondering murmur in my left ear
and the first long inhale that drew
my whole being upright

We had stumbled over the crying threshold.
The wind’s cold hands soothed back
our wild hair, and we gasped for freedom, aching
with sudden possibility—

A forest of umbrellas, cheerfully garish,
springs up with the receding tide like mushrooms
after a thunderstorm;
meanwhile the flock
of browning bodies sprawls sun-seared,
sleepy, over the giant mirror of the sand;
a kite wearing a sharkskin swims fluttering
through the clouds and scowls
with all his teeth.
One family with three little girls keeps
disappearing under the waves—
the lifeguard shrills angry warnings,
windmills his arm into a one-way sign
back to shore, back to shore.
The wind comes tumbling off the ocean
and snags itself in my hair and
this is almost perfect:
your laughter muffled with a cracked
conch shell, our hands wrist deep
in sea-wells and sandcastles, the burn
of happiness and salt water
singing in my throat.

~ by Grant Farmer, probably. 

Step 1. Stay low on the radar for years on end,
not really talking but always there.
(When did you even meet?
At birth??)

Step 2. Be “the older brother’s friend.”
Boys hang out with boys.
Awkwardly long hair and perpetual
acoustic guitar, and all.

Step 3. At sixteen, after haircuts and
lots of growing up, have one conversation
about music for three freaking hours
straight, no tangents.

Step 4. Paint a mural together.
The ground color is sandy, it is earthy,
it is not poop do not call it—
call it poop.

Step 5. Little things now. Chinese takeout,
the Psych series finale, Sara
Bareilles, stickers, fundraisers,
bowling, lyrics, books.

Step 6. Go to Africa. Africa!
Sing in the fields with the goats and pigs
and puppies; together learn to love
the Ugandan rain, sunsets, and people.

Step 7. You’re in. You have been
for a while. But just to make sure, pretend
you’re her mom and pester her
about grades.

Step 8. Stay up on that radar. That’s it.
Just stay there.

It's a little past sunset, and
you and I are chilling on your front porch,
though our grandkids say that "chilling"
isn't a thing you do anymore.
The railing flakes with rust under 
weathered green paint,
and we've decided to ignore common
sense for a while and go barefoot.
My feet, brown from your unswept porch
and all dusty in the wrinkles, are cold 
because they're not used to socklessness and
the early autumn wind anymore;
your feet are warm because your fat, fluffy 
cat is lying on them.
Inside, your daughter and my son
(whom we betrothed at birth) 
are putting their youngest child to bed,
while their teenage twins play the Xbox 360
in your living room and giggle
at old technology.
"Do you remember," you say, 
"when we first wrote poems together?"
We laugh because we can't,
and because we've never stopped, and
because growing older is definitely
something to laugh about,
as long as we're doing it together.

We haven't yet 
looked Death in the face, 
but when we do, we'll laugh again
because it's just another chasm
that our Father's built the bridge across,
and on the other side
there are probably plenty of cats
and another creaky porch railing 
for us to put our heels up on,
as we talk about the way life's rhythms
turn out a lot like poetry,
and we'll age, like wine or cheese or
maybe ageless people,
into a glorious eternity. 

Years ago, it was warm and raining in the orchard
when we met. Children who didn't yet know what loneliness
meant, we were sown next to the river by the young hands
of our parents, setting us in the earth with love
and prayers. (Back then, none of us understood eternity
but we raced towards it anyway, our tangled

hair flying wild.) We're tall trees now, unfolding, entangling
where our sapling selves least expected to, an orchard
binding itself together in preparation for eternity's
storms of sorrow, of joy, of loneliness,
teetering on the invisible threshold of maturity—and love's
in the twining of our roots underground, our hands

held tight against the coming wind. The weather hands
us these moments every now and then, these exuberant tangles
of teenage happiness and the bold scent of a wide love
following you home on a cold rainy night, when orchards
seem invincible, when we have rejected loneliness
like children still blindfolded against eternity.

Once, ten days of moments turned my hours into eternity,
made solitude suddenly sharp and cold in my hands,
and silence unbearable. Was this true loneliness
at last? The heart's refusal, long after separation, to untangle
itself from phantom branches still twining in the orchard,
the mind's reluctance to pause in anything that it loves,

the soul's aching at absence, having learned so well to love?
Oh, bring me back to the river that wells up from eternity,
and twine my roots into the pattern of my father's orchard
where I am meant to stand forever, while we join hands
and hold each other tight. I think our parents meant to tangle
us together when they set us down, praying we'd never be lonely,

and here we are, the answer. We're a hedge against loneliness,
yours and mine and everyone else whose love
is blooming into breathtaking flowers, all joyfully tangled
through our branches. I must be tasting what sweet eternity
has to offer, more happiness than I can hold, so cup your hands
and drink the overflowing with me: it's raining in the orchard.

Years from now, even the loneliness of a withering orchard
will still know these promises. Held inside our tangled hands
and older than our souls, this love of ours outlives eternity.

