Extra Hidden Life, among the Days - Brenda Hillman Wesleyan Poetry Series

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of the self

      is the f, its awning of breath—)

      The old woman greets death

      in her bed — — the peril cloud

      ascends — “well done!”

      She dozes off & feels for those

      she cannot help but feel fear for —;

      Over the ledge

      of sound — Vast sage!

      It visits her,

      she must sleep widely then. — And

      when the mild dead hover … she clings

      clings clings to the rim

      of the prayer wheel — Now

      motion goes on to release her —;

      she helped you unknow

      the half-true —.

      After, she greets the greeters …

      radiant roots, reluctantly brought:

      beside the creamy chaos of the stars —

      As i have since i was a child in summer, found a rock with a fine example of life;

      this time Flavopunctelia soredica, fringe lichen, with tilde-like edges;

      to extend a sound where other life could hear,

      in hopes of accomplishing nothing, offered punctuation to the lichen, to my

      mother who was very quiet at the time

      so it would be heard & not heard in the heavenly sphere, at least, as the

      brain imagined it there, making absolute motion, in a harmless frame, as

      the granite has spoken since i was a child, in other words,

      i said mãe

      with 10 rows of 12 tildes & 2 rows of mãe, in Portuguese,

      i recited the tildes by lifting a finger, recited the “mãe” lines,

      tapping toward where she lives very quietly in days she creates …

image

      Before bronze winter, unable to get good sorrow through,

      choosing a rock where a Xanthoparmelia shield had spread,

      facing the full-of-plastic Pacific, eager to include crows,

      waiting for one crow to disrupt the cantata of not-crow,

      counting by thinking, as for decades, i’ve thought punctuation has features of skylight, tsk-ing,

      (my brothers used to say tsk tsk, when we were naughty),

      hoping this might lift the dread of being human, & early, relieved by dots in the air,

      i repeated a composition 6 times with the crow & tried to breathe humanly, thus:

image

       (for M.W.)

      —or, perhaps we could

      care less carefully now …

      that they fluttered

      in the forest, with mid-

      gold clinging to their going … Their cadence

      became our anxiety:

      night vision, to rest as a speckled gleam,

      an ochre glance. The days can sometimes

      give them

      what they need—that’s

      pretty obvious (triangles of

      orange— a weight had been dispatched—)

      we’re visitors, & only briefly, at that,

      —one more flutter

      from the spirit world, glittering

      time looks on, souls

      as seeds, ready to rise, & stay …

      as if color has chosen to live,

      no matter what

      (it both is &

      isn’t a metaphor—)

       for KH

      & cloud caps

      in the drought— microbes in my gut &

      on the leg of the bobcat, microbes even

      on its photo—, buckles near

      grasses of perhaps not growing …

      no rain this week, no relief sounds … in our grief

      here, to hear coastal cypress— beware—

      so grown things rain:

      between life & nonlife &

      death: the whir

      under the dove’s wing, to — rows of marigolds,

      an end of earth where creatures go

      without supervision … such

      sorrow i heard—

      such sorrow they heard … bacteria

      also have their thunder in the nightlight

      of the biome, coasting,

      outside an arrogant noise

      they never made — breaks

      energy in sun’s

      setting behind a band

      of thunder clouds: cracks & volunteers—

      —kept losing self control

      but how could one lose the self

      after reading so much literary theory?

      The shorter “i” stood under the cork trees,

      the taller “I” remained rather passive;

      the brendas were angry at the greed, angry

      that the trees would die, had lost interest

      in the posturing of the privileged,

      the gaps between can’t & won’t …

      Stood outside the gate of permissible

      sound & the wind came soughing

      through the doubt debris

      (soughing comes from swa¯gh—to resound …

      echo actually comes from this also—)

      we thought of old Hegel across

      the sea— the Weltgeist—& clouds

      went by like the bones of a Kleenex …

      it’s too late for countries

      but it’s not too late for trees …

      &

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