Two Dynasties
“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”-- Louise Glück
I ask you ghost
what language should we speak to our children
the knotted sound of a falling word, begun
when you shaped loss into rings
or golem stories transfigured in the afternoon over the laundry basket
histories licking shape into the space between the door-key light
and a stranger’s languor peeping curves turned into meaning
caught in the lie between axil and midrib valley’d together
dark pensées in an attic’s pitch opening you
and the words fall nearly apart
ceiling slivers drip down with taste an orange peel scent
bitten margins the skin’s rind rings away your name
the festering peach falls in the warm Ontario sun August’s ripe aquaria
the wishing the wanting the wading through the orchard
the children quirk for more time, more time I ask you ghost when
earlier
I ask you father
which words began to bubble up spun themselves into banners of taught
thought going adrift, you a white cotton scarf
strong over the escarpment the poles you lifted us up upon
we kneed up your back a gull gliding arabesques when you
snatched the light and left the door open, our hearts ajar a movie
heroine’s heart cracking and then every throng was gone
every car unbuckling on I-95, the hotel room hunched outside Baltimore
we dragged the sea and sand up from the Chesapeake into the room
toe-small piles on the carpet corners
your underwear and the tv light flickering white and black&blue
dreams
the chemistry of an ill-suited room love abandoned on the Holiday Inn
bedsheets, as the nation racks up a family one by one over
the Stateline grief on the sunburned shoulders of four
young boys, wide-eyed and loose lipped
the barren woods carved into their sleep the neon over the balcony
as the city mirrors Atlantis on the horizon
the ice machine barks at the end of the mildew-stained plaster
corridor with a terminus’ buzz ice cubes drop like death’s rattle
fear drops in their small throats not yet ready for what
the ax swing in the sounding of the salt-damp ocean air
breath frenzied an aquatic twirl
intelligence lay in the corner of their eyes that vast shoreline
who will save them from themselves, these children
I ask you, father
later
I ask you mother
which of us was wingward and wild waxing west and in abundance
the tide lit love across your brow when loss coursed light through the wan horizon
speculative and long I too remember Yilan
yackled, the hills rose black and the sea washed away blanched
the hoof white on the black sand ruff the words that wronged us
on the frontier of the small island, each to each both your songs
nothing ever nor forever you ran away I wish I could ask you
why, as the light followed you through the front door, our family gone
now
my brothers and I bend reflexively beneath the milky sun
the lone Oak a sentry in the field enormous in its love
once split by the sky’s lightening tongue we lift glasses
of rum to cool our brows first a heart, then a home
then we, each to each after the undying, became one
through the grief and the wreckage
a family unspun but I tell you
will always tell you and I will tell you again
we became our own namelessness wired together with grief outrun
for my brothers
