Mariann

Sea Level

Down from the mountains of Appalachia 
and the highs of new love 
I’ve come across the extended monotonies 
of interstates, back to where 
scrub pines stand small at sea level. 
There’s the house I left for good 
(if forever can ever be good), 
and there’s the Great Egg Harbor River, 
which widens here, and everywhere 
the visages of ghosts appear 
and disappear. I’ve come to visit 
the friends who’ve stayed 
casualty’s course—the dearest ones, 
who somehow have learned to live 
amid the messiness of allegiances, 
the turns and half-turns of whom now 
to console, whom to embrace, and when. 
I pull into their driveway, wanting 
to tell them how it feels to have— 
for the first time—an undivided heart, 
a sudden purity of motive, 
but when I begin to speak I realize 
I don’t. I say it anyway, won’t take it 
back. When their outside cat wants in, 
they let him in. Then he wants out. 
They accommodate. That cat 
is almost as lucky as I. No mountains 
here, I can see the afternoon sun 
on the horizon hanging on, 
about to dip and be gone. Their yard 
is a dusty orange. I love the truth, 
I swear I do.

-Stephen Dunn

The Orange Grove, Spain, 2005

Pulled over off the highway on a dirt road 
     cutting into miles of orange groves, we counted 
one, two, three, before ducking beneath 
     a loosened fence line, sure we hadn’t been seen.

Inside the silent orchard, we searched 
     for perfect fruit, sun-ripened globes 
glinting in the midday heat, branches bent low 
     beneath the weight of what we intended to steal—

or borrow—we laughed—certain this was a lesson 
     we could not pass up. Sitting cross-legged 
in blue shade, we peeled the skins and let them drop 
     at our sides. It was then you spoke of him

more freely than you had before. Distance, 
     you said, had begun to blur facial features, 
the dip and rise of his voice on the phone, 
     those phrasings you loved, his hands in gesture.

Four thousand miles west, on a continent 
     swung out against a date line, an ocean—
the cherry blossoms bloomed as if in unison, 
     as if to frame the Arlington National,

those bleach-white graves lined evenly 
     along the green he passed each day. His thoughts 
were elsewhere, typing letters late 
     at night, telling of his job, the new apartment,

that place he liked to eat, asking 
     about your life there, what you saw, 
who you met in that foreign land where 
     the orchards spread out for acres,

ours dimmed finally in the waning light 
     of evening. And walking back to the car, 
smiling, tired—we were caught. 
     After a few questions, the groundskeeper laughed.

When we offered to pay, he waved his hand—
     his pardon that abrupt—and then began 
to tell in broken English how each tree 
     is planted alone, apart from the others,

to give it room to grow, he motioned outward, 
     a breaststroke in midair, to give it space. 
But—he leaned in, and with fingers intertwined, 
     explained that the roots connect

anyway, that the trees are made sturdier 
     because of this. That, even from a distance, 
each grows around another, a strength 
     you could not see, but understood immediately.

-Tori Sharpe

The Night Song

Night has come; now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain.

      Night has come; only now all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.

      Something unstilled, unstillable is within me; it wants to be voiced. A craving for love is within me; it speaks the language of love.

      Light am I; ah, that I were night! But this is my loneliness that I am girt with light. Ah, that I were dark and nocturnal! How I would suck at the breasts of light! And even you would I bless, you little sparkling stars and glowworms up there, and be overjoyed with your gifts of light.

      But I live in my own light; I drink back into myself the flames that break out of me. I do not know the happiness of those who receive; and I have often dreamed that even stealing must be more blessed than receiving. This is my poverty, that my hand never rests from giving; this is my envy, that I see waiting eyes and the lit-up nights of longing. Oh, wretchedness of all givers! Oh, darkening of my sun! Oh, craving to crave! Oh, ravenous hunger in satiation!

      They receive from me, but do I touch their souls? There is a cleft between giving and receiving; and the narrowest cleft is the last to be bridged. A hunger grows out of my beauty: I should like to hurt those for whom I shine; I should like to rob those to whom I give; thus do I hunger for malice. To withdraw my hand when the other hand already reaches out to it; to linger like the waterfall, which lingers evenwhile it plunges; thus do I hunger for malice. Such revenge my fullness plots: such spite wells up out of my loneliness. My happiness in giving died in giving; my virtue tired of itself in its overflow.

      The danger of those who always give is that they lose their sense of shame; and the heart and hand of those who always mete out becomes callous from always meting out. My eye no longer wells over at the shame of those who beg; my hand has grown too hard for the trembling of filled hands. Where have the tears of my eyes gone and the down of my heart? Oh, the loneliness of all givers! Oh, the taciturnity of all who shine!

      Many suns revolve in the void: to all that is dark they speak with their light—to me they are silent. Oh, this is the enmity of the light against what shines: merciless it moves in its orbit. Injust in its heart against all that shines, cold against suns—thus moves every sun.

      The suns fly like a storm in their orbits: that is their motion. They follow their inexorable will: that is their coldness.

      Oh, it is only you, you dark ones, you nocturnal ones, who create warmth out of that which shines. It is only you who drink milk and refreshment out of the udders of light.

      Alas, ice is all around me, my hand is burned by the icy. Alas, thirst is within me that languishes after your thirst.

      Night has come: alas, that I must be light! And thirst for the nocturnal! And loneliness!

      Night has come: now my craving breaks out of me like a well; to speak I crave.

      Night has come; now all fountains speak more loudly. Any my soul too is a fountain.

      Night has come; now all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.

      Thus sang Zarathustra.

Cradle-Song

I received her, as once 
          she received me 
into her lyric hold 
          and let me ride anchor there, 
smaller than the letter alif.

They gave her into my hands, 
          seven pounds, two ounces, 
as once they had given 
          me into her hands.

I set her on the hearth shrine, 
          as she set me once a place at her table, 
among her other needy charities.

After nine months I scattered her 
          back to that cold, delphine Atlantic of hers, 
to tidal squalls that rip 

          and sigh their salt across the rocks,

as once she let me fall

unready 
          onto this world’s 
gasping, shouting, love-stained shore.

-Patrick Donnelly

Drinking Like A Fish

Though blue at a distance, 
the surface is clear 
as gin with a tension 
that can bob you like 
an ice cube. What 
you really want, though, 
is to float below 
in chartreuse light, 
to glide through tonic bubbles 
above the swaying kelp, 
borne along on currents, while 
your heavy body, stranded 
on land, still stumbles 
and gasps. This 
is your true element, 
where predators 
ignore the pinstripe 
of the inedible. 
You’re even 
a Pisces.

Deeper and deeper 
you go, to the bottom, 
fin silt that swirls 
like bourbon in branch water 
to darken the gloom 
where things with gelatin 
wings glow blue 
as a gas flame. 
And this is where 
you want to live 
forever—to grow so 
transparent, so fragile, 
even the weight of the sea 
cannot crush you.

-William Greenway

The Conversation

Though he thought I was asleep in the sun, I was not. I was lucid. 

For a long time I watched his ship departing 

until the flag at the stern vanished, eaten by the gray horizon. 

Then the gulls came, then the stars. I began to live between visions 

of reunion and the truth shifting like tides against the dunes. 

Under a tent of yaupons I built a hut of driftwood, using sea oats 

for a threshold and the emptied halves of mollusk shells for the roof. 

Butterflies traversed the shore. When I held the ocean’s shell 

to my ear we were one 

vessel speaking to another vessel 

about the rapture of the void. 

-Christine Garren