Jorie Graham: Ten poems

Elsewhere, from the air, something softens the scape-

which activity precedes, though doesn't necessarily require,

the carpet-bombing that often follows-And

the bands of our listening scan

the bands of static,

seeking a resting point, asymptotic, listening in he hiss

for the hoarse snagged points where meaning seemingly

accrues: three notes: three silences: intake

of breath: turnstile?: a glint in fog?: what the listener

will wait-into, hoping for a place to

stop ... Jacob waited and the angel didn't-

2.

Once off the interstate, we exhausted the tangible.

The plan seemed to dagger forward on its own, towards the horizon-line,

the future its mother-of-pearl cadaver, down there, where the map continues

onto the next blue page.... Our plan.

One must not pretend one knew nothing of it.

One must not pretend one didn't tenderly finger its heavenly style.

The skyline itself, bluing now towards evening,

the spidery picture of the plan we tongued-up-

unquenchable--where were you?--never-to-be-defined,

solo first-fruit performance for which the eye

is still intended.. What shall we move with

now that the eye must shut? What shall we sift with

now that the mind must blur? What shall we undress the veilings of dusk with,

what shall we harvest the nothingness with,

now that the hands must be tucked back in their pockets,

now that the bright shirt of the over-ripe heart

must be taken off and the skin of things restored,

the long-haul restored (where the quicknesses had reigned),

the carpenter arriving as if out of the skyways

with a measure in hand, a sad eye, a vague patience-

the tongue-tied carpenter ready to scribble and strengthen ...

Our plan ... To get the beauty of it hot.

The angel called out but Jacob, Jacob ...

3.

Down by the riverbed I found some geese asleep.

I could see the billboards, but they were across the water.

Maybe two hundred geese--now beginning to stir,

purring and cooing at my walking among them.

Groping their armless way, their underneaths greening.

A slow roiling. A hundred redundancies. Squirming as they swarm and sponge

over the short wet grass--bunchy--the river behind them

presenting lapidary

faithfulness--plink-

no common motion in their turbaned brooding,

foliage darkening to feathers above their vague iridescence ...

A mess of geese. Unperfectable. A mess

of conflicting notions. Something that doesn't have to be

imagined. An end-zone one can have pushed forward to,

here at the end of the path, what the whole freeway led to,

what the whole adventure led to, over three oceans,

galleys, slaves, log-books,

tiny calculations once it got dark enough to see,

what the whole madness led to--the curiosity--like a virus--here,

like a sign--thick but clear--here at the bottom of the sedge,

the city still glimmering over there in the distance,

but us here, for no reason, where the mass of geese are rousing,

necessity and circumstance quivering in each other's arms,

us in each other's arms, or, no, not really.

4.

The angel was on the telephone.

No, Jacob was on the telephone.

There was no doorway through which to pass.