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Fore the re neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit thoncsnotturra than him tharf sie to ymbhycggannae aer his hiniongae huaet his gastae godaes aeththa yflaes aefter deothdaege doemid uueorthae.

Each living thing is like a kingdom that rises not quite out of nothing: April stirrings of some boy and the May beauty of a generous princess. Then came children— who could calculate their splendor? And there were factories in valleys, mile after mile, dragons of purple smoke, blue flames at night, castles hidden in forests equally hidden where a shining company rode through flowers to pacify the dangerous land. Triangular sails, violet, saffron, and rose, glowed beyond coves under cliffs dangling silver torques of waterfall. Later the parents aged and grew more grateful, more full of a certainty that could not be glimpsed or dismayed, and then the children were gone to some other land as if to heaven, yet the mourning was not for death. Now by a quiet wall buckled cement gives a bright home to milkweeds like strange skeletons, pale green, intact and upright, and tall white grasses that never wave. The sole survivor— a duty was laid on him to tell the tale among new minds, other ways, and how do we imagine him, wherever he’s gone—all that remains, scholar of an unread book, beggar of an unfilled cup, an unknown variation, the thought of the kingdom in a lost man?

for St. Mark's Episcopal, Good Friday 1999 In his careful welter of dried leaves and seeds, soil samples, quartz pebbles, notes-to-myself, letters, on Dr. Carver's bedside table next to his pocket watch, folded in Aunt Mariah's Bible: the Bill of Sale. Seven hundred dollars for a thirteen-year-old girl named Mary. He moves it from passage to favorite passage. Fifteen cents for every day she had lived. Three hundred fifty dollars for each son. No charge for two stillborn daughters buried out there with the Carvers' child. This new incandescent light makes his evening's reading unwaveringly easy, if he remembers to wipe his spectacles. He turns to the blossoming story of Abraham's dumbstruck luck, of Isaac's pure trust in his father's wisdom. Seven hundred dollars for all of her future. He shakes his head.

Long after the sun falls into the sea and twilight slips off the horizon like a velvet sheet and the air gets soaked in blackness; long after clouds hover above like boulders and stars crawl up and stud the sky; long after bodies tangle, dance, and falter and fatigue blows in and bends them and sleep unloads its dreams and kneads them and sleepers dive into the rivers inside them, a girl unlatches a window, walks shoeless into a forest, her dark hair a flag rippling in darkness. She walks into woods, her feet light-stepping through puddles, over hard packed dirt, through grassy hills, over sticks and pebbles over sand soaked in day, stones sun-sizzled over lakes and frigid streams through dim cobbled streets darkened squares and dusty pastures. She runs from nothing, runs to nothing, beyond pain, beyond graveyards and clearings. In the dark the eyes of startled creatures gleam like a herd of candles. They scatter and give night its meaning. What echo of a bell lulled her what spirit, what scent of a word whose storm wrote her what banks fell to drown her which blood star which thread of water which trickle of light whose heart being launched whose floating soul seduced her what promise did it make her whose memory burned her whose prayer did she run to answer whose help, what sorrow clot what pain dammed inside her what wall must she rebuild now whose treasure beckons her who spread ivy like a veil to blind her? Daybreak lies chained to a blue wall from which the stars drop and lose all meaning. She runs past villages that lost their names roads that lost their destinations seas that lost their compasses and sailors rivers that lost their marshlands and travelers houses that lost their sleepers and criers trees that lost their songs and shadows gardens that lost their violets and benches valleys that lost their worms and farmers mountains that lost their prophets and marauders temples that lost their sinners and spires lightning that lost its silver and wires chimeras that lost their bridges minotaurs that lost their fountains. Crescent moons hover above her, ancient white feathers, birdless, wingless lost to their own meaning. Music rises out of her vision. It stands, a wall covered with silver mosses. A clarinet sounds a wounded mare, violins women who lost their children. Flutes blow their hot dry breezes. Drums chuckle the earth’s ceaseless laughter. Pianos are mumbling sorcerers calling spirits and powers. Cellos chew on the sounds of thunder. Dulcimers skip about on crutches. Dance floors flash their knives daring their dancers. Words mill about the streets like orphans. Then a lute begins groaning and dawn loses its meaning. Night girl, night girl your book is full now. You have drawn all the pictures. You have seen many weepers. Stars held your sky in place and moons floated on your lakes and washed them. When a bird sings when dewed branches tilt sunlight into eyes when curtains are soaked with light when mirrors drown in shadows, take your day to the shore, my child. Put out the words that fired your waking, scatter them on the sand like seeds, then with your feet gently tap them, and let the bright waves receive your meaning.

