Color

When he said black oak, he meant the branch we would hang him from, the tree next to the gray granite building looming in fog.

When he smiled and said nothing, he meant what he might do to us.

When he said now, he meant the ten-acre oval on the grassy expanse, the marching band drilling, the cluster of grackles picking at roots, the dog and its Frisbee, the woman and her book, the circle of breathing inside a chalk circle bulging at each end.

What would we have God do.

On a hill outside of town, April snow, the Indian paintbrush blazing. It’s a short walk from ice to fire. Not a single name for entering voice, for leaving the body behind.

We might have changed our names. We might have flown the flag upside-down. We might have resurrected the Cree and pushed ourselves back to the eastern ocean. We might have sung the wordless song that comes from the beginning of defeat, out of the caves of wind. We might have known the chemistry of mind, the industrial ballet of the heart. We might have danced with living things. We might have done all of this and nothing.

What would we have God do. God who was always a voice, then breath and bone and blood, only to become air again, the color of this weather, rising and rising toward the next color, the one behind the sky.

At the End of War

The colonel could not decide whether or not to move back to the Iowa town with its own cloudy stream and tinker with two-cycle engines and buy popsicles on hot days for his granddaughter and her many friends.

The bullet flying overhead and southwest had come to resemble the bullet flying overhead and northeast, the battalion’s dog had come to resemble the enemy’s dog, their scorpions the enemy’s scorpions, their flowerpot of basil the enemy’s flowerpot of basil. The greeting of one man had come to sound no different then than another’s, the dust-filled dome of day no different than the enemy’s day. At night, the enemy’s sighs and quaking sounded no different than the tremors from under a nearby tent, splotched with camouflage. Where the desert had overheated, it turned to glass.

The sea contained an abundance of salt then. Nothing at the end of the war could sink.

The air contained an abundance of smoke then, and the silence after fires. Nothing else could rise from the ground except for the struggling grass, burned to the root time after time.

The colonel could not decide whether or not to move to Virginia, set up a business in a 200-year-old house, and become a frequent guest on MSNBC. What was a man to do with his plans, his leftover map? Either way, something like a flight path led back to the world of voice. The house squatted under 300-year-old trees. Warblers and goldfinches would not budge from their singing. Something in a man wanted to sing.

After the day count, the lie count, the medal count, the arm and leg and face count, the body count, the one apology, the one decree, nothing was left at the end of war but to move past the hand.

Loving a Woman

Understand the young man does not know he wants to fall and fall and fall until he cannot recognize himself any longer. The air rushes up from under him, each building a blur, even as one face, then another, snap into focus at their windows. Gravity will have its way with him.

The young man does not know a lovely suicide comes first with its awkward quiet, every word a deserter, its one dull thud in the chest. Even if he knew the language, he might not use it.

For this reason, he can only talk with others about his face in her breasts, the nipples hardening, the size of his cock, the damage it could do. It’s a story told by firelight, the owls and coyotes singing across the dark surface of night. It’s a story that keeps the other beasts away. It puts the boy in him to sleep.

In this way, he will separate from his mother, even as he does not know he wants to fall back into her.

Still, sometimes in dream, all the gear ratios dissolve and his hands turn to water on the face of someone beside him. Then her body turns to rain. Then they fall from the sky inside the same storm. All through the day, the dream will make him tired.

For all of his life, days have moved forward or backward. Even now, the road unfolds from the horizon as he crosses the Mojave toward the next great city of light. The hard edge of curb and door stay the same. The palm trees survive their drought and the cars running into them. He never changes his name.

Still, the sky wheels above, and the earth manufactures holes for the innocent to fall into. Understand he will never suppose this. He prays to the god who is around the corner, waiting at the roadside café. He could never imagine a god who might wear the disguise of earth. He would never suppose that where the fault lines met he might find a door to the next world.

Electric Blanket

Unreal and thin, its veins rode varicose across the dream-by-dream twisting of the body.

What the last century could offer after the death of monarchy, decades of loneliness. What it could understand about fur, about human touch. What the last century could offer as solace or reparation, the daytime darker now than night, every river on fire.

Separate controls. What an arguing couple could agree on. A system of lightning strikes issued by the hand.

Left on the curb, a quarter at the Salvation Army, three days later under a bridge, on the back of a runaway, where it does not work.

Radiation streamed from it, we thought, taking X-rays as we slept. Somewhere God held up our slides to the light, examining lungs, the cloudy weather patterns of a soul. We would glow for him, we thought, saying his name before we drifted. We would glow for him toward the private jungle where the negative froze black with terror or, overexposed, went white-hot with longing.

When our sister found him, curled blue and fetal under the blanket, she turned the dial back to zero, toggled off the tiny red light that had lit his last way to the bathroom and back. In the blanket’s electric grip, one last comfort overtook him before the heart stopped beating and there was no way left to keep out the cold.

When the Other Man Asked Him Did He Pray

He kept driving, each storefront a shoulder-to-shoulder forest he couldn’t see around.

All those miles down the boulevard, numbers counting down by twos.

And the field opening where the buildings end, and light settling over the lengthening eye.

And wind across the tops of bluestem and the lives of insects.

And all animals in the grass, even birds, moving in their own ways under the sun.

And on the horizon, something like his shadow walking, something small as a daytime star against blue moving up and down over the far line of earth.