Ralph Angel

The way she puts her fingers to his chest when she greets him. The way an old man quiets himself, or that another man waits, and waits a long time, before speaking. It’s in the gaze that steadies, a music he grows into—something about Mexico, I imagine, how he first learned about light there. It’s in the blank face of every child, a water that stands still amid the swirling current, water breaking apart as it leaves the cliff and falls forever through its own, magnificient window. The way a young woman holds out a cupped hand, and doves come to her. The way a man storms down the street as if to throw open every door. And the word she mouths to herself as she looks up from her book—for that word, as she repeats it, repeats it.

All dark morning long the clouds are rising slowly up beneath us, and we are fast asleep. The mountains unmove intensely. And so do we. Meadows look down. A city there looks up and stirs a little. Adrift the rolling tiled roofs of buildings, the deadly trains of grinding sand and morning— a spy unfolds his paper, the coffee’s served. A bride and groom stand shivering on a tarmac in the mist, and they are happy. Each one and all of us entangled, the room is moist with us, the house unfinished, windowless, and we are fast asleep. The brother of the groom can’t get close enough. He leans against the brightest ridge and ladder, the sucking sound of memory as heaven picks up speed and hurtles through his burning skin its frozen blankets to the sun.