Pomegranate

I pry out the seeds with my fingers and all
my memories spill onto the frosty marble
counter. Little, lit up like ruby-red carnival lights,
rough as the cat tongue of Time
inviting us to sit at the table to gobble us up
in a mouthful. The pomegranate returns
late autumn, ready to ruin us, on whichever night
we are in the kitchen, distracted by dinner: very lightly
it stains our fingers that pensive, murky color,
the color hours take on that won’t
clot—the open color of memory.

 
The Sky Over Berlin

Don’t ask me how or why. Now and then
pigeons go astray, they go through
a window, a curtain, a mirror left half
open, and nothing can prevent their scattering
through the transparent sky of the soul, the way
watercolors disperse under the serendipity of water
drops. Don’t ask me how or why
these mistakes happen, or if they even are
mistakes. How could I know whose hand
opens mirrors, whose hand precipitates
water? Sometimes, life chooses the wrong
piece, white moves for black, and then
an eagle appears under a coat, a word
on a bee’s lips, a sad angel
sitting in a laundromat. They say
it happens to everyone, not only
those with wings. Comforting to know.
Comforting to know error is a part
of us, sustains us like air or blood,
that the best encounters are really
losses or confusions, accidents happening
three thousand feet above sea level over forgotten
cities, there where words ascend
like effervescent globules, and disappear.
from the journal THE BROOKLYN RAIL
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