ROBERT
KELLY

Tell me about the highest
road in those mountains
across the river and I will
and I will tell you about
a snail shell I found once
on a plate in Chinatown,
no, that was a cockleshell
the snail was in the yard
before that, remember
the sky above the steeple,
the small tree I didn’t know
you said it was a hawthorn
and now is now? Snail trail
leads here, always. Drive
up Overlook, Round Top?
Be a car with me, a warm
more vehicle than utility,
more utility than sport but
still, wheels work, growl
up the ross, all I want to do
is breathe the sky, suddenly
that sounds scary, angels?
what price that breath?
bark of the locust tree too,
rivers flowing straight up,
in France this is the day of Mars
here it’s Two’s day, old you’n me,
ride me up there, my shell
spun around a mere identity
you can change any time you like
just by saying so, here we go
tell what used to live inside me
before it talked itself out away,
please help me to find the tree.

11 October 2022

Broken things
sing story,

geology of breccia,
Arthurian romance, a stone
to stumble on
yet again.
Again the dream
of houses where,
the blond sunlight invading,
woodshed and Alaska,
hold it steady, the pan too full.

Time is what must get answered
but never soon, the light
above the door comes on,
a voice gentle as the fingertip
tap on the window glass says
I was born here can I come in?

Absurd pilgrim, to think
and to think you can ever leave
a place you have been,

places stick, you are their sum
stumbling through the shattered
fragments of the new.

The stone rested there.
Pick up your lute or flute
or telescope and try
to make a song of it,
an image we can see–
that would be brave, bold
as an engine,
sweet as the stones
of ancient Athens
scattered in your backyard.

10 October 2022

Sometimes saying their names
is communication enough.
Friends. The family
with no shared DNA. Names
link us, recite them sometimes
at waking, to know them,
to know they are there.

2.
Write down all their names.
Mix the letters all together.
Play Scrabble with them,
use all the letters, unscramble
the secret messages, call it
kabbalah of friendship,
what you have really learned
from knowing them. Love
in this science is just,
but just a song along the way.

3.
So I wrote down the names
of friends I had to write to
today, little notes mostly,
nothing scary. I wrote
what I had to write, it felt
so strange, as if it all
were done already
on this busy day, as if
they knew already all
that I was about to say,
knew all, but I knew
they needed the words too.

9 October 2022

A rumor on the Rialto,
a bird is coming, hawk-hungry
but no squeal alive
to warn us, a silent bird
wings made of memory
spread out to shield us
from motherly sunshine,
and there we’ll be
glum in the shade,
quiet as music
with no one to talk to,
not even ourselves.
They think it’s winter
but I know it’s longer than that,
I have seen its feathers fall
now and then across the path,
in shadow, no sun glare,
easier to pick out
the threads in the fabric,
a bird that we thought!
will scare us to sleep.

8 October 2022

Come with me to that place whose name lives
so deeply in all water

we will not find it deep below
we will find it high above the sea in what we call the sky
where every cloud every breath
is moisture is mother

an inhabitant of that strange
country that vanished
before we could even begin

vanished and left us to do the work of being, being the others
so maybe just maybe we are

Atlantis already the world that slipped below the clouds the world of secrets clear as the sky.

6/7.x.22, v.v.