Sara Veglahn
Tomorrow Morning, Suspended Life
I was the first of many and that it is one way to make a life. You had each day and most of the morning. Now it is up. Use what you want but I have been out for a long time now. Go look. What was I if not a call each day, if not a look out over there, if not one of many people?
This day is a has been, there was no now. I could call it a sound, could call a sound a number. Are you there? What I see is so suspended, like a long look at what you said. You said to write my number on my life. You said to go. I know that there is no use in a first thing. This is what I was. Now is like a tomorrow, a word you could write out.
You would call this a long way down. Is it that you are so many and that you know my life? What did you see? Have I been there? You use up, you find, you make, you see. I write you your morning in a word.
Now is out. It is no use. Water is life, life is suspended. Look, make me a way to go. I can know what you are, can have a way. I go out and find each side of you. And I see that you are suspended and that this is like many people. Tomorrow morning, tomorrow, a word you can make and see.
You were a who-did-it thing with a number in the water. A could-come thing as you said what you were. An if-then thing in this long time over. A way. A day. A so long, you.
As I go, hot on the sound of your will, I was all about what I could see. You had it your way. So many, each time. I would write it all down, but see, there's no word for it. Of one way out, this was a no go.
We were one, we were two. We were no number you could call on. That morning I would find you as if you were water. Way out over there. And that sound—you said some sound. I was like many people who look first for what they are and then for what they said. I did this. I know how this can be.
Over the Ocean
after Barbara Guest
Across this water is the water of every explorer
there is grace in a wave
there is sadness in a riverbank
Ways to leave: a hand taken back a backwards glance
So long
Over water and other words for water I've found a graceful embrace
I've found the warriors of grace marching graciously
Notice me there, I am there, O Nameless.
We are running and climbing through sparks and waves
thousands of them falling, blue and also blue.
Notice me there and foggy
Every river leaves us bound to land
Our houses balanced there
Abundant with what you'll find there
I've found
every river gives forth an obedient country
from A Book of Acts
An act of geography
There might be dedications determined by the disciplined music of a thousand looms. What kind of day means another melodious shift? I've been training my left arm to hammer and am already accustomed to the heat of the forge. As for flames, I head in directions of yellow turning orange turning away my gaze and the watery foundations. If there were a globe, I could place a finger and match equator to longitude, gather the topography into a fistful of ash. You might have brought the other motion with you, made three broad X's across a tomb. I might have touched fingertip to fingertip, climbed the hill and surprised the city, a flat-faced junction in the field bones.