Arriving Back in California
Defined by sunlight, the waxy leaves of the camellias
waver in the wind. I know how time moves
only in one direction. But today is an exception.
Flying back across the dateline, I’ve arrived before I departed.
So I can relive the day that started with the pointillism of rain
in Shanghai, the taxi stalling on the expressway.
I can remember the future, my shoulder jammed
against the seatback and my legs folded
under the seat in front of me, a video of sleep
running behind my eyelids. Clouds brushing
the wingtips. It comes to a still point,
this always rushing forward. The lunge of landing,
filing into the jetway, entering a haze of fluorescence
where everything turns white, my ears still stopped up.
Furiously chewing the air in my mouth. Something
I kept so long to myself I’ve swallowed it.
But the day repeats itself. Is this what stuns us?
Or is it being here, the bleached hills a magazine’s idea
of paradise. Threads of poppies flashing in the grass,
each adding itself to the vernacular of May.
The landscape so unbearably familiar. Shadows sharp
under a China-blue sky. The hum of bees beneath the trellis
in the rising heat indifferent as the desolation
stirred by a fan’s slowly moving blades.
— Alan Soldofsky from In the Buddha Factory (Truman State University Press, 2013)
The Hard Season
Rain-glutted, the stream
splays to the base
of the retaining wall.
Good. Now you have reason
to pray. Of all the birds
watching from winter-stripped
trees, vultures
are kindest, killing
nothing. This is a true
measure of things.
Don’t hold back now, have
chocolate, throw extra
kindling on, even though
skies urge cover & hoarding.
When mice pitter in
for crumbs, compliment
their small feet and fitting
ways. When your mouth
houses a curse, swallow,
think how you once
had no words at all
yet managed
your hungers. Everything
that comes, passes.
Everything that passes
rakes its fingers through
and passes.
— Kathleen Lynch
