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The Fan Waving its crenulated edges, the fan moves over the wounded table revolving around night, around history as loss. With cloths in both hands I polish my mother's table; moths cling to the screen, my hands circling, cleaning the wood until they rub off into the cloths and I leave them inside. You will know by the nocturnal business of air. By light I'll be gone to hands grown back on a serrated shore where I cut my feet traversing crosscurrents, the mix of fabulous winds. Odysseus in Amberland for Craig Feathery web above my single bed makes darkness visible, home a lung. I breathe as if I lived, as if you turn sheets and rain to sails, make darkness visible, home a lung. Reach back to hold the burning globe, turn sheets and rain to sails. My dream was once a sleep I heard. Reach back to hold the burning globe: a self you saw in me I wonder who. My dream was once a sleep I heard. The sparrow calls the wren to sing a self you saw in me I wonder who. The deer look back at us, we drink their gaze. The sparrow calls the wren to sing as I attach more feathers to the web. The deer look back at us, we drink their gaze. Awake you’d rather be a foreigner as I attach more feathers to the web and wander mossy gaps of afternoon. Awake you’d rather be a foreigner arriving with a book when wine is poured and wander mossy gaps of afternoon through amber trails of Vilnius hotels. Arriving with a book when wine is poured, I breathe as if I lived, as if you through amber trails of Vilnius hotels and feathery web above my single bed. Speed of Light The solar system aligned in tawny fire, as usual, for the last ghost flower, the dusky sparrow with a backbone like our own, the last tongue of ice stretching down to Russia across Siberia’s Laptev Sea as it dissolved. The pumpkin moon rose to white fire when farthest from us. The older it was, the fiercer the ember — can you show me the new species of our finished knowing, of its dismantling beyond pieces of light, the blazing star that thrives in the ground as button snakeroot, the old North Pole we’ll sail across? In midnight pouring rain I draw the curtain and see a buck leaping River Road. Drenched antlers flash in the streetlight — my roots untangle — Listen, go eat an apple, find a sunpatch, light a candle in some dark corner, burnish your heart in the light you become. |
| © Copyright Heather Thomas |
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