In the Vault of Morning

for our elders

You arrive as found blade for this tale 
I will tell you no gospel you know, 
No crow’s throat will belt guesses 

This year sound out the life I spend 
In the company of those who are all 
On their way to another world

And I am still on your way here 
A mouth as a cold wind
And I rise from me as I rise from me 

And I lift us bad as the night air 
Bad as it in hurricane season  
And sudden as we’re filled with the black wind

I feel nothing like dread
Hold still the planetary language
Who’ll tell you, really, what we’ve done

To speak of walking, of having walked 
Where flocks, animals say, slow lorises, rest 
Something of their tired and bud

To rot our chests of their bright moons
Moons disgorged from a twisting …
No, forget the moon. This time, we know 

The moon does not heed our endless calling 
Or duties for lubricating our worry 
The endless looking up, like a moment ago

When I could mean just anything else
Break into a crowd, a too narrow room,
The Atlantic’s long rage, mean anything at all

Where must I consider to live
With whatever dried longing 
We rise up to be in the morning           rain

Credit

Copyright © 2021 by Canisia Lubrin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“This poem is one articulation of the conditions and priorities of a human landscape in which a largely disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths have been our elderly. Not incidentally, condition can also be synonymous with virus; and priority can also be synonymous with preference.”
Canisia Lubrin