One little boy writing a book,
“making pictures for it too,” he said over Zoom,
proud face bright as an apple in my screen.
“It’s about a problem,” he smiled shyly
in that occupied land where soldiers sneak around at night
breaking into houses, chopping olive trees, smashing lamps.
“A problem between spiders and ants.” Well, this sounded
refreshing, a problem not made by humans. He said
spiders and ants each want to dominate their corners,
not letting other species have space. I didn’t quite understand,
since spiders spin high-up webs and ants tunnel in the ground,
but he insisted on friction, something about vicinity.
They want the whole space. I could see stone walls behind him.
Hear his parents speaking Arabic in the background,
a spoon clinking a bowl. I felt homesick for my whole life.
Now he was whispering, other kids listening in,
scattered in villages around the West Bank where my grandma
once lived. I knew exactly what their world looked and
smelled like, and wished to be with them
on that ground, stirring smoky coals in a taboon.
“But there’s something the ants can do,” he went on softly.
“So they don’t all get killed. The spiders are stronger
than the ants, you know. So the ants pretend to be spiders!”
What? How does an ant pretend to be a spider?
He showed reluctance to tell, being still immersed
in the making of his story, but gave a clue.
“It’s an expression on the face. An ant makes his face look like a
spider’s face. For safety. Then they won’t attack.
It’s not that hard.”

For the first month of life, I was 
unnamed. To my Mama, my body belonged 
to one name, and to my Babushka, another, so 

they called me Lyalya, Lyalichka, little 
doll, baby, because neither would bend 
their letters and though I was already known 

to scream, to refuse sleep and strangers, 
they couldn’t have known then how, 
silently, I’d keep screaming, keep refusing 

any name they’d give me, how in my mouth, 
it wouldn’t feel like mine, and on the tongues 
of others, even less like I belonged. 

My mother imagined me maiden, Alyonushka, 
who saves in every fairytale, saves her brother
when he is stolen by Baba Yaga’s wicked swan-geese

and turns him back into a boy when he becomes 
a goatling. Alyonushka, who stays silent
for seven years, sewing twelve sweaters

out of nettles, fingers raw, skinned, only 
to run out of time on the final sleeve, so her youngest 
brother must wear a wing instead of an arm, reminding her 

she’s failed. And in the painting, Alyonushka, 
keeps her eyes cast down on water, her feet 
bare and untouched against coarse stone, she is

meek and docile, alone, she would never leave 
or disobey her mother, so eventually, mine 
admitted this name could not belong to me.

A month before my birth, Dedushka Yuzya 
died, some sudden spell Soviet doctors
connected to his heart because they only knew 

it stopped, and in our people’s way of wearing
our dead, of carrying them along the gumline, 
Babushka named me Yulya, because its sound 

was closest to her love, because two syllables 
are an easier loss to bear, because 
like all our matriarchs, she wanted me named 

for a man none of us could save. How could they 
know such naming would curse us to a life worse 
than a single wing? What if I’d stayed, Lyalya,

from speech and voice, stayed screaming,
how many more of us could have been
saved? How many would have stayed

swan, refusing to give up the sky.  

The sun holds all the earth and all the sky 
From the gold throne of this midsummer day. 
In the soft air the shadow of a sigh
Breathes on the leaves and scarcely makes them sway. 
The wood lies silent in the shimmering heat, 
Save where the insects make a lazy drone, 
And ever and anon from some tree near, 
             A dove’s enamoured moan, 
Or distant rook’s faint cawing harsh and sweet, 
Comes dimly floating to my listening ear.

Right in the wood’s deep heart I lay me down, 
And look up at the sky between the leaves, 
Through delicate lace I see her deep blue gown. 
Across a fern a scarlet spider weaves 
From branch to branch a slender silver thread,
And hangs there shining in the white sunbeams, 
A ruby tremulous on a streak of light. 
            And high above my head 
One spray of honeysuckle sweats and dreams, 
With one wild honey-bee for acolyte.

My nest is all untrod and virginal, 
And virginal the path that led me here, 
For all along the grass grew straight and tall, 
And live things rustled in the thicket near:
And briar rose stretched out to sweet briar rose 
Wild slender arms, and barred the way to me 
With many a flowering arch, rose-pink or white,
            As bending carefully. 
Leaving unbroken all their blossoming bows, 
I passed along, a reverent neophyte.

The air is full of soft imaginings,
They float unseen beneath the hot sunbeams,
Like tired moths on heavy velvet wings.
They droop above my drowsy head like dreams.
The hum of bees, the murmuring of doves.
The soft faint whispering of unnumbered trees.
Mingle with unreal things, and low and deep
            From visionary groves, 
Imagined lutes make voiceless harmonies. 
And false flutes sigh before the gates of sleep.

O rare sweet hour! O cup of golden wine! 
The night of these my days is dull and dense, 
And stars are few, be this the anodyne!
Of many woes the perfect recompense.
I thought that I had lost for evermore
The sense of this ethereal drunkenness, 
This fierce desire to live, to breathe, to be;
            But even now, no less 
Than in the merry noon that danced before 
My tedious night, I taste its ecstasy.

