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I am on the bus to Boston, almost alone.
Some girls my age are chatting two seats up;
the few others are quiet. Vermont
planes into hills here, the moon is full
and the still-bare trees are black, pitch,
and flat, they are thin as daggers tonight.
My reflection is one bright page,
lit arms and lap, shadows where I wish
I could see eyes. I am thinking six things:
1. Jay-Z rhymes in my headphones: the pressure of sweat,
where we dance. His women are fine, are not there,
are his, he sings of sex then leaving,
but what rhythm like lightnings,
like it feels like being carried,
it feels like we are dancing even with those we can’t see.
2. I’ve been reading Hopkins, underneath the music.
New rhythm, I feel myself called into this night, this ink,
I imagine the bus full,
the way it was driving up. Is this different
than imagining the dark riders here, real across aisle’s distance,
empty seats? The Asian man to my left waited with me
at the station; we stood alone by the driverless bus.
He kept pointing, asking me, “bus ticket?”
He showed me his creased pass.
I brought out my own, and he pointed at it, “bus ticket?”
Yes, yes this is a ticket, yes this is the bus,
and he asked me, “bus ticket?” What on earth could he mean?
3. Last night I couldn’t sleep, I felt it twice:
God or something awful moving through me, rigid, jaw snapping,
I remember forcing it shut.
I remember the weight of breath, buzzing skin, remember thinking
I was strong, stronger than what
moved through me, was not right, was too much:
so I gave up, I let it through me,
and it worked. It left. Then later it happened again.
4. Liquor by the fire that moonrise, waking all the
night:
Long past, but also Vermont:
we stepped outside at dawn, butter yellow,
purple, dark leaves of birch. We were naked.
Would have smelled like sex if warm.
But instead it was mist, twigs hurt our feet in the moss.
How sweet, that honey climb of light!
How I wish I could feel how she felt,
or that I had something to say to say to her.
How I pray to have something to say.
5. The fear last night is over. I am sitting up in bed.
In the mirror is a circle of mattress, body,
beside me the sheets bunched like another asleep.
In this scene my head is a stained glass flower and bee;
curled small, dull, milky, a body half swallowed by bloom.
My great uncle made this in the last years of his life.
He was at D-Day, he waded from those boats.
Dark breakers, I can’t ask him what happened:
I wouldn’t have fought in that war. What distance—
Pearl Harbor, French beach;
the bombers over Auschwitz, their targets miles away—
right triangles—God—I’m not saying there aren’t heroes,
he was trying to help end it, to go home.
And here I am, my religion giving up:
all the good Quakers are dying, who inspired,
who rebuilt bombed out Europe, I know one
who laid his arm out for a military needle:
they made him sick, tried to cure him.
He volunteered; everyone wanted to heal.
6. There is room in the mind for one more.
What missing. Seventh, I am sick. Come back.
Bridges, lanterns, birches, extinguished city lights.
You are passing, moon, missing. God rekindle.
I am calling into this night, it is quiet. Another
asleep in a poem.