And when the rains came
like lean wolves
we were ready. The statues strew with purpose,
half-buried in myth, in the fecund already
filling with color
like the last practice of a dance
that stretched like honeysuckle
on the border of a marble quarry,
where a girl, enslaved, leaned to test the taste
& imagined her name imprinted
on the road to the temple at Delphi,
so that there was no doubt, not ever,
of her freedom.
~
Her name in an earth screaming
debt & torches & sharks.
~
North—
A thousand horses pull through the dream of a little land
& I must feed them
more
than stories & touch.
~
Ghosts, not flags
on the stars.
~
It is beginning to snow in the mind
& I am still in the car, that 100,000 miles of dream,
returning to where I’ve woken,
gift after gift,
thankful & bruised
as the faint music of the past opens
like a snarl—
the clarity of nests abandoned by winter, the apartment, the cathedrals of youth,
where swallows in the last feed ate the sky
of foreign cities
as I protected the mind
with youthful answers.
~
The yard is a half-finished altar,
a rat’s nest of tears.
~
Carved into the ether, the day
I was gifted the knife.
~
Bombs & the muffled screams of the dead.
~
There is no land, no palace
or money for rent.
To hold onto these dreams—horses at the trough,
consuming the fire in gulps.
My daughter at the door, in a bright-purple coat,
tying her boots
as I start up the car.
~
I am here & also
sitting in a fortress
by the sea.
I am here in the dream of the land, in the sky I was given
& give to my daughter
in paused moments of warmth—
~
Also this…
~
A kite lost in the grave-clouds,
& her birthday next week.
~
Also this…
~
The snows never came back
to hide us. Wolves in the labyrinth, guarded by guards
that shoot down any leaving
from their posts.
~
And the betta fish, the swaying tail we buried in ceremony, in a handkerchief,
as we decided an afterlife, a heaven in miniature, a now,
where her fish & grandfather
are never alone
& I imagine, alone, the part of story where she can visit the soil in the future,
because we own the land
& the handkerchief we folded
disappears
when she shows her first love this place.
~
Dad, we must be going somewhere…
~
In a country I’ve built another country, a home,
though its mostly a poem, a story
before bed—
there is good water to drink
& horses,
wolves & dangers
in the ways we can explain
& prepare for.
The road to this country is a thread.
A benevolent fire.
~
Dad…
~
I don’t know where we’re going…
Imagine it with me.
Step in. Let us in.