Miles Waggener – Ⅲ
Sun Corridor
Soot falls onto the foothills,
onto the nimbus of new cities in the haze,
their worn-toothed horizon
of grabens and rooftops beleaguered with
little past, and their present
little more than
a thief’s hour, which has caught
me dozing by the unblemished murk
of the reservoir,
where stepping from shadows
is my dead father
muttering into a jacklight’s wick
that will not light,
his shirt and furrowed brow
a brambly thatch that waters
assembled seasons ago, his body
giving way as
country music fades to talk radio
from his pickup
–my pickup
parked by the water’s edge.
The way here, the once uncrowned
and headlit turns
taken late at night through
foothills, is a wide and straight
grid of outskirts
that drops the eye down what’s left of
a river against the dam.
My hands pull the weighted line
and gizzard bait from
the surface, and the radio’s
panel of experts tells me what the next offensive
means. The tugging
fish, barbed and
jaundiced channel cat, has no use
for daylight, as with
rumor or an all but
opaque stone’s glow, a dream of
dwindling afternoon and heat
from the bottom
of deep water.
When will its dragon face surfacing
at the end of the line not
surprise me? The groggy dead
are not lifting heavy lids to join us,
and the future is an easier
page to read, the recto
beyond the spine, the far bank exposed
against the current, and beyond that
the third bank, the third
page of the open
ledger, which for once
is clear—my finger pressing
it flat— the water, whose
shore the page becomes
above dry weeds, just out of
a lost season’s reach.
Lambent and stubborn before
dusk’s metal finally lathes and draws
the desert together,
flattened into what draws me
into the one dimension
proffered, the sun sets
and my eyes cannot adjust and
shut until awoken
to follow a voice into a tuft
of weedy stalks—keep your eye on that hollow
tree at the far bank—
where now are model homes,
whose timed florescence
shines on kitchen counters, living
rooms’ easy chairs on cue,
and through the window, the second ghost
tonight is me, climbing the stairs
to a door where my mother, too
weak to walk, must be carried.
Powerlines scaffold the floodlit ether
in every picture window framing us.
She is lighter than I dreamed, than air, than
anything I have ever held in
my arms, and it’s hard not to
keep lifting her and not rise together
through no one’s
furnished rooms
above the unlivable rises
and look down upon the glistening
holes, the artificial lakes,
their shallows’
burnished surfaces so still
even water is waiting for the word.
Umbra of no one listening,
light of no one in the kitchen.
You will never die,
model homes tell us, halo,
unguent, promise, balm,
supernal-supernatant, no
one ever dies—
festooned by flags: WELCOME
HOME—follow me boy
there’s something you need
to see.
Waterline low in late summer,
the broadcast of experts grows
convincing in the glow,
their lips pressed against our ears,
at eleven years old,
at fifty, their worries are
well-founded, their warnings
bid the eye to wander into cat-claw
acacia, into the reeds,
into the pungent corner spilling dusk
and the flutter of insects,
and who can remember which
conflict they speak of, but
the war is closer, the night air
pressed upon our eyes, the swelling
borders, the experts worry.
Our boarders.
Tall enough to make us wonder what
might live inside their clasping
bases, horned stalks and
chambers, the plexus of
camphorweed pushes through
clay flats along the shores
of the reservoir, a bowl for
what was planned, then built, filled
then spent—boy, shine it there—
to be this torn throat,
nightfall—stop shaking, see
its eyes there in the reeds?
No? Look hard it’s
there.
Seed-heads, barbed,
held windless by sharp in-
folding, as optic cups
form farthest from light
in the earliest stages of the eye,
ovarian, never dormant to
what takes its time stirring, to
false resemblances we can no longer
court—there, I see it
and for which we are
forever marked—hold it there
tumult triggered into breath,
startled lift, the no-matter-
how-much anticipated owl
breaking through stalks, whose
wings draw out, fledgling, umbra
of no one, light of
no one, whose wing draws us in.
