*
My arm and the night
half around - this star
carried downstream
lets me rinse its light
beside those great rivers
the lame once every year
crawl childlike, led - this star
still points and all the world
morning at last. I don't know when.
Every stream is waiting
till another will flow from its side
slightly open, afraid to speak
holding my hand and its shadow
not yet trampled by moss, by darkness
by sunken eddies and warts - my hand
blurred, limping to the riverside
- all night though my bones don't soften
twisting even tighter - I never let on
the morning must know I'm here.
*
And though this shelf has cooled
its metal never dries - for 40 years
slips and the old spoons, cups, plates
struggling to lift more rainwater
once cloudlike, half dead now.
When you shake the shelf
both east and west, - 40 years
a small, glass plane, a knickknack
- everyone else is missing
even the letters home
and this souvenir that rattles
- you cover this shelf with cowling
enough to keep the wind away
and the years that can't stop raining
or when I wet my lips
press against this shelf
to bathe as once some damp green fuselage
and rain touching down
- so many times and still
you too, on a clear night
reach out into nothing but moonlight
and the cold air skidding across my hands.
*
The oldest shout is orange: this moon
almost in reach - each autumn the horizon
moves us closer to one another
lets the still warm evening
work its way through our sleeves
-I can feel the Earth swelling
when the moon is filled, my heart
shaking to deep red
darken along some riverbank
almost to its headwaters, almost overhead
and the moonlight harden into continents
rushing toward each other
toward mountains that lean
as if still alive, smell from winter
from sending your hand, then taking it down.
***
Simon Perchik
