Poem The earth said remember me. The earth said don't let go, said it one day when I was accidentally listening, I heard it, I felt it like temperature, All said in a whisper--build to- morrow, make right be- fall, you are not free, other scenes are not taking place, time is not filled, time is not late, there is a thing the emptiness needs as you need emptiness, it shrinks from light again & again, although all things are present, a fact a day a bird that warps the arithmetic of per- fection with its arc, passing again & again in the evening air, in the pre- vailing wind, making no mistake--yr in- difference is yr principal beauty the mind says all the time--I hear it--I hear it every- where. The earth said remember me. I am the earth it said. Re- member me. Tree Today on two legs stood and reached to the right spot as I saw it choosing among the twisting branches and multifaceted changing shades, and greens, and shades of greens, lobed, and lashing sun, the fig that seemed to me the perfect one, the ready one, it is permitted, it is possible, it is actual. The VR glasses are not needed yet, not for now, no, not for this while longer. And it is warm in my cupped palm. And my fingers close round but not too fast. Somewhere wind like a hammerstroke slows down and lengthens endlessly. Closer-in the bird whose coin-toss on a metal tray never stills to one face. Something is preparing to begin again. It is not us. Shhh say the spreading sails of cicadas as the winch of noon takes hold and we are wrapped in day and hoisted up, all the ribs of time showing through in the growing in the lengthening harness of sound--some gnats nearby, a fly where the white milk-drop of the torn stem starts. Dust on the eglantine skin, white powder in the confetti of light all up the branches, truth, sweetness of blood-scent and hauled-in light, withers of the wild carnival of tree shaking once as the fruit is torn from its dream. Remain I think backing away from the trembling into full corrosive sun. Momentary blindness follows. Correction. There are only moments. They hurt. Correction. Must I put down here that this is long ago. That the sky has been invisible for years now. That the ash of our fires has covered the sun. That the fruit is stunted yellow mold when it appears at all and we have no produce to speak of. No longer exists. All my attention is free for you to use. I can cast farther and farther out, before the change, a page turned, we have gone into another story, history floundered or one day the birds dis- appeared. The imagination tried to go here when we asked it to, from where I hold the fruit in my right hand, but it would not go. Where is it now. Where is this here where you and I look up trying to make sense of the normal, turn it to life, more life, disinterred from desire, heaved up onto the dry shore awaiting the others who could not join us in the end. For good. I want to walk to the left around this tree I have made again. I want to sit under it full of secrecy insight immensity vigor bursting complexity swarm. Oh great forwards and backwards. I never felt my face change into my new face. Where am I facing now. Is the question of good still stinging the open before us with its muggy destination pitched into nothingness? Something expands in you where it wrenches-up its bright policing into view--is this good, is this the good-- under the celebrating crowd, inside the silences it forces hard away all round itself, where chanting thins, where we win the war again, made thin by bravery and belief, here's a polaroid if you want, here's a souvenir, here now for you to watch unfold, up close, the fruit is opening, the ribs will widen now, it is all seed, reddish foam, history. The Sure Place Outside the window this morning, I reach to it, the newest extension, here at second story, of the wisteria vine-- the tenth summer's growth, the August 13th portion of, the rootball planted when still the mother of a new child, one almost tired-looking very silent out-arriving tendril--what kind of energy is this in my hands, this tress of glucose and watery scribbling--something which cannot reach conclusion, my open palm just under it, the outermost question being asked me by the world today-- it is weak it is exactly the right weakness-- we have other plans for your life says the world-- wind coming from below with the summery tick in it, where it rounds and tucks-up from fullness where it allows one to hear the rattling in the millions of now-drying seedpods hanging in the trees off the walls under the hedges, every leaf has other plans for you say the minutes also the seconds also the tiniest fractions of whatever atoms make this a hot breezeless day, in which what regards the soul is what it has given back (when the sky is torn)(when the seas are poured forth) the wisteria in my hand: who made it, who made it right, what does it know of the day of reckoning, is today its day-- I could pull it, my vine, down, I could rip it out--still no day of reckoning--the day it is said when no soul can help another--each is alone--the unseen will say do not hoard me-- do not--as I hold its tether in the morning-light slant-- as the horizon does not seem to hoard the unseen-- so also the ideas are not emptied, look I am holding one-- shall we say that this instant is the end of time where I raise my hand into the advancing morning where the dawn-cool lifts to let the stillness of midday be seen here underneath these low-flowing mists which all the long time