What will the storybook tell? an
inch of
meng-chiao’s grass in heart or
thunder?
who will the story will? an after
thought
or what is taught after that: the
lie, an inch
above your grassless heart & art
as art –
What will the storybook tell? an
inch of
meng-chiao’s grass in heart or
thunder?
who will the story will? an after
thought
or what is taught after that: the
lie, an inch
above your grassless heart & art
as art –
As I sleep away my mourning, grass walks, asks, “what
is it that the children of rain remember most?” The story
answers, waters the plaint – As I seep away my morning,
grass is worm is root as this poem is awake with heal-
“How does the strange earth bear fruit, does it know
which road shall converge into dark & which one shall
be the rabbit?” I stand as it all begins to flower & then
smoke – the fruit bearing earth now rustles its feathers-
do we in our moving
move toward life or death
do we in turn sell, burn & prosper do we raze our haven as death?
Stroke by stroke drawing us
Out there? Father of rhythms,
deep wave, mother,
There is no out there.
All is open.
Open Water. Open I.
Open hearth Open stone crucible of love crux of I
Women, ships, lost voices.
Whatever has dissolved into our waves.
I a lost voice
moving, calling you
on the edge of the moment that is now the center.
From the open sea.
Whatever has dissolved in our bones
as rust
recalls –
we recall the tender
the edges recall, the stone, the work of the sea as the breaking out of open water.
—
Lines in bold are from Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Outer Banks”
Poet as difference
the smellsweet
wrungtooth, it keeps us in guess
in
deference to differ
the snuckroot
earthsweat, as blade wishes blood
in
rain – the differed
the nailred
skyrust, as air as parch as wet as pain
—
that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill it or ignore it
Audre Lorde