Via Negativa

I try deciphering the sky's patterns:
what blue means against grey, how much

white gathers over rust-colored hills 
at which time of day, before night

plunges everything into uniform 
darkness. Homebound during power 

outages as storms lashed at windows, 
to pass the hours sometimes we'd spin

cerveza bottles on the table when we 
played cards, told fortunes, or asked 

questions answerable by yes or no.  
Who its amber neck pointed to 

as it came to rest was the lucky or 
unlucky one. But the future is never 

a transparent sheet— more like a plain 
brown manila envelope with a seal 

that someone shoves under the door 
with a warning not to open it until 

it's time. But when is the right time, 
and what will you find should you open

the flap and bring its contents nearer 
the blue flame to read what it says?
   

Today it's Thursday. Wasn't it just 
Monday? Everything's moving too fast.

Every day seems to bring some new
betrayal of what we want to keep.

Buses and trains leave the station,
but at least they return. The neighbor's

dog barks when the postman brings the mail, 
yet I haven't heard from you. It's been

nearly five years. Still, I collect 
flickers of things— the shadow of leaves

on the trellis. Small, hard buds 
emerging from nodes on the fig tree, 

though the rest of it is still 
shrouded in winter sleep. Evening 

is a well into which the dark pours, 
so we can pull it up just one small pail 

at a time. But time, time is the windlass 
to which all things— and we— are lashed.

My ancestors knew how to listen
for sound before it even became
sound— for the tremor in the forest

canopy before seeds helicoptered
to the ground, for the rip in the air
through which a faraway storm first

tested its breath. It's a listening
that begins in the gut, that room
in the body where they knew

interrogations take place under 
a naked light bulb swinging 
from a scaffold of bone. 

They learned to trust the call
of shrikes in the field, slugs
shriveling into themselves 

at the first whiff of toxins in
the air. When I pause mid-breath
without even knowing why, it must be

their presence alerting me to the smell 
of smoke, from having lived through past 
fires. Obeying intuition, the body inks 

a more visible map through minefields, 
as if to signal that danger itself should 
step aside from knowing we've seen it. 

When they bought a record player console
with sliding cabinet doors, my parents
treated it like their most prized 
possession— something to throw
a flannel cover on when not in use, 
in case the chill mountain air might warp 
its wooden panels. The Impossible Dream
from The Man of La Mancha was my father's 
favorite recording. He had the Jack Jones
and Johnny Mathis, and later the Frank 
Sinatra version from the album That's Life. 
He liked to sit in an armchair after dinner, 
eyes closed as he listened to the singer's 
voice pull up and up toward the unreachable, 
as the music swelled like a wave on a dark
night pinpricked with stars inside
his chest. He told me Cervantes' story 
of a man who charged at windmills, believing 
they were giants; of how he vowed to fight
for the helpless and infirm. This 
was a noble quest, he stressed— to 
bear the unbearable sorrow and right
the unrightable wrong. I couldn't fathom
then what sorrows he could have been carrying, 
what wrongs he might have needed to address.
He's been gone more than thirty years, 
yet when the world feels tilted, I remember
how sure his voice sounded, as if 
the dream— any dream— was within reach.

My friend shows me his arthritic 
fingers, and I try to click my trigger 
thumb. But he can't hear the noise 
it makes because of the vacuum cleaner 
sounds made by the tinnitus in his ear. 
I suppose we're getting to the age 
when we can start to tell the difference 
between a dull hurt and a door that's 
permanently closed, between the new-new 
shine of chrome encasing a cheap plastic
interior and the unpolished gleam of a body
whose limp is louder than its mind. The world
loves words like résumé, strategic, and 
effective positioning. It rewards the one
who hasn't even earned their name,
the one who hasn't stood at the edge of
an ultimatum or answered a call at midnight
which rearranged the entire plot of a life.
I sometimes take my graduation ring 
out of its box and wear it, just to remind
myself I know some shit. I've learned
that forgive doesn't mean forget, but also
how shame burns hot at first but you can
learn to outlast it. Becoming is long, hard 
work, and I know I only have these ordinary 
days to build from, to cobble some light 
even from failure for the rest of the path.