for Charlotte

1.
We unfold from the stone

cabbage leaves
crisp curled tight—

slice through the matrix
and find the geode,

slice through what they call
the head and find
our original face.

Animal vegetable mineral.
The distinctions fade,
the face persists.

2.
Once you took some photos
of a head of red cabbage
I’d sliced through the middle
and other slices other angles,
so many faces, diagrams,
maps and measures.

All of them meant us—
a picture anyhow
always means the one
who makes it,
the one who sees it.

3.
Warmer today
still some leaves
on the beech tree,
who will tell in me
what to say
when they fall?

That’s where you come in—
that’s what we have to be
to each other,
                              evergreen, obvious.

4.
You gave me a geode
amethyst grotto,
I gave you a cabbage,
map of my mind.

Proportions vanish,
any line leads anywhere—
mystery of poetry
any word leads everywhere.

5.
I try to give you something of value
but everything I offer
is a shadow of what you give me,
no diamond worthy of your finger.

6.
Light thickens in among the trees
because the branches talk so much
just as I suppose inside our skin
the light fades fast in the commotion
blood and fluids, chemicals at play,
how dark it must be inside us
though that’s where light is born
or at least where it comes from.

7.
The other side of the park
was a mystery to me.
Streets had numbers and no names
but the sea was closer,
the houses separate and small.
I could not understand it—
the other side of anything
is difficult enough, but why
was the other side of Marine Park
so different from us? The sea
is the same, I thought,
and I have sung that to myself
every day, praying that I’m right,
the sea is the same, the sea
is the same. But Malibu is no Oahu,
yet on the rocks of Gloucester
splash the waves of Gerritsen
and maybe I still have hope,
the sea is the same,
maybe the other side
one day will be the same
and we will be there,
cute little houses, a roughcut beach.

8.
As if we give each other
everything that is to come.

We cook the cabbage of course,
turns purple red as it stews,

the images dissolve,
the deep sweetness of the leaf
comes out, teased by our salt.

9.
The sun is bright right now
over where we live—
the humble gift of everything there is.

See, when I woke up I thought
of what it’s like to saw through rock
or slice through cabbage,

how there is a brain
inside everything, me again,
sure that the rock stinks.
But then the pain comes,
of knowing what is thinking
the wound of revelation
changing the face of what we see.

But stone and cabbage,
not a diamond, not a rose?

10.
We interrupt this poem to bring you an important prose from the management. Language is at your service night and day. Language is at the root of every gift we give each other, Language tells a diamond from a chunk of glass, Language tells I love you loud and clear when signs and objects fumble at the door. Trust Language, Language means my heart is yours.

20 November 2020