Hello Leander, tucked into cloth, tiny lion
who yawns through the virus and tear gas.
You are a new scent of heat.
Before any scar grazes your legs
I would show you the rows of bicycles
in burned colors, and whistles and cardinals
who pin the cold snow. You hold a small
share of what it means to be here.
When the air shatters around you,
gold and marine, please know you belong.
You are half sky, half butterfly net, alive
to friends and strangers, fast to net
and trust. There is nothing
that is not worth much. Arrayed
in overalls and tackle-box, you should grow
to see the deep green rains, the roads
brushing the clouds. To compass
all you have done from a porch in late life
and listen to the bees who, woolen
and undeterred, have returned. I hope
you stay warm inside the white dusk of
morning. No one stays unscathed
but you have days of summer to grow
into your thoughts and learn the great
caring tasks. You have yards of treelight
to race through under the birds’ low song-
swept radiances. The trills you hear
are glass grace. They are singing.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.

^{—for Juan Antonio Corretjer and Consuelo Lee Tapia}

In the photograph, the poet leans over to kiss his wife. He wears a black
suit and a black tie, as if there will be a ceremony and a medallion hung
around his neck. His hair is white and crowns the back of his head. Her hair
is white in waves. She lifts her face to kiss him through his white mustache.

This is a despedida. They are kissing goodbye. The charge is conspiracy again.
The officers born years after his first incarceration lead him away to Castillo
de Ponce. The officers lead her away to the women’s prison at Vega Alta.

The evidence is in the poetry. As the convoy of the empire’s army rumbles in
the dark, past the mountain town where one day they will be buried side by side,
the poet says to his beloved: Esta es pausa / para el amor. Es sólo / breve pausa.
The poet watches her sleep. This is a pause / for love. It’s only / a brief pause.

If the pain doesn’t come back, 
what will I write about? Will the poems 
have tendon and teeth? I didn’t get 
right the sonnet of all its colors. 
I did not find the exact dagger of phrase 
about the long loss of my life.

Hope is all I do and am. 
I don’t think I’m poet enough 
to make you taste this mango; 
or see that sutured sunset unless 
from a hospital bed. 
I was good for carving. 

There will be kisses, music, street names. 
Loved ones will go where the gone do. 
What if I don’t want to (write it: can’t) 
write about these things. 
What if I would rather feel 
than create feeling? 
What then? Go ahead. 

Two years into anorexia recovery, 
when I begin to miss dying more than ever, 
my cat begins to hide. 
She disappears for hours and I find her 
hammocked in the lining of my couch. 
She has hollowed it out with her teeth 
and stares at me through cobwebbed eyes. 

I am startled at my own anger. 
After all the time and love I’ve given her, 
I can’t forgive her turning away like this. 
My partner reminds me that cats 
do not know how to be cruel, 
but they do know survival and fear. 
Each day, I reach into the dark 
mouth of the couch and pull her, 
claws and all, back into life. 

Weeks later, she dies with no one home. 
I discover the body and the urge to blame 
myself glows hot in my chest. 
How could I let her die 
in an empty house? 
How could I be so cruel. 

On the drive to donate her body, 
my partner apologizes with every breath. 
We pull over and he cries into my coat, 
How could I let this happen? 
And I know that if he feels guilty too, 
maybe the blame belongs to neither of us. 

This is the person who tried 
to breathe life back into the cat’s corpse, 
without realizing what he was doing. 
He did it because his instincts told him to, 
because every cell in his body is good. 
For weeks, the memory will make him 
shiver, gag, rinse the moment from his mouth. 

This is the person who gave everything 
to keep me alive, when letting me die 
was the easiest thing to do. 
He never stopped looking for me 
when I hid in the hollows of myself and my heart 
became a shadowy hallway of locked doors. 

This is the person who, if I died 
as the doctor said I would, 
would surely blame himself, 
and I would bang my phantom fists 
against the plexiglass of the living world, 
screaming No! 

I did not die. 
And when I was stuck in the hospital, 
sobbing as I pictured him living our life alone, 
I wrote him a letter asking how 
he could ever forgive me. 
He wrote back saying I would 
rather miss you for a while 
than miss you forever. 

In the car now, he asks how 
we’ll ever survive this 
and I say Together. 

I built an unnamed altar in my heart, 
And sculptured sacred garlands for a frieze 
From delicately petalled memories,— 
The fragrance of a word, the fragile art 
Of ash-gold hair, dim visioned things that start 
With radiant wings from mist of reveries, 
And vanish at the telling as a breeze
Blurs mirrored stars in dark pools set apart.

But, as I worshiped reverently there 
The symbols of the beautiful, there came 
A light aslant the shadows of my prayer 
That silenced mine uplifted lips with shame. 
The garlands coldly carven in that fair 
Unmeaning tracery enscrolled—thy name.