are still and waiting for that one heat that will not change its face, even when the horsemen ride up and it is time, and the face of the heat stays, shimmers-stays, and the knives of the day turn blade-out in the long corridor of noon which comes looking for this tendril-- and I hold it tight to the stone as I bring the string round it not to crush the sucrose and glucose in it but still to hold it back that the as yet unformed blossoms that would channel up it might channel up it coming finally to spawn in long grapelike drooping which the bees next month--what is that--will come to inhabit, a slowness which is exactly the right slowness, and I tell you I can feel in it that one crisp thought which I must find a way to fix upon this wall, driving a nail in now, and then a length of string, around which to wrap this new growth, for it to cling to and surpass so that next week when I look again it will have woven round its few more times and grown hairy in its clinging and gotten to a new length which we will be called upon to tie back, new knot, new extension, to the next-on nail yet further up on what remains on what's left of this wall. The Hiddenness of the World The lovers disappear into the woods again. The war is on. The blizzard on, in its own way. Also many interpretations on their way--of fascism, of transcendence, of what you mean by perhaps when you look at me that way. A minute more and then a minute more you look. And then? And then--everything would have been different. But the lovers are in the woods again, the signifier is in the woods, the revolution of the ploughshare in, clod-crumble in, cloud- tumble, hope and its stumble in--everything would have been, could have been different--do you not think--and the war still on--and would you have gone--could you spare an arm, an eye, a foot is a thing one hopes to keep, one's stop and go, one's step, one's only way which could have been another way, but wasn't. Do I have to end in order to begin, I ask the light that lingers on the trees--between the trees--the lovers have disappeared into again. I cannot breathe. This verge is taking up all of my life--is it my time or space, I cannot tell--this being here but then not here, trying to suss out all the fundamental laws--like sniffing-in the day I think--the human laws, the commonalities we call our word-to-word thing, our love--what else shall I think--that emotions have no significance? life no validity? We're going to see a movie later on. There is a terrible thing inside of me. It must not grow. I can hear my own scared space apologizing now to every thing. Like a lightning bolt come when a blizzard was expected. It looks expensive in the sky. Breaks nothing but still whacks us like a stick, hissing you must forget organic life, your little dagger of right/ wrong, your leprosy of love, of hate, of all such local temporary wonders. The lovers are taking their time I think. The storm appears above the woods like a radio left on in an abandoned car. Are they apologizing now, again, to the earth, are they wishing they could stop and hide--let's be the lucky ones that don't go out again--are they standing terrified in their Jerusalem of knowing things, of things, a couple of lucky ducks, blood flowing normally though maybe a little fast, because of all the promises that must be made, so fast, my arm, my name, I swear I'll never tell, all the impending before the ambulance of the outside arrives to touch them when the last trees are surpassed and nothing but this clearing's left. The light is hammering down its thousand fists. From war it looks like blossoming. It's forcing the green fuse. It's synthesizing lapse. The huge wild oleanders sway. It all awaits this temporary race--run run--our race--the great fires seeping deep into this thinnest moment from the only now--why don't they wake us--no--we want to sleep--the lovers in the movie of the woods, I see them from my inner life, I see skin slip, light reach, face scar itself with time, hair burn, leaf throne itself, and nothing turn, brush, sweat--the fire, the now--it screams at us year after year--each day so sweet--almost a duplicate, unnerving us, celestial us, looking everywhere in day for the origins of, the hidden part of, the natural--wrong search--wrong fires--nothing will be done in time--no one wishes to become--preparedness is dull--such thirst for this delay, this looking away, this sanity--the lovers in the woods, really in the outside now--un- bounded delirium, abstraction, hidden real, dark realm--have no more access to the day.... But could it be more beautiful. The wind has dropped. Two cardinals play in the young oak. They slip and rise. In distance, bells. Wind then no wind. A previous life, a hummingbird, has found the agapanthus there. It always does. Its blossom always blossoms just in time. Either nothing is alone. Or everything. You are alone in the alone. To exit the human is to exit the singular, the plural, the collective, the dream. The woods have an entrance. From where I watch I do not think I'll see them exit who went in, here at the start, the only start, we are filtering them out, are leaving them in dark, in hiddenness, all excess, all sincerity. Don't touch. In the flamboyant interim, burn. Feel this outsideness here. Here on this page. Here in my head. You. You in me in this final time. My shadow. Haunted. Organic. Temporary. Excerpted from [to] the Last [Be] Human by Jorie Graham All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