Soot falls onto the foothills,
onto the nimbus of new cities in the haze,
their worn-toothed horizon
of grabens and rooftops beleaguered with
little past, and their present
little more than
a thief’s hour, which has caught
me dozing by the unblemished murk
of the reservoir,
where stepping from shadows
is my dead father
muttering into a jacklight’s wick
that will not light,
his shirt and furrowed brow
a brambly thatch that waters
assembled seasons ago, his body
giving way as
country music fades to talk radio
from his pickup
–my pickup
parked by the water’s edge.
The way here, the once uncrowned
and headlit turns
taken late at night through
foothills, is a wide and straight
grid of outskirts
that drops the eye down what’s left of
a river against the dam.
My hands pull the weighted line
and gizzard bait from
the surface, and the radio’s
panel of experts tells me what the next offensive
means. The tugging
fish, barbed and
jaundiced channel cat, has no use
for daylight, as with
rumor or an all but
opaque stone’s glow, a dream of
dwindling afternoon and heat
from the bottom
of deep water.
When will its dragon face surfacing
at the end of the line not
surprise me? The groggy dead
are not lifting heavy lids to join us,
and the future is an easier
page to read, the recto
beyond the spine, the far bank exposed
against the current, and beyond that
the third bank, the third
page of the open
ledger, which for once
is clear—my finger pressing
it flat— the water, whose
shore the page becomes
above dry weeds, just out of
a lost season’s reach.
Lambent and stubborn before
dusk’s metal finally lathes and draws
the desert together,
flattened into what draws me
into the one dimension
proffered, the sun sets
and my eyes cannot adjust and
shut until awoken
to follow a voice into a tuft
of weedy stalks—keep your eye on that hollow
tree at the far bank—
where now are model homes,
whose timed florescence
shines on kitchen counters, living
rooms’ easy chairs on cue,
and through the window, the second ghost
tonight is me, climbing the stairs
to a door where my mother, too
weak to walk, must be carried.
Powerlines scaffold the floodlit ether
in every picture window framing us.
She is lighter than I dreamed, than air, than
anything I have ever held in
my arms, and it’s hard not to
keep lifting her and not rise together
through no one’s
furnished rooms
above the unlivable rises
and look down upon the glistening
holes, the artificial lakes,
their shallows’
burnished surfaces so still
even water is waiting for the word.
Umbra of no one listening,
light of no one in the kitchen.
You will never die,
model homes tell us, halo,
unguent, promise, balm,
supernal-supernatant, no
one ever dies—
festooned by flags: WELCOME
HOME—follow me boy
there’s something you need
to see.
Waterline low in late summer,
the broadcast of experts grows
convincing in the glow,
their lips pressed against our ears,
at eleven years old,
at fifty, their worries are
well-founded, their warnings
bid the eye to wander into cat-claw
acacia, into the reeds,
into the pungent corner spilling dusk
and the flutter of insects,
and who can remember which
conflict they speak of, but
the war is closer, the night air
pressed upon our eyes, the swelling
borders, the experts worry.
Our boarders.
Tall enough to make us wonder what
might live inside their clasping
bases, horned stalks and
chambers, the plexus of
camphorweed pushes through
clay flats along the shores
of the reservoir, a bowl for
what was planned, then built, filled
then spent—boy, shine it there—
to be this torn throat,
nightfall—stop shaking, see
its eyes there in the reeds?
No? Look hard it’s
there.
Seed-heads, barbed,
held windless by sharp in-
folding, as optic cups
form farthest from light
in the earliest stages of the eye,
ovarian, never dormant to
what takes its time stirring, to
false resemblances we can no longer
court—there, I see it
and for which we are
forever marked—hold it there
tumult triggered into breath,
startled lift, the no-matter-
how-much anticipated owl
breaking through stalks, whose
wings draw out, fledgling, umbra
of no one, light of
no one, whose wing draws us in.
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