Via Negativa

I hear her the first time before I turn
the corner, walking through the refrigerated 
section and shelves still stacked with butter 

blocks, cardboard boxes of eggs, seasonal 
peppermint- and mocha-flavored creamers.
Leave me alone, no, you leave me alone— 

the inflection of anger in her voice somehow 
incongruous with the almost languid way she 
pushes her cart and considers a bag of frozen 

peas. Leave me alone, she repeats into her phone 
as she makes the rounds for her grocery items. 
Other shoppers keep their distance and avoid 

eye contact. When did we not exist in 
a time of conflict that didn't trickle down 
into the minutiae of our lives? I go in solitude 

so as not to drink out of everybody's
cistern wrote Nietzsche, afraid the world
might rob him of his soul. What strikes me

is that she keeps the line open, doesn't 
cut off the connection, then put her phone
on silent. Not a big anger, perhaps—

Its audible tip, just enough to pierce the air 
toward a listening. Just enough so the curious 
soul leans a little way out of its bunker. 

Like a tent, like a tarpaulin, 
like the roof that held each 

thing in. Across my belly though
fainter now, brown marks 

that stretched my skin from 
inside, each time my womb grew 

to house a child. Let everything
happen to you, said Rilke— 

and I, a kind of vessel life
will fill and burst and fill

again, if it doesn't defeat
me. I thought it was my duty 

not to break this cycle. 
But really, not to break. 

Almost the longest night. 
Before real darkness arrives,
travelers set out.

*

Some leave, some arrive.
Flaggers waving lit-up wands
before the train station.

*

For a few moments,
the silhouettes of trees pressed
against the sky's burning throat.

*

Domestic vs. extravagant
space: a parade of placid geese
not yet leaning into the wind.

"Make no little plans."
         ~ attributed to Daniel H. Burnham


Like most everything else, it began
as a kind of dream. But grand, both

in scale and purpose. Each instance 
toward the manifestation of the dream 

became practice, a testing of principles 
first laid out on drafting paper, to bring
 
a sense of imperial order to the new colony 
in the East. Outward from the core of government

and the hub for commerce, a network of radiating
grids laid upon the wilderness. Here, the air

was bracing and fragranced with pine: a tonic
for those languishing in the provinces' 

tropical heat and malarial fevers. After 
the roads, a sanatorium was built on a hill: 

as charming as any in Simla or the Swiss alps, 
promising rest and recovery for the tubercular; 

fresh food and sunlight. A City Beautiful, 
whose monuments and buildings were scaffolds 

for ideals of civic and moral virtue— whose site,
cleansed of unsightly elements, would support survival,  

beckon trade, arrange functions for urban refinement and
aesthetics. An eye for immediate defense and a long future.  

flame-colored and obsidian spokes, trapped in marble orbs—

children flick these into a circle, serious but at play. 
 
to be ground-level, eye-level, and sense the tremble

of what you can't see beneath the only surface

you know: echos of passing traffic, daily clamor

from rushing to or from some important purpose.

describe this strange vessel which we inhabit,

our feet rushing to or from some important purpose.

you know the echoes of passing traffic, daily clamor

of what you can't even see beneath the only surface.

meet it ground-level, eye-level, sense the tremble

as childen flick globes into a circle, serious but at play.

flame-colored and obsidian spokes, trapped in marble orbs—

A high pile of pillows in bed, tufted 
mattresses, double-lined quilts. Side 

sleepers, face-down sleepers, flat-on-
the-back sleepers chasing the elusive

dream of sleep. But we lose count: sheep 
show no signs of quitting their high jump

marathons. The moon keeps training
its too bright spotlight through 

the window. Is it that we've grown  
too soft, too dependent on the idea 

of sinking as release? In one museum 
alcove, shelves of wooden and porcelain

takamakura, curved to cradle the neck and
head of the sleeper in such a way as to 

provide both a cooling effect and preserve
elaborate hairstyles. Perhaps they were on

to something, all those geishas and others
who lay on a mat and rested their heads

on these pillows, even while entertaining
the suitor that slid into the chamber at night,

having first slipped a poem of supplication
into the hands of a lady-in-waiting. Soft 

light from the moon filters through screens 
as though it did not have an iron core 

and a silicate mantle. When I purchase 
a sobakawa or pillow filled with buckwheat 

hulls, I'm thinking only of how tilting 
the chin upwards lifts the tongue away from 

the back of the throat, straightening the airway 
to better aid the flow of air into the lungs. 

Breathlessness can be involuntary; can 
also be the climax of heightened emotion.