The Celebrated Colors of the Local Sunsets

The day feels as thin

as the letters fading from

half a can of spray paint

a decade ago on the brick wall

of the closed down

Suder Feed Supply where we used

to skateboard and think

of all the crimes the police

could punish us with

for being poor, and teenagers,

for wearing skin-tight jeans

and growing our hair

like a girl’s, for almost anything—

at least it felt like it then.

I can’t imagine home

without thinking of the past

and the faintest stir

of indignation. It’s beside the point.

Today, I’m revisiting Miłosz

with a pen pressed to the pages

making notes in the margins.

In 1987, in Berkeley,

he is doing the same, and thinking

back on the end of his countries, their

“posthumous existence.” Like him

I know a place

I can’t return to, and without

much imagination can picture

everything coming apart, one way

or another. When I imagine

how it might go, it is

just like this: I am memorizing

bird calls and wild

plants which become a blur

at the far edge of my yard,

their Latin names tangled

in my mouth. Didn’t I

already show you this?

The country at twilight

and a far-off darkness

of pines, a deep red sky

imagined for this page. What I left out

wasn’t meant to be remarkable—

a bruise faded from the surface,

the wounds buried

like overwintered wasps

plotting assassinations

beneath the snow. So let’s see

if I can draw it into focus,

like the truant daydreaming in class

suddenly with something to say—

the one end I know complete.

Once, I thanked my father

for the gift of this life,

something he didn’t hear.

It was two years before he died

and he was high

on the translucent painkillers

the hospital ordered to keep him

comfortable after surgery.

It was as real as anything

I ever told him. I stood

over him in the hospital bed

and traced the outline of his body

under the gown, the collar and hip bones,

his stomach, his penis, and balls,

numbered the black stars

printed on the cotton and listened

to him breathe, mouth

open, just so, a way

into the hive growing in his chest.

He didn’t hear, and then, he couldn’t.

In those years, I barely spoke to him

and now not an hour can pass

I don’t hear him, now that

what he has to say is always

final, always a last word. And

Miłosz is buried in Kraków

and my father has entered

eternity as ash, and I am

certain what doesn’t last

lasts—Hydrangea quercifolia,

Hypericum densiflorum,

Solidago rugosa