Galileo, Mercy
When my hands are knotted arbutus
and my spine wind swept from this
long life spent on the edge of island cliffs
dig up the little graves I will have planted
at my feet, and read me the regrets I treasured
there. I will be blind and white. No red skin left.
You will have to place the parcels
in my crooks, up to my mouth
until I recognize the cologne. I won’t know
the names, granddaughter. Making love
in a canoe, Ontario bright as a sand dollar.
Wild horses, red electric guitar. We stirred
sugar in our cheap red wine. Two of us on
his bicycle, Montreal wet and steep and the
breaks snapping like April ice.
But I will remember the smell of their hands.
Birch, arbutus; our beauty is palimpsest.
Fugitive. We bend slowly and slowly forget.
Fever like drunks who bury empty bottles
at their feet. It is a mason’s church down there,
daughter. Sand, green glass and want. Roots
graceless as kelp and a collection of gestures.
The constant graze of palm over
widow’s peak. Laughter held like a thimble
at crest of his tongue, one tooth missing.
Hand like a starfish on the back of my heart.
Read to me like a harpy calling
the glass orchestra of these bottles
to my branches.
When I have forgotten, sister.
Call me Memphis oak
and string this evidence to my
twigs. How light refracts.
How I chime hollow, the gulls stirring.
It is Galileo.
It is Mercy.
The choir of each loss singing.
