Bright Dead Things. Ada Limón
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head,
parachute and crown,
all the intention of wishes, forgiveness,
this day’s singular existence in time,
the native field flourishing selfishly, only for itself.
THE GOOD WAVE
A bat cracks in the flickering background
and we’re dead tired from the horse track,
all those losing bets stuck crumpled up
in our cheap fedoras, but no one, not even
the dog, is unhappy. Baseball announcers
are trying to be funny about nothing, crowds
cheer on the momentum of the home team
and it’s not too early for pj’s, or promises,
or some low-sung lullaby that salutes
the original songs on the inside. I decide,
someday, to name a kid Levon, and you
agree, and outside the dark traffic groans by
on our curving country road making a sound
like the slow roar of applause when
the home team’s tide unexpectedly turns.
DOWN HERE
The dog does this beautiful thing,
it waits. It stills itself and determines
that the waiting is essential.
I suppose this eternity
is the one inside the drawer,
inside the buttonhole.
All the shouting before
was done out loud, on the street,
and now it’s done so shushing-ly.
There is a saying down here,
I’d never heard before,
I hate it for you.
It means, if the dog pees
on the carpet, I hate it
for you, Too bad for you.
It means, if you’re alone,
when love is all around,
We all tip our lonely hats
in one un-lonely sound.
HOW FAR AWAY WE ARE
So we might understand each other better:
I’m leaning on the cracked white window ledge
in my nice pink slippers lined with fake pink fur.
The air conditioning is sensational. Outside,
we’ve put up a cheap picnic table beneath the maple
but the sun’s too hot to sit in, so the table glows
on alone like bleached-out bones in the heat.
Yesterday, so many dead in Norway. Today,
a big-voiced singer found dead in her London flat.
And this country’s gone standstill and criminal.
I want to give you something, or I want to take
something from you. But I want to feel the exchange,
the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out
and the ear holding on to it. Maybe we could meet
at that table under the tree, just right out there.
I’m passing the idea to you in this note:
the table, the tree, the pure heat of late July.
We could be in that same safe place watching
the sugar maple throw down its winged seeds
like the tree wants to give us something too—
some sweet goodness that’s so hard to take.
THE QUIET MACHINE
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