Read an Excerpt
TIN BUCKET
The world is not simple.
Anyone will tell you.
But have you ever washed a person’s hair
over a tin bucket,
gently twisting the rope of it
to wring the water out?
At the end of everything,
dancers just use air as their material.
A voice keeps singing even
without an instrument.
You make your fingers into a comb.
ORPHEUS ASCENDING
A crack appeared.
Beyond it, snow was pouring through the spring sunlight.
A bright, dry snow
like particles of unearthly metal.
I emerged.
And the earth closed after me, keeping her inside,
the way an instrument case
will seal shut around its black music.
Or was I the instrument?
Or was it not music, but pain
singing from the depths?
()
Aboveground
the peonies were smothered
in snow, bent beyond their weight with ice-white.
The bare-root apple couldn’t hold
and snapped. I kept looking back
to where the bed stood stripped
like a table.
()
Then came the smack of snowmelt
off the eaves, the house weeping and shining
under fresh sun.
Every water bucket brimmed.
The garden—rinsed, dismantled—
breathed out a new green.
And with all the windows open, through the space
came the sound of—what were they?
Meadowlarks?
Days elapsed, years.
()
I still live
in our little house by the orchard, sited so the setting sun
illuminates the garden,
the bubbling fountain
like a fountain of fire in the final moments
before night draws across its lid.
Then, absolute quiet.
Even the wind resting in the trees.
We on earth, how can we know
how long the silences will be
between the movements?
I wait for song
to grow in me across the dark interval.
