~REBECCA REYNOLDS~

FROM LATIN INSULA OR ISLAND

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The coffee smoldering inside.  And something
I know is intimately, like being alone, is
being alone, without courage or presence, so
going back to what is lonely, the safety in that,
but what is
living and living with this
intentness, which comes and goes, a space
without an image or poetry to latch onto, here
is the stuff I throw off, the story that erases itself each time,
or the voice inside, in the flurry—
only propositions have sense—
"a totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world."
My father's imagination has
the beauty of a drunk's, a gully
without feeling, sparkling
and palatial like the Crete sea
with some inside sounds, with the
carpeting or flora—which thoughts were true—
and when we had reached a totality the world
came into focus, and the dog was at the screen, panting
in front of winter.  Something gray
picks at the leaves, there is a difference
between the impulse to speak and the impulse
to sing.  I am airy, hoarding the blunt
log of my tongue, high noon,
whem Saturday diffuses.  This is the best form for it,
for Saturday, for the father, hummimg back there
so often I have wanted to steal something inexact
from the others, from you,
finding myself with this cloud,
and the past was the occasion.  A Western light forsakes
the orange drapery.  I could use a drink
this time of day, the aftermath of noon,
though the feeling is one of silence sunk into the fundament
of its own word, wherein the bearer is levered down, worse
because of the silence and the barest difference.
I know those bones, that uneasy shape.
 
 

© by Rebecca Reynolds