Renvyle: Night Collage Seven
I could sit shiva for Sky, if I lived near
her loved ones. Instead I pull up a stool
and listen to the night, seek out
the lights on Clare Island until low clouds
move in and seem to snuff them,
and I think how in Cold War Berlin
they planned to turn down the air
in the fallout shelters
so no one had the oxygen to rebel.
Closer to home, our neighbor is hurrying
along the sea lane through the dark.
What is needed in the barn this late?
Imagine. Not enough oxygen.
But that’s the problem.
We can’t imagine.
People have returned
to the house up the hill
and every window is ablaze.
Together, they make a city,
a miniature Jerusalem.
After the winter storm departed
we found the gunwale of a wooden boat
washed up in our garden, and from somewhere,
decades ago, my mother’s voice reciting: Where
did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere
into the here.
I miss my friend who once
lived in the heart of Venice.
Salve, Sky. Salve.
Who knows where this all ends up.
All those watery stars.
If I knew how I’d pull up this island
like a low chair and listen for you.
Or rebuild that boat and row.
* * * * *
Salt Meadow
I’m sweeping and thinking of my father
when you call me over
to watch a dog careening
through early summer
in the field between our house
and the sea. First here,
the head’s quick flight
above the grasses, its fur russet
as the foxes of my childhood,
then gone. The meadow itself
soon to be mown,
the smaller and smaller circles
of the haying coming near again.
My father’s words rimmed with age:
I am getting edged off.
He didn’t mean it kindly.
Grace again — for it is Grace,
our neighbors’ dog —
ears hanging in the air
like a bird’s copper wings
then falling from sight.
The grasses of the field,
like promises of abundance. Or like
the return of all these swallows.
My father’s words mixing
with my worries
over just how much will be enough
to see us through.