I Was Trying to Forget [reverse translation]

I was trying to forget a line by Walt Whitman
in the back of a taxi on the hottest day of the year.
You looked like a ghost, but more real
to life than you ever did before you died.

You were an emergency in red lipstick
as always. You poked me in the arm
and giggled at some private joke.
The same one you always told yourself
when you were nervous.

But that's where the dream ends.
Like tall buildings reflected in other buildings
because there is nothing else to see
except a narrow thread of blue the clouds
cross when the light turns green.

I was trying to forget before it was too late
to remember what it was you wanted.
What it was you wanted
me to understand.

The Backbone Flute

(after Vladimir Mayakovsky)

I place my hand
across her lower back
where the ridges form
finger rests
like a musical instrument —

a flute
hidden inside her body —

then blow
ever so lightly
between her shoulder blades
to make music.

Torn Earth

They tore the earth
to make room
for the highway
entrance ramp

healed over as rock face,
it doesn't talk to us
anymore.

It weeps ground water
here and there
and whispers saplings
like stitches and scars.

Pain we mistake
for experience.

How to Find Water (found poem)

1.

Before sunrise,
lie down flat

placing the chin
on the earth.

Take a look
out over the country.

Then, dig
in places where vapors are seen

curling and rising
into the air.


2.

The following test should be applied:

Dig out a place
not less than three feet square
and five feet deep.

Put into it about sunset
a bronze or leaden bowl.

Smear the inside with oil,

lay it upside down
and cover the top

with reeds or green boughs.


3.

After applying these tests
and finding the signs described above

and if a spring of water is found
more wells must be dug.


4.

Such places
face away from the sun's course

and the trees are thick in them
and the mountains,

being themselves
full of woods,

cast shadows of their own
preventing the sun

from striking the ground.

Mayakovsky

It is 1912. Pre-revolutionary
Leningrad. Excuse me,
St. Petersburg. You see
a teenager
with a square head
under a square hat
smoking sticks
of dynamite. He asks you
if you have the time. He asks you
if you have the time to read a  poem
or collect rocks to throw
at the czar's procession.
Life is hard, he says.
But he says it with a smile
and you believe
what he will go on
to prove eighteen years later.

Landscape with Shed

Horse as actor.
Horse as avatar
for the person you would prefer
to be. Horse as stage
on which you act out
your better self, informed
by the earlier possibilities.
Horse as landscape
with apple tree and shed,
hay spilling out like so many ideas
of what the future might look like.

Evolution

We invent
the machines
that will kill us.

The Point

The point of any conversation is to reach the end,
the conclusion. Do you want more coffee?
How long will you be in Nova Scotia?
How about that game last night? Or maybe not. Maybe
the point of any conversation is to keep the conversation
going, like a dog chasing its tail into sleep
or the line of climbers, tethered together
picking their way up a mountain.
You cannot see the summit
until you get there. Ditto the conversation
that circles in on itself
only to end up
somewhere unexpected.
As if everyone in the room
were waiting on the unspoken,
the implicit, the proverbial
elephant in the room
to speak. At which point
we can all speak freely, unafraid
of appearing stupid or needing
to fully understand how and why
we arrived at the point we are today.

Snowy Egret

Uncommon. Elegant. Fragile.
Like lace curtains in an open field near water.
Wineglass stems for legs.
He is an expert at standing
perfectly still.
The fish only see him
by his shadow.

Ailment

Transported by love.
Riding public transportation.
Wearing love's raiments.
Wrapped in affection.
Call it what you will.
What you want to be
is attracted, attractive
to those around you
like a person seen
waiting at a train station
wrapped in secret wings
about to take flight.