Some white book sonnets
Your share in the possible
is as deep as your willing-
ness to come to a standstill
and forgive your belongings
for following you this far,
unable to judge or explain,
forgive them, forgive them, so far
they’ve been functions of how far you’ve came,
and forgive your attention,
and forgive now your thought:
The spirits of both have we let them
follow us this far with the spirits we’ve brought?
--
The house will be messy,
our problems will be small
but not at all
particular, or penetrable.
The house will be made of rooms,
now and into the century
regardless of how long it stands
and how stubborn our problems
or whatever we call them:
eternal or ephem-
eral. Our house it looms
heavy over fate and destiny does it demand.
--
I call you, imperfect extension of me,
to come do what I do, hurt again who I’ve hurt,
lay waste to love’s time and blaspheme love’s cert-
ainty, I invite you to see what I see:
The detours were tended, kept flooded and long,
then pierced by a simpler method.
In order, at first, to upset this
I set up my roots in its mud, by its fog,
so your summons, then, is no opportune bluff:
From at this cool surface where you once resided,
sparkling with mistakes but searching for kindness,
I call you when I need you, which is always, which is enough.
--
To come from life: ‘intrigue’
interlocked with ‘boredom,’
—or when overflows your portion—
but always do their boundaries take
on stranger forms than what you’re used to,
possibly spirals or starlike maps
or the obvious—one succeeding the next.
The attention of love periodically chooses you
to lighten the world, with strength and in stasis
which I’m only reminded can—and does—persist
when my cup is sank shallow and list-
ing, when a traveling wave is standing in places.
--
Ceasing motion for half a second,
leaving an orbit but unready
for the dusty, broad outer plains
of space that constitute a place.
Ceasing watch for months, then years,
means taking out the central gear
to replace it with a heart of yearning
whose every beat enjoins the system to a turn.
“Ceasing to change means forfeiting life”
say the tired, the dreamers who let escape
love, who imagine change as a knife
set to cut them out somehow, assume at once two shapes.
--
Our dreams can be embarrassed
of dependency on sleep,
how, at night, to grow, they need
to be passed over in a thankless
sweep of our elbow
or fit of our cheekbone
and suddenly become
as light as a drop, an anodyne ‘hello.’
Our sleep, however, is stable:
brings full to bearing its person
and whether or not it is certain,
to hold and to comfort the dream it is able.