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Blue Place
for Jane, Eva and Grace
Last beach flowers: the color of asters, old bruised heart
suddenly out on a stalk blooming...
Light is always the first to know
as if the condition of the world
rested on each morning eyelid, dawn slowly spinning
out of view. So what's left for us
here by the edge of the sea where sails clog
what looks like the horizon.
Sunrise has rolled back into the pink glow
of the head of the globe What did we know?
We didn't know the words
and was there music another land?
Countries listed off the map beaches sandpapered
the air and the sea deep-lunged at us
across the tearing edges Oh forgetful sun
moon and stars out and shining
bareheaded in weather like this. It couldn't be
time to wake up: heads bent with the weight
of startled voices listening
to the end of dreaming and fighting to be heard.
Memory will not follow
tickle us or age Only the enormous
accuracy of silence will imprint
our past a soundless kiss on the lips goodbye.
My hands fall easily into the hands of women
who stay each other arms and whole bodies of tenderness
pass into the future with the aroma of suicide
salt in the air in our mouths.
We move out from the blue
place this palpable hurt on earth.
The sense of it: pain
but not blindness. No.
Beatrix Gates
for Jane, Eva and Grace
Last beach flowers: the color of asters, old bruised heart
suddenly out on a stalk blooming...
Light is always the first to know
as if the condition of the world
rested on each morning eyelid, dawn slowly spinning
out of view. So what's left for us
here by the edge of the sea where sails clog
what looks like the horizon.
Sunrise has rolled back into the pink glow
of the head of the globe What did we know?
We didn't know the words
and was there music another land?
Countries listed off the map beaches sandpapered
the air and the sea deep-lunged at us
across the tearing edges Oh forgetful sun
moon and stars out and shining
bareheaded in weather like this. It couldn't be
time to wake up: heads bent with the weight
of startled voices listening
to the end of dreaming and fighting to be heard.
Memory will not follow
tickle us or age Only the enormous
accuracy of silence will imprint
our past a soundless kiss on the lips goodbye.
My hands fall easily into the hands of women
who stay each other arms and whole bodies of tenderness
pass into the future with the aroma of suicide
salt in the air in our mouths.
We move out from the blue
place this palpable hurt on earth.
The sense of it: pain
but not blindness. No.
Beatrix Gates
| Copyright © 2008 Beatrix Gates. All Rights Reserved. Poem originally published in In The Open, Painted Leaf Press, 1998. |
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Hear Bea reading her poem.