Robert van VlietThe Light’s Agitation1. Mirrors she smiles a figure at once immobile and emerging eyes closed almost lost her head back ring flashing she shows her throat to the fog coiled unsprung a poise of question these arms softened by the effort a shrouded moon and she drops suddenly into being but not into sight a figure crouched lit by its own fires which flare but bring no warmth the water surges from dark to dark she dips her arm she will carry us we will not drown a star falls the bird in the northern darkness marries the aurora please love stay my hand and the moon is a hand one state empty the sky the hand aflame beside her open in the whisper of her own dawn she rises 2. Broken In another room hardly spoken Not referring not denoted You see into this room You see the branching silence green capillaries combing the sky blue You see these shadows the afternoon’s illegible signature You feel shuddering flocks of particles breaking wave on wave on your reaching hand A figure emerges stepping between you and the surf and draws the curtain You are dust hanging in the light giving identity to the light slanting through the room And she cannot shut you out She draws the curtain and still she breathes you in stirs you sending a flurry of you around her You especially love her arms after she drops them to her sides You are the room and you hold her close even as she draws away Each moment here is a broken habit 3. You Took the Suni you took the sun from my pocket and prowled the morning streets scouring them empty ii the moon a smiling bullet a serious question underfoot not stepped on lightly the moon as I said the moon howl the word a teacher once said in an unguarded moment that every story and every poem tells you somewhere how to read it then he recanted laughing ruefully read this poem ruefully and quietly your mouth filled with broken glass fragments of the shattered moon plunging through the naked trees 4. Mirrors she rises open in the whisper of her own dawn the hand aflame beside her the sky one state empty and the moon is a hand please love stay my hand the aurora marries the bird in the northern darkness a star falls we will not drown she will carry us she dips her arm the water surges from dark to dark lit by its own fires which flare but bring no warmth a figure crouched and she drops suddenly into being but not into sight a shrouded moon these arms softened by the effort a poise of question coiled unsprung she shows her throat to the fog her head back ring flashing eyes closed almost lost a figure at once immobile and emerging she smiles 5. These Momentsi A parable might suit this moment were there one with roots just beneath the grass breaching here there Dolphins at dusk But no Such a fable with patience like the tide would ebb It would recede to bare the earth knotty and gaunt ii A woman is no story She wanes slips unseen through sunlight and grows like a shout a yawn Then at last rises heavy and red beyond words beyond pain to tilt obliviously over the islands and horses and swooning waters She rises far above the fables but pulls them gently tugs their pleats misaligns their yarns and vanishes insouciantly into a cloud 6. On Cold Mountain, Laughter from Afar Sounds like Weepingi : Beside Lake Harriet I see dead grass beneath a tattered quilt of dirty snow, and the mottled road flashing beneath my tires like an old man’s parched scalp. The frozen lake is a grinning palm, its fingers uncurled and lost in the surrounding city’s grid. And white light craves the grouse-hued hill across the bald highway. But the light’s agitation, drawing the world in stark lines unbearably sharp, the light is an insurrectionist, brash, insurgent, young. So fleet, its revolution stands still. ii : Moraine This hillside, pushed here some long time ago by rude ice, this hill interrupts the sunset. The sun slips away. My heart drops with it, a tambourine down a staircase. And sorrow clutches me. The sun will not notice me here tomorrow. iii : Kairos Here, incoherent sorrow; imagine, I suppose, how a building falls as you look past it to the clouds. And on this loom, we shuttle at the nose of unmeaning. Acts ravel, acts unravel. We shuttle with our eyes closed. iv : The Little Dog I linger in memories: a neutrino passing through everything, never tagging anything. I slip between you — under the rock; through the furnace; out toward Hong Kong or Marion Island; then off to Procyon, and Gomeisa. v : The Place And the beaked and trestled trees, bare, mocking the houses, so ignorant of gravity, they drink the same well water, they flex the same bones as the squat, ungrowing homes looking back and forth, riding slowly down into the earth. The answer to the question asked by the beleaguered trees, at the place where we stumble every time, at that crooked corner that fools us, there where that wandering syllable settles into uneasy mud: a world made from a thread, a world tangled in its own mutterings, a world in which we can be one moment at rest and the next a blur, where we can clutch tasseled silence to us one moment then let it shiver, driven by the wind; where spoken we are mute. Robert van Vliet is a poet, designer, and teacher who lives in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in The Sixth Chamber Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Eunoia Review, Haikuniverse, Otoliths, and elsewhere.previous page     contents     next page
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