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich. It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is, is hungry for food, And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one. The forest begins to gather its silences in. The meadow regroups and hunkers down for its cleft feet. Something is wringing the rag of sunlight inexorably out and hanging. Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads. Something is licking the shadows up, And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in. Something is inching its way into our hearts, scratching its blue nails against the wall there. Should we let it in? Should we greet it as it deserves, Hands on our ears, mouths open? Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat? Should we turn on the radio, should we clap our hands and dance The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance? I think we should, love, I think we should.

—Seoul, Korea 1971 Father gave her a little extra. How could she not fall for him? He was handsome but still a boy. In the depot where soldiers took such women, his skinny body clung too close to hers and his narrow ass still belonged to his mother. The other men knew the routine and how much to pay. She loathed their accent and American swagger. The sweat would barely cool and dry before another shook the cot and bucked his hips out of rhythm—in some other time zone. However, he began to offer other things besides money. He brought sweets from the base and the minute he touched his pocket the face she reserved for his English crumbled like sweet toffee. Because he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, no time was spent on uneasiness. Chocolate, caramel and peanuts spoke best, secured his place. He hooked his arms through hers as if they could stroll the lane like an ordinary couple: the unassuming black and the Korean whore in the middle of the Vietnam War.

I stood in a longhouse with a woman who may or may not be Mohawk. Some shift their opinions about her like meteorologists, as if her blood were a storm system tracked in its comings and goings. But the father of her two sons was, without question, Seneca. We knew that, in Haudenosaunee country, a father is to some degree irrelevant, that her own shifting identity would impact her sons’ lives like a gene vulnerable to betrayal, causing certain, terminal conditions. She waited on an elder she called Steam (warning I was not to call the elder woman by that name). Steam (not Steam) would observe the boys, understand their natures, give them their Creator names defining their lives during the next ceremony. I confessed my namelessness, confessed my longhouse- and fluency- deficient community, and confessed that my clan mother, three hours away, did not know me well enough to give me a name, confessed my community followed a more casual ceremony. You find your name after a social misstep, a dubious facial feature, a birth defect. Names offer the name-givers comfort, that your challenge is harder than theirs, no matter the truth. Our names are a convoluted toughening of our skins. My name is not like Steam (no one is forbidden to use it). No one calls me Batman because of my status, my utility belt, my impressive batpole, my agility, my muscles, my profile in spandex, my virtues, but because I wore the cape to an older age than I should have, and could continue to wear it now, as that shit is not going away any time soon. Even kids who only know Christian Bale or Michael Keaton, lurking in latex and leather hood, still think Batman is my name. And this is why I have no memory for when or how you became the Bumblebee, what it means, beyond the literal. You soar in gardens, spend days ensuring growth, and if metaphors are at work here, this one seems true enough to keep you in amber wings, fuzzy yellow rings, black lacquer torso, and sensitive antennae. What metaphor suits the night I left on the Amtrak for Chicago, past 1:00 a.m., while you stood on the platform, watching those cars pull out, the night I wanted to leap from the train, stay? I cannot invent new names for the ways we slow, struggle, attempt to maintain the illusion of futures without measure, defy actuary numbers and because I have gone closer to the light than you have, the story is easier to craft and finesse than it should be. Pollination trails are smaller than those I’m forced to fly in, and lying in Little Rock, Santa Fe, Manhattan, Minneapolis, Seattle, hotel rooms, the ellipse of your name trail winds me home, waiting, dusted in pollen and history.

When Claude says blessed is he who has seen and believes, you know he is about to tell the one about bees. His father told him which kind of sting was worst, but you have to see some things for yourself, and when you ask how on earth do you catch a bee to see anything, he tells how you hunker down next to a sweet potato blossom and watch until one lands on the ruffled cuff and then ambles down into the sweeter sleeve. You lean over and pinch the blossom shut, and there you have it, ready to sting yourself so you can decide on your own, and he wants for you not to doubt this: even more blessed, you will be, you have heard — and not seen.

The rat traps emptied, the grain troughs filled. The distance between sheep shed and my own ice-melt dripping on the mat equals the diameter of moonlight squared on his face as he looks up and finds me again. Says he’s sure I’d been swallowed by the elements, says he’d been about to come looking. I step into the warm. Two baas from out back where I’d worked. Two tufts of wool he lifts from my hair. In just such a manner are sleek blue words slyly acquired by a wispy whiter-than-snow page. He’s seen it happen. Seen a tear of mine, then two, well up and slip loose as the little boat of orgasm veers into the vortex.

If not being (something) is the same as being, then I will live forever. • Round shadow inside the sunflower’s corona. • If I lived forever would the present’s noose be looser? • Moon shadow made of angry bees, confined. Come in.