Two Poems

CLEF

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Skaja1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

At night when the wind peals
over empty farmland, I sense

an ocean rolling up at me
out of blackness—dulling

the blade, icing the plaits
of frozen grain. Once

I could sing whole arias
alone in a crowded theatre

as if my own voice
could return me

to myself. I think
I was listening.

I think the white glare
of the light

is always unnerving.
When winter drops,

I see my hand
in it. A metalled fist.

My fingers fall
over pitch pine, yew

needle, furrowed bark.
So I’m sustained.

So I know all the words
for that. I belong to

a system of cleaving.
These are my papers.

See how I was a bell
clanging all night

through the broken fields?
How I spoke only in code?

I know what to do
with the dark.

Let night-creatures stare
through the glass.

They will witness
my rust voice, my salt

mouth. Carving up
all the syllables

like sea-glass. C sharp
is a signal. I will spell it all out.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Skaja2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I’m inventing a way
to speak to you.
To explain

the way it felt—
like 50 acres
burning.

Spruce, pine,
fir. Everything
ashes.

Like we dug ditches
all night
to save them.

If I don’t believe
there is a collective
cloudspace

I believe
there is something
in trees

& I learned grief
is like that—
maple, cedar, hemlock

ditchline black
with treefire
treecinder treefell—

our mouths
filled with dirt,
the woods

loud
with what chaos
survived it.

It’s the first year
you’ve been dead longer
than you were ever

alive. What
would you say
about that?

I was 10
I looked up suicide
in the dictionary—

I didn’t know
anything. Without
you, we were

heavy, divided.
We knelt down
in the dirt

where the roots
were suspended
in water.