After Joan Sauro

When I am fire, I cannot easily go home

to take the chicken from the freezer

and open a can of olives.

When I am fire, the other cars slow down

and point at the flames pushing out my windows.

She’s divorced they say.

And you? When you are fire,

where is the dark but inside you somewhere

afraid of loneliness?

When you are fire, you are beautiful.

As much because I like you

as because of the fine blaze of your lips.

When I am fire, it isn’t easy to separate

the heat from the inquiring air.

Distance flares up all along the Spokane River.

Most of what you’ll learn

about stars and space

and even dark matter

will be cheery:  will be cheerily

presented in your yellow, bright,

(like the sun!)

cheery classroom.

I’ll help you paint those styrofoam

planets, any color you want,

and when your teacher tells you

the scales are all off

I will whisper in your ear

the truth:

She doesn’t have a clue.

Perhaps that will be enough.

Maybe you’ll take up music

and play the cello so well

the neighbors one house over

will weep and forgive and donate

to orchestra camp.

But some day, and I can’t help this,

you may learn about the endless

spread of space.

And if I’ve found for you a good

and helpful Sunday school in those early years,

maybe you will think it reflects the glory

of God’s kingdom, eternal, eternal,

or maybe you will think,

like we’ve all thought,

that every mile of emptiness

tells the story of our abandonment.

There are things I hope you never know.

But trapped in your colorless bedroom,

or hunched over a stranger’s toilet,

or left alone in some apocalyptic waiting room,

some dark day when you are 14 or 29 or 48,

you may feel you understand

black holes, exactly.

I won’t be there then, I suppose,

but I’d suggest this,

which is mostly no comfort at all:

That it might take precisely this kind of universe

to hold us up.

That maybe stars explode for a better reason

than science can give.

That no one will ever understand dark matter

and that means it could be anything

and that means it could be infinitely good,

like all those nights we spent, happy,

painting planets.

If we were to wait a moment for the things

we refuse to know—the waiting of early February,

of the sky that grays before the storm, scent

of cold, like metal waiting under ice—

so that we find ourselves helpless beneath

the weight of it all, then what? A man once

told me, angrily, that I needed patience, needed

to believe in the tiniest spark of luck, that want

of perfect timing can set us to a frenzy

of spinning it is impossible to pull out from.

Or a sculpture in a dark corner can spark us

to a blaze in wonder that cannot stay silent

and we’ll stomp our wordless shoes against

the blue carpet at the museum. How dangerous

we are. How words can leave us overcome.

We hold ourselves apart even now in case we find

ourselves imagining that which we want most,

the place we cannot lift ourselves from.

Aren’t we half-blinded by sunlight? Don’t we want

to find a shadowed bench? If we move, if we,

for even a moment leave the things we thought

we were or thought we needed—the salt on the road,

the vacuum lines on the carpet, the sleeping dog,

the wind before the snowfall lifting last autumn’s leaves

into a whorl—if we leave these things, who have we

become? How could we stop ourselves from waiting?

Every night, we are the sleeping and the walking.

We rush barefoot into the drifts of patient snow.

What is useless then? Shovel, bag of rock salt,

two small guards standing vigil by the gaping door.

This was off some tributary

of a dirt road, a day excursion,

nine of us and the driver

before a gash in the earth

covered up by brush,

so I never would have seen it,

couldn’t find it again.

Hunched before its mouth,

we listened as our guide said

dangerous, hard hats,

head lamps, stick together

because it could take days

to find you. Of course bats,

so guano, and tight spots

you’ll wriggle through.

It will be colder than July.

At times, the ceiling drops.

In, I considered the weight

of rock and dirt, the sunlit

trees leafing on top of me,

their long roots digging

down to me. I thought of this

often. Thought better of being

ass and elbows underground.

Then disconcerting beauty

everywhere. Unnumbered

stalactites and stalagmites:

horns, fangs, tapers, fingers

all dripping like faucets

in the night. It’s water

on limestone over centuries

that made this, he said,

pausing in a cavern so large

our lamps, like our voices,

faded. Tired, mud caked,

each of us, at his insistence,

put a hand before our face,

and killed the lights. Dark

bit down, swallowed wholly,

and I was back in that motel

off the interstate, shocked awake,

fumbling for a bedside lamp

that wasn’t there, that was

across town where you were

or were not sleeping. I swear

that I smelled disinfectant

in the air, that I heard an A.C.

wheezing. And in that moment,

crouched under earth, failing

to stare my hand into being,

I felt all over what you said

when I left, how our years

together were no time at all.