The Brooklyn Rail

Draft

I am troubled by a covered wagon.

Huge contrivance   unhitched in a field of heather.

Committees in my head explore
the ways and means of its removal.

Prone

When it was time to surface in this world
a voice said: be a shotgun or a thorn.

For either, I would need sleek gloves
and a manual for stanching wounds.

I wouldn’t need a cowboy hat. The voice
said if you aren’t sure, I recommend

a cozy lounge where currently another
soul’s deciding: cloak or waterfall.

But I knew then what I would be, prone
as I already was, to ward off all

encroaching life. And yet, the doe
who chanced my path, stayed still as stone

then sniffed, then blinked: you fled—

Fog

—so immersive and mysterious
this afternoon in late October—

Any moment     a young giraffe
might leap from it

and gallop for the nearest pear tree

*

and when the giraffe lowers its neck
to the topmost branch I shall think of
mother pouring water from a kettle
older than me into a cup older
than she   a task she still does well
as rising steam surrounds her

*

A dream:

Aaron—whom I haven’t held in years—
was living in some dingy basement
lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs: still poor
and sad, still beautiful—a life spent
writing the life of Brahms. He didn’t ask
but wanted me to tuck him
in a drawer among his folded shirts.

I watched him while he fell asleep.

*

The thing no one ever says about
fog is that it has its own language

enter it and be immersed within
its rigorous, elusive grammars

*

In fog we observe what it means
to not be able to observe   the space
between articulation and un-
knowing is the fluency of fog

*

Another word I’m reaching for is

*

doubt    some say “a source of great distress”
but can it not as well erect
a palace of the possible?

*

I pad from room to room    hoping this
opacity will last a little
longer      because once it lifts
the hedgerows and houses will be

nothing more than what they are

*

Mother isn’t getting better
soon preparing tea will seem as strange
as folding former lovers
with their shirts inside a dresser drawer

*

Any moment  the dashing Brahms
of 1853 may step forward
with the score of his third piano
sonata tucked beneath one arm

remoteness has its own attractions

three years after we first kissed
I knew Aaron was devoted to a ghost

*

Whatever you imagine
fifteen steps from where you stand
you imagine because

in that moment you are prone

it sounds subjective and it is
but should you move—
and move you must—

every inclination bows to chance

*

Partial fog’s one kind of fog
inside the encyclopedia of fog

*

Any moment     my mother’s fog might lift

If so, I’ll tell her what transpired
while she was eating pears

with Brahms      though nothing will amaze her
more than learning it’s October