CROSSING BORDERS
~~ one thought can produce millions of vibrations
(John Coltrane – 1926-1967)
it’s all about inclusions. geology gets it
and math, and the medical world, artists too
their gold strokes framing bone china
while in the kitchen a baker’s tines edge a pale pie crust
until, oven-blessed, it resembles that bronze disc
shimmering in a late autumn sky.
and a fawn glistening with afterbirth crosses over
to join this exquisite/terror-ridden/sanctifying world
as it wobbles uphill fresh from swimming
in its warm mother, and
Coltrane’s saxophone gets it:
jazzing vibrations as it woos the divine to earth
thedivine
thedivine
thedivine
divine as human loving
human the way a Pakistani girl
takes a bullet to erase all borders
hope
in memory of Sadako Sasaki (1943-55)
imagine you never saved the medicine wrappers,
news sheets, used hospital gift paper;
say no one ever told you the legend:
fold a thousand paper cranes to earn your wish
suppose, like an agnostic, you’d refused
to conjure every beak/each paper wing
like beads of a rosary, to bargain for
a life beyond your twelve years
suppose the cranes had saved you as you folded,
suppose your classmates hadn’t finished the balance
of your thousand birds, could we now read
the Children’s Memorial kóan in granite:
this is our cry this is our prayer peace in the world
some 60 years later your Peace Flame wavers
over a blood-soaked world, still
what is hope if not a young girl
diaphanous in a white cloud over Hiroshima
holding a gold crane poised for flight
PEACE IS
a baby’s new fingers curling
around air, catching
things we think invisible
and a mother holding her child
against waves crashing on shore,
steeling against ones still coming
peace is the aspen leaves:
shimmering gold coins
at the top of Kenosha Pass
it is waking each morning
grateful for not going blind
in the night
peace is learning to look
at each face, not a tribe,
to memorize each name
it is resisting the urge
to cut off a car gaining
as the lane disappears
peace lights candles not bodies
and refuses to make
anyone kneel and
peace is the eye focused
keen to stave off
the first sign of war
SISTER VINCENT’S LEXICON
In third grade Sister Vincent primed us
for the January feast days
her large white wimple swaying
as the chalk squeaked out big words
like epiphany saying as she wrote
it meant manifestation or revelation,
“Big help” I signaled Mae Thomas,
the Feast of the Circumcision came next
but she wrote nothing beside that.
By the time I’d traced the final “n” we’d moved
on to January 21st and Agnes Virgin-Martyr.
“What’s a martyr?” Margaret Holland asked.
“A saint killed for Jesus’ sake,” Sister said, but
Jackie Barnes’s hand shot up. “Why would
God wanna’ see someone killed for him? ”
“Why wouldn’ God say, ‘Put down that sword
an’ let Angus go,’ S’ter?” but Sallie Toomie
interrupted, “What’s a virgin?” then copied
with care Sister Vincent’s answer: “The holiest
kind of person.” I raised my hand but Sister
called on Dick Mulcahy, the smartest boy
who asked my question: “That other feast
you said before – sir-cum-sis-hum – what’s that?”
but Sister snatched up a pastel picture, St. Agnes
holding a lamb and said we’d no more time
for questions, that we should put our heads down
on our desks and pray ejaculations
to our very favorite saint.
LIKE THIS
Don’t try to explain the miracle, kiss me on the lips, like this, like this.
— Rumi
Not the way father kissed mother
on the cheek, not in the front of the house,
no, in the back, in the bedroom, basement, in
those dark places, those under the earth
places no one can see, kiss me
across mountains when we are apart, kiss me
under sly sheets after the trace of a late shower
kiss me the sweet, sweet kiss of the glad-we-are-married
on the lips. Once more. Once more. Kiss me
on the ear, not like the grackle or Canada jay
saying what’s on its mind, but like the hummingbird
laughing at gravity. Kiss me slow, not the way
aging bones explain marrow to each other
winter mornings. No. Slow. Like a late June
two-step. I know I know: time is
the only kiss that lasts, but
just now – tonight – make me
believe the miracle of lips
like this like this
METEORS
In honor of Malala Yousafzai
Did your eyes flash terror
when they hijacked your school bus,
one of the men snarling your name down the aisle,
scanning each innocent face before lighting on yours?
What images blazed just before the bullet
grazed your luminous brain, sweet Malala?
At the hospital did you have nightmares: Taliban
instead of those loved olive trees in the orchards
outside your father’s classroom, a thousand
points of grief webbing your mother’s face?
Or did you dream bright streaks shooting across
a black sky? Not disembodied particles of dust
but flesh and blood women, subversive sisters
from the past, their stories foreshadowing yours:
a 17th century girl so bent on learning, she camouflaged
her body under boys’ clothes to register for school;
eleven centuries back a German mystic
whose paintings and words depicted God as woman
and a Mexican nun who — reproached by the bishop
for her writings — replied with the classic
defense of a female’s right to study.
Why do we doubt the sky is filled with history?
At eleven, Malala, you blogged:
Why aren’t girls allowed to learn?
I want to be reading books. I want to be writing them.
Incandescent little rebel, you already are.
FOURTH OF JULY
Just exploring you say as you swerve
off the trail to Lake Charles both of us heady
with thin air. Later I follow to find you
stretched on the round flat rock your long body
tanned, itinerant legs spread wide on granite
catching the hot noon light
you are waving your own bright flag
like an unspent fourth of july sparkler
laughing, coaxing me closer to an olive poncho
cool and smooth we love, our sex weeping
at the grand spill of nature. Soon you nap
the nap of the guileless, hungry jays carping
over your sweet light snore. Mid-summer candles
of a conifer sprout, their purple-pink tips glowing
and at the tree base a small cluster of
blue flax satisfied with the day
already beginning to close.
hope ii
i have not given up on you
though somewhere children’s bones are
showing through once radiant skin
and a woman wails for her husband
a marionette twitching above their door
his sex stuffed in his mouth, the mouth
that once made her sing and
bodies are bombing other bodies and their own
yet i have not given up on you:
bougainvilleas still stretch for
the sun, and if we listen we can hear
the iris waiting its turn
just under the pasque flower
no, i have not given up, hope:
in the kitchen jasmine tea steeps
and shortbread waits on bone china
as outside the window a new fawn
speckled with afterbirth – wobbles
uphill with no apparent destination but
under the porch the eye of a red fox
scopes for prey somewhere nowhere
but nowhere is a long way to go
still the iris, hope, the iris
Rita Brady Kiefer 