Cento of Borrowed Light

Last night, clear as a bell
          through the keyhole, nothing

a short silence, then
          humming because rhythm makes persistence possible.

The smoke of my own breath
          between my ribs, till every breath I draw
                    repeats. repeats its birdsong.

Listen to the birds. Fight sleep
          walking, blinded by light. The clatter

the pulsing brass heart of it
          receding, rises and then planes. Color
in this unlikely lapis light,

          the surface of the little lake.
I am in again, and swimming,

          time tangled together, copper wires
                    bright as a window of a just-lit room

and light you can step in	and out of.

I peer into the tunneled past
          in the woods with its lapping tongue
immense pines weighted with snow

the wind is unfostered, untended,
          your fingers stinging brightly in the cold.
 
Time worn through–
          here memory makes you.

The light continues for years,
          gathering itself to the idea of green, lingering
                    past evening, past waiting,

as small as a world and as large as alone.










The lines in this poem are from: “This One, That One”, Lawson Fusao Inada; “In the Corridor”, Saskia Hamilton; “Silence”, Wong May; “Nocturne”, Wanda Coleman; “Song of Myself” (1892 version), Walt Whitman; “The Unending Lightning”, Miguel Hernández, trans by Edwin Honig; “Red Lilies”, Barbara Guest; “How to Imagine a Fractal”, Nicole Callihan; “Light”, Barry Goldensohn; “Fulgura Frango (or How to Count to Infinity)”, Dominique Bernier-Cormier; “Five Landscapes”, Cole Swenson; “Paddling at dusk, Winslow Homer, watercolour on paper (1892)”, Cynthia Miller; “The Lake”, Daryl Hine; “Light”, Alice Jones; “Dangerous Electric”, Janet McNally; “What Lights Up...?”, Keki Daruwalla; “Two Paintings by Gustav Klimpt”, Jorie Graham; “Mutoscope”, Elizabeth Spires; “Lost in the Forest”, Amy Gerstler; “Autobiography 2 (hellogoodby)”, Michael Palmer; “backyard song”, Diane Seuss; “Tritina for Susannah”, David Yezzi; “Untitled (Bicycle)”, Ann Lauterbach; “Definitely”, Mary Jo Bang; “The Point”, April Ossmann; “Mount Grace Priory”, G.C. Waldrep; “Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead”, Catherine Graham; “maggie and milly and molly and may”, e.e. cummings