To plant under doors the wild branches of the telephone                                                                                            To fix, date, number the place where I am

                                                               —Pierre Martory

 

Open mouth for milk, for sound, for singing, for wanting, for knowing. Put your mouth on it to know it. To trust the world like that, going at it all open. Reaching until you tip over. Surprised to have the floor rushing up to meet you like that. A little blood on your lip, in your coffee, leaving its tang at the back of your throat. Pictures sliding down the walls. But it's morning.

 

Making your way through the world in words, is it something you can do, is it something you should do? Does someone need it besides you? There are geese in the background of my voice memos. I say "nothing much," but there's not room in that for the texture. Squirrels rattle the leaves. Have I always been plotless? Plot me then, I am willing. On the deepest curve of the park.

 

Possible titles like Why Did I Get So Sad About the Pictures and Everything You Want & Nothing You Need and Accidentally but Nonetheless Hurting You. Put them aside. Remember a chiming song to greet the day. A dusting of snow, true wonder. Before we unfolded so sidelong, trailing incomplete thoughts in circles. Shake it off your shoulders, the lingering snow. Remember the song in your palm, where it glows.

 

The ladies gossip the whole time they are walking their dogs. Twice the workout—so much air. Remember being fifteen, when everything was about music? When I was pregnant, I got to feel that way about songs again, they crowded my heart like that. Concatenation of cravings. Now my mind quiets enough I can hear the quiet, and the birds inside the quiet.

 

What will I do about that poem. I don't hold my life so lightly in my hands now as then. Or more like: I won't die if I fight barehanded.

 

Time is my captain, my frenemy. Barack Obama has a cabinet of frenemies. Politics has a built-in china cabinet chock full of paranoia. At the sound of the planes, I open the door a little—I know it is just the AFB two towns over, taking heavy business to Iraq. But I wonder each time if now it is our turn to be on the receiving end.

 

Needles of the pines looking sharp but bending long and soft. Pinelashes. K said the mark had life in it but too small, it was strangled by the grid. She noticed and began again—looped her arm wide. First you have to notice.