Here on this edge I have had many diminutive visions. That all at its essence is dove-gray. Wipe the lipstick off the mouth of anything and there you will find dove-gray. With my thumb I have smudged away the sky’s blue and the water’s blue and found, when I kicked it with my shoe, even the sand at its essence is pelican-gray. I am remembering Eden. How everything swaggered with color. How the hollyhocks finished each other’s sentences. How I missed predatory animals and worrying about being eaten. How I missed being eaten. How the ocean and the continent are essentially love on a terrible mission to meet up with itself. How even with the surface roiling, the depths are calmly nursing away at love. That look the late nurser gets in its eyes as it sucks: a habitual, complacent peace. How to mother that peace, to wean it, is a terrible career. And to smudge beauty is to discover ugliness. And to smudge ugliness is to be knocked back by splendor. How every apple is the poison apple. How rosy the skin. How sweet the flesh. How to suck the apple’s poison is the one true meal, the invocation and the Last Supper. How stillness nests at the base of wind’s spine. How even gravestones buckle and swell with the tides. And coffins are little wayward ships making their way toward love’s other shore.
This poem uses a wide-angle lens, unusual for me. I was not in my usual Midwest, but at the sea. I was envisioning what exists beneath the surface. Since childhood, I have been nettled and transfixed by death. In this poem, I discover that the engine of death is love. Maybe if I was a preacher for a day, this would be my sermon.
Many thanks indeed to all the poets and publishers who shared their new work during ArmchairBookFair21, and to you, our readers and generous donors. Your passion for poetry inspires us everyday.
"Michelle T. Boone, a former commissioner of cultural affairs for the City of Chicago, has been named president of the Poetry Foundation, nearly a year after the previous president resigned amid an intense outcry over the Chicago-based organization’s perceived lack of commitment to social justice."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
