Risings and Fallings

It is the left-behind who are emptied.

The child who days ago was sometimes

a bit of a nuisance

will not wake you with her crying any more,

but you will wake yourself—

again and again that void,

a lesson in drowning.

The cradle rocks, and we are lulled

by returnings we understand:

coming home, remove your shoes,

five times a day, the call to prayer,

the crucifix on the wall,

Ganesha minding the door,

ablutions, gestures, familiarity.

Of course, there are loves and jealousies,

a living to earn: farms and factories

stalls and incense,

and always and everywhere

people chasing the sand from the threshold,

for we like an ordered world.

You were vexed with your lover

and parted angrily.

Your dear friend turned one way

and you another.

As every morning, your father went down to the shrimp farm,

your mother to the hotel,

your children to school or to play,

and they were rough and smooth in your life,

grains, sometimes, held and shushed,

dear, familiar, irritating.

On a scale too large and too small for our note,

the Earth sped, like a skater folding her arms,

which the braking Moon will slow again

before they come back,

sorrowed reunions in the shifting wrack,

rocking, rocking.

Do not think those doll's eyes behold any truth.

You see how they are clouded.

-II-

Though in grief we cling to "Never,"

that is not a word time knows.

Only forever is forever—

a feather still until it stirs—

again and again joining and unjoining,

joy and grief,

and this, too, is a cradle.

Time and chance:

given enough time...

The beaches that were worlds,

the beaches of those worlds,

shore beyond shore.

And this is no evasion of finality;

it is as real as tears,

only, we are prone to hyperbole,

to our quintessent "nevers."

Time and chance:

On an autumn bluff above a northern sea,

a woman walks in the blowing grass,

looks far into the slate blue merge,

salt wind coldly brushing a tear.

Beneath her feet,

separate by storied stone,

bones of one she might have loved.

Time and chance:

Clutching her flotsam child,

rocking, rocking,

she empties her lungs, soundless,

until the drowning gasp.

Time and chance:

Where the road bends, she pauses, wiping her brow—

stardust of myriads she has loved.

We are surrounded by them always.

They are motes in the air.

They are blossoms in the field.

We breathe them in and out.

The grit of them irritates our eyes.

They are underfoot and in our hair.

We chase them from the threshold.

We could not be without them.