Secrets of the Universe (by David McFadden)

Secrets of the Universe (by David McFadden)

1You’re waiting for a bus at Ward and Baker
2and a woman comes up to you
3and asks for a dance.
4into what we see: dragons in leaf, draped scales
5alongside the river of harried, spring-stirred silt.
6The magpie recites Scriabin in early morning as a mating song,
7and home is just a place you started out,
8the only place you still know how to think from,
9so that that place is mated to this
10by necessity as well as choice,
11though now you have to start again from here,
12and it isn’t home. Venus rising in the early evening
13beside the Travelodge, as wayward and causal as
14will, or beauty, or as once we willed beauty to be--
15though this was in retrospect, and only practice
16for some other life. Do you still love poetry?
17Below the willows, in the dry winter reeds,
18banjo frogs begin a disconcerting raga,
19one note each, the rustling blades grow green--
20and it tires, the lichen-spotted tin canteen
21suspended in the river weeds like a turtle
22up for air: such a curious tiredness deflected there.
23And what would you give up, in the beautiful
24false logic of math, or Greek? In the sum
25of the possible, long ago in the summer grass …
26Here beside the river I close my eyes: there
27the little girls lean continuously across a rusted
28sign that says Don’t Feed the Swans
29and feed the swans. The swans are reasoning beings;
30the young cygnets, hatched from pins
31and old mattress stuffing, bright-eyed, learning
32what has bread, and what doesn’t. What doesn’t
33have to do with this is all the rest:
34one more chance to blow out the candles and wish
35for things we wished for
36that wouldn’t happen unless we closed our eyes.
37Not the gingko or the level gaze, or the speaking voice
38beneath the pillow, or the waking in the morning
39with a name. But cloud – or grief, when grief
40is loneliness and you close your eyes. Speech,
41when speech is loneliness, and you close your eyes.