Grebe
“We are gathered here today,” the dear hostas breathe beloved,
eight huddled around a stump, tightfurled where juniper berries in winter
gather their smoky voices. My beloveds heregathered dearly
in this small square yard, beloved are the heaps and dribbles of stone and dirt.
Dearly beloved, gathered are we here by cardinal and northern window and
blunt lily-to-be. “Dear gatherers,” the hostas whisper, strapped in like small green parasols…
their hushed breath the clearest breath today —
––
A blue light travels briefly over the meadow
What is my condition now that I’ve outlived my context
What is my new law of being, too new
for framework?
I inhabit the blurry middle.
Will this new law of being be restrictive
or permissive? How will we
breathe? Blue light pauses in the tangled song
of wet crickets, where, amid night violets, those loving
curlers, I stand —.
They’d cut off the man’s feet, they’d
laid him down.
Years after that horror the yellow roses thrashing
in opposition near the painting of the blighted blue mask, its red streak
of mouth in the dark, constricting world of the frame then,
one pale figure rising —
in hollow hospital gowns in cities and villages
many figures rising —
Are you all right are you allright alright alright in there?
––
In my dream, there were three tasks:
I folded a magic basketball in half
I stitched a dress out of an accordion while it was breathing
heavy by the sea, heavy by the sea…
I was jolted out of the third harsh vigilance. My five-fold insect’s eye:
Is the child breathing
The cards of March were deathly: a punctured eyeball pinioned by yarn
And a blue tree floating in air without roots
The water in the backyard rose and did not sink
All colors took on their neighbors'
I remember the respirator I remember how it made his hospital gown balloon out, subside,
balloon out. Nobody was stopping it though he was dead. We were transfixed by
the breath moving without the breather.
The child drew the Magician card
***
Her name was Windflower but we called her Flower
My favorite dog of the meadow
White as a star in the snow turning her body around to make sure
I was there
At 3 a.m. I think of her, stark in my own life, as you at 3 a.m. are stark in yours
Maybe we’re all stars then. Disjointed, sharp, too bleakly bright to see ourselves anywhere but in
vast outer spaces emptying, timeless as she in all softness,
the memory-blur at 3 a.m.
Her concerned eyes caught my throat
All dogs are inward, all hounds of the hamlet going
inward now but still setting their concerned eyes on me
The way the petal fell the way white meant contagion now white with red flecks
The gasp in the brush the way blossoms looked like crowns crowns like a
virus.
The only way to talk about childhood was to talk about woods and meadow
and fox and deer and the sycamore at a vast distance then. The ash tree scripted over
by emerald borers. The d-shaped wounds. The many contagions…
and the lake even farther away —.
“What will you name her?” they asked.
Windflower but we’ll call her Flower it’s easier to call her that way
****
The respirator takes on a life of its own
The respirator takes a life of its own
The respirator takes a life
Petals fall, fill in the cracks
Petals will, wall in the cracks
Petals, small investigators of breath
doubling over —
in a gust —.
––––––––––
“beforelife” was the title of the book that could’ve been Celan or Valentine
appeared before me before I knew my new context
weeks later I am behind the tiny square window of the kitchen
three black-capped chickadees appear
thieves of the heart
what is there to ask of them? They live in a village
of breath. Remember the breathing
that had no breather?
I have wanted to add a faded red house
to the view
weeks after watching the film where the peach-soft
girl gets blown up in a car
in the middle of her joy mid the free passage of her joyful love
weeks after watching the film my tears begin
unstoppably as they might have in real life
where the mouth and jaw ache
she was a dream within a dream within a dream
the soft-faced girl in the Italian film walking with children
a young teacher a child herself a tendril of life the only tenderness
there I, dry-eyed, watched the film again decades later
during the pandemic, shrewd, without despair —
but over the weeks she appeared and reappeared at 3 a.m.
lifting off her soft shirt in the blowing wind — billowing up,
the tears without prohibition
I am going inward you said I am inward more inward I am moving away
***
Gone the man with stumps for legs. Gone the breathing
machine.
I will enter this rain into the registry of tears
Remember the respirator how it made his gown balloon it was the first part of day
Grebe is the bird of today
Her oily feathers spanned flat, the pattern of tire tread
where no cars had sped
Her fractured eye fixed on us as she sinks.
The whisperers were not in love they were dying they were whispering
as a way to breathe
For them, for you going inward again, I grieve, for the child pounding walls again: grieve, grieve
with me, Grebe
_____________________
Small oval crystals on my doorstep
qualify as the light of this day. I first piled them
in a transparent heap the shape of an anthill,
soon jostled out of place.
Many fell into the grass, magnifying the blades
unintentionally, atonally
as unintentionality has been so long my song,
having had no mind to move with the swift deadly force
of consciousness. Every force, every movement deadly:
watch the lively steps of the green fly, its arabesques, its disco wings
and the distraction of honeysuckle blooms hung from bloodless canopies,
the killings going unnoticed undercover.
In the high, bright air, “Rules,” you said,
“We have to have rules,” and you stepped away. I stepped
away, and from that safe distance, we could see how large we’d become,
almost enormous with hunger that had its own plan.
We listened for other voices,
red star above us, shrubs noiselessly coupling, the simple plan
of the sun, shadows enlarging, swelling around the edges —. We’d been reading
from a large pink book about a crystal city,
shatterproof though the crystal is as glass, delicate, in peril,
but immortal. It holds and reflects
so perfectly the world becomes black, a black shine we live inside
together in that book, that crystal book.
“Rules,” you said, “What we can and cannot do.” I touch the crystals
on my doorstep, I leave the others in the grass.
When I pass through the door, they without moving pass too —
––
What was the rule for the man with stumps for legs, the man
whose feet they had cut off? What is the rule for our breathing, for the machines
that billow the gowns around us? Those transfixed by that, those needing
to be pulled away —.
***
The rules become less about contact, more about listening
The real rule is to pay attention to the dignity of light
When breath gathers badly, stop moving
Let every breath become a meadow, pulsing with froglets,
ferret out the hurt, heed the sorcery of the lake
The rule of yellow roses, their withdrawn throats, secret layers of their minds
The rules no longer about nakedness — but about being too heavily clothed,
too masked. The rules have to do with bare hands in dirt
Rules determined by gardens, gardens by a river, by a church,
Rules of garden and river and church all the same, all correct
At the pearl edge of the downcast sea correct, all correct —
ξ
Alessandra Lynch’s fourth book of poetry, Pretty Tripwire, was published in January 2021. She is also the author of Sails the Wind Left Behind, It was a terrible cloud at twilight, and Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other literary journals. Currently, she serves as Butler University’s poet in residence where she teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs. Alessandra also paints from time to time. www.alessandralynch.com