Taste, and remember all the summer days 
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake 
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always; 
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take 
Into my hands again, but still discern 
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes. 
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
            Sweet with faint memories,

And mellow with old loves that used to burn 
Dead summer days ago, like fierce red kings.
And this hour too must die, even now the sun
Droops to the sea, and with untroubled feet
The quiet evening comes: the day is done.
The air that throbbed beneath the passionate heat
Grows calm and cool and virginal again.
The colour fades and sinks to sombre tones.
As when in youthful cheeks a blush grows dim.
            Hushed are the monotones 
Of doves and bees, and the long flowery lane 
Rustles beneath the wind in playful whim.

Gone are the passion and the pulse that beat 
With fevered strokes, and gone the unseen things 
That clothed the hour with shining raiment meet 
To deck enchantments and imaginings. 
No joy is here but only neutral peace 
And loveless languor and indifference, 
And faint remembrance of lost ecstasy.
            The darkening shades increase. 
My dreams go out like tapers—I must hence. 
Far off I hear Night calling to the sea.

I would have each couple turn,
join and unjoin, be lost
in the greater turning
of other couples, woven
in the circle of a dance,
the song of long time flowing

over them, so they may return,
turn again in to themselves
out of desire greater than their own,
belonging to all, to each,
to the dance, and to the song
that moves them through the night.

What is fidelity? To what
does it hold? The point
of departure, or the turning road
that is departure and absence
and the way home? What we are
and what we were once

are far estranged. For those
who would not change, time
is infidelity. But we are married
until death, and are betrothed
to change. By silence, so,
I learn my song. I earn

my sunny fields by absence, once
and to come. And I love you
as I love the dance that brings you
out of the multitude
in which you come and go.
Love changes, and in change is true.

^{—on my seventy-ninth birthday}

Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries. 
In the secrecy of my room 
I would not admit I cared 
that my friends were given parties. 
Before I left town for school 
my birthday went up in smoke 
in a fire at City Hall that gutted 
the Department of Vital Statistics. 
If it weren’t for a census report 
of a five-year-old White Male 
sharing my mother’s address 
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester 
I’d have no documentary proof 
that I exist. You are the first, 
my dear, to bully me 
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear 
an abstracted look that drives you 
up the wall, as though it signified 
distress or disaffection. 
Don’t take it so to heart. 
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much 
as being who I am. Maybe 
it’s time for me to practice 
growing old. The way I look 
at it, I’m passing through a phase: 
gradually I’m changing to a word. 
Whatever you choose to claim 
of me is always yours; 
nothing is truly mine 
except my name. I only 
borrowed this dust.

We met ourselves as we came back 
As we hiked the trail from the north. 
Our foot-prints mixed in the rainy path
Coming back and going forth. 
The prints of my comrade’s hob-nailed shoes 
And my tramp shoes mixed in the rain. 
We had climbed for days and days to the North 
And this was the sum of our gain: 
We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain. 
Our old souls and our new souls 
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years, 
And a thousand years as a day. 
The powers of a thousand dreaming skies 
As we shouted along the trail of surprise 
Were gathered in our play: 
The purple skies of the South and the North, 
The crimson skies of the South and the North,
Of tomorrow and yesterday.

Such as the lobster 
cracking loose 
from its exoskeleton 
after moons of moulting,  
or the viper that squeezes 
out of the skin 
of its remembrance, 
this oracle invites you
to rewild yourself,
to unbox, detox, and de-
clutter your blood. 
Break free from the mold
you made for yourself, 
for the animal 
in you that craves 
routines like sugar,
addicted to the stress 
of your comforts. Sling 
your arm around the waist 
of your discomfort
like it’s a new lover
in these uncharted 
seas and distances 
untraversed. Take
and give glee. 
Summon surprise.
Something whim-
sical this way comes. 
It smells something 
like wishes wrapped 
in wind as you
trod the winding path 
through 
the forests 
of your interior. 
Be warned. You will
bewilder beloveds. 
Hush. Some 
events are better
experienced than 
explained. Take soul.
Your joy is your job;
and yours alone. 
Hire your
self every day. 
Climb into your traveling
shoes knowing that
there, too, will 
be dancing.

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

^{My voice restore for me.
—Navajo}

Here is the wind bending the reeds westward,
The patchwork of morning on gray moraine:

Had I words I could tell of origin,
Of God’s hands bloody with birth at first light,
Of my thin squeals in the heat of his breath,
Of the taste of being, the bitterness,
And scents of camas root and chokecherries.

And, God, if my mute heart expresses me,
I am the rolling thunder and the bursts
Of torrents upon rock, the whispering
Of old leaves, the silence of deep canyons.
I am the rattle of mortality.

I could tell of the splintered sun. I could
Articulate the night sky, had I words.

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.

                                                                   —Sandra Cisneros

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—

I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge . . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.

Beauty is not caused,
It is.
Chase it and it ceases.
Chase it not and it abides.
Overtake the creases
In the meadow when
The Wind
Runs his fingers thro’ it?
Deity will see to it
That you never do it.