The sorrow you leave behind
is that of a body missing its arm.
It is the disbelief of sudden absence,
the clumsiness of a crippling,
and the tormented yearning for lost wholeness.

Beloved,
hold with me a
dim-lit memory:

remember snowflakes on your eyelashes, while
ice cracked under my hair,
and above us the looming sky
leaked tiny white teeth to bite our noses,

slush spattering your boots and
creeping down my collar - and we
went on and on,
too happy even to shiver.

remember a room breathing soft yellow,
which soothed the red from
our cheeks and mingled mutely
with grey in the corners.
the touch of solid wood
through dry socks,

a blanket draped
across three dangling pairs of legs,
tangling us together like
we'd never let go of our laughter;
the warm embrace
of a guitar's broad humming.

we sat, and smiled,
and sang the cold shadows
to sleep.

In another age, you and I
tried, but could not make peace with unfamiliarity.
Yellow festered to a slur in your mouth;
never mind that to us it meant power and holiness,
the color of emperors, the birthmark on our bodies
as children of the mighty dragon.
Never mind that in honesty, we held our skin
to the pale of the moon or the soft brown dust and
thought it the same:
we too curled our lips at you,
laughed at these white foreign ghosts in our fields,
your hair and eyes blazing in strange pigments--
red like our fruit, green like our mountains,
blue like our great clean sky--that never belonged on a body,
that were surely a mistake in your making.

Today I carry this turmoil in my memory,
but not in my blood. My ancestors have etched their legacy
into my cheeks and nose and eyelids,
but these veins are mine alone, to color as I wish.
I have chosen to love hair golden as the morning
and eyes gentle as dusk, which have painted my childhood
and taught me that vibrance can easily frame your face,
bright and true and beautiful.
I know, too, that if I laid you out and peeled you open,
I would find a crumbling core of borrowed rot
for Death's long fingers to grasp and draw back to itself,
the same ugly weight that lingers black in me
and steeps my days in bitter weariness.
That has always been our problem, after all.

Perhaps someday, you and I,
we'll work the rich ground side by side,
colorful children of the same father
with new light blooming from our hearts.
We'll hold hands and never wonder
at the complement of our skin, at the reflection
of the dark earth, and the tender flowers we'll leave behind
will sing our ancient, blood-filled stories
in a thousand lovely hues.

Beloved,
drink with me this
light-drenched memory:

the dark blur of a watercolor forest
at the field's far end, where
edges of swollen husks hardened
under withering, tea-stained petals
and whispered of colder days to come;

the gentle brush
of pale grass against your neck,
holding your slender throat
and shoulders close in
ancient arms of dust and clay;

a twilight that seemed to stretch forever,
sun-streaks repainting the sky
a hundred times--
each hour, another wine-soaked layer.

a creaking swing,
a bench for both of us,
warm wind like honey in my mouth;

we slept, and oh,
the cicadas' laughing
carried us till morning.

I know you hide
your hurt behind
that smiling face
and dim computer screen

I want to break
those barriers and
comfort you with
more than words

Forgive me for
this stupid silence—
I should be holding you up,
but don't know how.

you are scraping at the ground
with bloodied bare fingers,
eyelids nailed shut
and a staggering weight on your shoulders,
your ankles chewed raw from every time
you stood, raised a hand to your shredded neck,
and Master pulled
so the shackles bit deep and you fell again.
the rusty iron bands
are too big and chafe at you,
but never slip off.
you're trying to find something you
once lost, you think,
you know. you hope it's still there
but when you reach too far,
Master--Monster--leaps onto you,
tears at your flesh with jagged claws and teeth
till you can't even scream, though
your jaw still stretches open,
wide in anguish.
sometimes you collapse, sobbing for
your cracking spine and useless eyes
and bloody hands

and
"i'm a good person," you say,
calmly sipping coffee in the dark,
leaning back in your chair.
you smile hollowly
and turn from the light
i'm holding out to you.

stubborn,
It glows brighter at your back.

You and I have always known,
and we are both aware
that Father brought our spirits close,
and Father knit them there.
So then, together we will grow
with love and grace and prayers--
and of His light our souls will glow
within His sovereign care.

Emmalee
flaps very stupidly
and thinks forty-two chromosome
makes you dumber than a garden gnome.

--
This is an absolutely terrible clerihew, but please click that link.

This happened on Thursday night.
--

Haleigh, 9:20pm:
The night grows short and
my patience grows shorter still.
Post, you poet, you!

Me, 9:35pm:
i'll write a poem,
but i have one calc problem
left for me to do.

Haleigh, 10:24pm:
that wasn't a hai
ku. If you'd said "I will," it
would have been one, though.

Me, 10:30pm:
what? Haleigh Swansen
says that word as "pome" instead
of "po-em"? how strange.

Haleigh, 11:02pm:
people who say it
that way say "poe-UM", my dear.
That's not right, either.

Me, 11:10pm:
I stand corrected
on that second syllable,
but there are still two.

Haleigh, 11:16pm:
I just read the link...
OK. I'm the faulty one.
You are free to mock.