Lita Sorensen

 

Night and its forces…
--a found phrase (after Michael Ondaatje)

Like a sumac bush hiding
twigs and leaves and magenta
shadows

Giving itself to darkness
                              and sublimation—

The world was always yours.
In moments of ordinary beauty
you knew it: the slim sylvan
moon climbing the sky beyond
prairie-town buildings,
“Night Blue,” the name of

some panavision cathode ray tube
shade, real this time.

The world is hush, is solitude,
and for all those not listening
is foolish, is fear—

For it is everything:
the whir of the air conditioners in
the background, the tenants asleep
bathed in the cool light of television
screens; the tall sonorous trees, dark;
their leaves whispering of things
known years ago;

the small, sad opossum
crawling over stone steps
to hide, much maligned by humans;
the sparks of stars remote above
the noisy clatter of cities, illuminating
car lots and park lands alike.

There is no way to make reparation.
And night has known this from
first knowledge of days.

See how illumination grows.
Photographs record all the earth
and her inhabitants;
yet none of it to eyes that remain unedited.

Lush landscapes, parking lots
the same to lenses
recording the same
cold light, or dew dropped screen.

 

River Prayer
For T.H.

Not that you could endure God’s voice—far from it.
But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless
Message that forms itself out of silence. --Rilke

 

Sun a slow blister waking sky to day—
I walk east to the river
on fallowed earth—
its surface yellow, turned to fat.

The wind is cool and I drink it
feel breath slide down my throat
like water. The Missouri snakes below
calm and traveling always on
                                                       And I follow it
letting branches cut my hands
on the narrow shore
letting hair fall down my face
like wet veils
like rags, like tears.

Remember
that night on the Mississippi
we built a fire on broad waters—
the wind at the brink
tasted like roast oak
and the clams we found
burrowed tight?
The earth both fed and ate.
We were no exception.
All things were brought together
by wind, and so, by cleaving
must separate.

                                               Down river south
clam shells anoint the mud as small pearls.
Mud sucks at my heels,
profane and dark.

On this broken morning
Light seeps through
clouds ordinary as dust cloths
and air tunnels messages along the plains.

Far away, rivers also speak in ordinary tones.