Intrusive Beauty. Joseph J. Capista
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I’ve been,
Then touch the spots I’ll never be.
The largest bell ever made,
The Great Bell of Dhammazedi,
is lost at the bottom of a river.
History of the Inevitable
Fire wants to be ash, which wants
a bucket to hold it with unseeping certainty.
The bucket wants to look like the moon,
which it does some nights, while the moon
wants to be the storefront window, full
of something. But the window’s coats
are tired of town’s dull hooks and long
to be pitchforks, which long to be trees.
The trees envy the slow-moving cow
beneath their boughs, and the cow wants
an engine to propel it though the sharp
fence where the man rests, wondering
how he will ever go to his desire when
the universe so needs his tending hand.
Domestic Intelligence
Best trash this tulip spray
lest, come A.M., drooped
blossoms drop,
lest tabletop become
again some variegated
scattergram
impelling you to measure,
plot those points chance
and beauty intersect,
lest gorgeous red-gold
nonchalance grace
faience eggcups,
patinaed grapefruit spoons
you set while upstairs
wife and daughters slept,
lest over salmon crème fraîche
and warm pear tarte tatin,
your mind threads petals
back to florets, transfixed
all day by what remains
detached yet correlates.
Best nix this vase entirely.
Avert. Preclude. Forestall.
Best obviate astonishment
at each blossom’s way
of falling into just-the-place.
As if you’ll ever understand.
The Beautiful Things of the Earth Become More Dear as They Elude Pursuit
Another wave rolls over me before
I clear its crest. I haven’t surfed since June.
Foam lifts me, holds me, sings me back toward shore.
Sunrise grows a little smaller, further
away. I’m sheathed in leaky neoprene.
Another wave rolls over me before
I catch, then lose, my breath: the atmosphere
and sea gleam mica, glint their pinks and greens.
Foam lifts me, holds me, sings me back toward shore
as something flickers in a distant trough;
lit windblown water droplets—jewels—they shine.
Another wave rolls over me. Before
my eyes, a distant skimmer nears and spears
a silverside. It’s gorgeous, then it’s gone.
Foam lifts me, holds me, sings me back toward shore.
“Your poem,” said Danny, “needs more beauty. More.”
I paddle, touch the water to touch sun.
Another wave rolls over me before
I’m lifted, held, I’m sung right back to shore.
Exit Wound
John, 1975–1995
Your knees that afternoon were caked with dust
and other matter—life’s particulate
remains unstuck from his apartment floor.
We spent three hours searching for the place.
And when your finger found the dimple just
beneath the sill (it ricocheted) I watched
your face, all day a tangled knot of pain,
grow slack. The face I saw was his, or his
age nine at Gettysburg beside the storm-
felled tree from which he yanked a musket ball.
He bit the slug like on TV and broke
his tooth. He cried. He was a boy. We knelt
a moment, touched the bullet, touched what now
tears headlong through our lives. He was a boy.
Thirtysomething Blues
Shannon
It’s not the risk we mind, but consequence.
To do without at twenty-two was “in.”
Yet now we’ve had, to have not stings. We wince
at what, in younger days, we sought: the chance
of sloughing all we never meant to own.
It’s not the risk we mind, but consequence.
The job, car loan, the mortgage on the house:
the things we need are things, not dreams but plans.
How once we’ve had, to have not stings. We wince
at possibility should it yield less,
no lamb and cherries, nightly glass of wine.
It’s not the risk, mind you, it’s consequence.
We’ll quit! We’ll walk! We’ll move to France!
Responsible adults know my refrain:
Yes, once you’ve had, to have not stings. I wince
mid-concert when you say, “I’ll sing like this
someday.” Those notes won’t pay the taxman, Shan.
It’s not the risks we mind, but consequences,
as once we’ve had—we wince—to have not stings.
SOWEBO
Southwest Baltimore
By the time the boy’s tooth chips and bloody
hair mats his scalp cradled beside the spokes,
which spin and clack, this does not matter.
Not the curbside assault, not the battery.
What matters here is the grace with