Conversation
Maybe an anchor, this day
of first goodbyes,
what might become
safe from the drift
in tangled grass, tonight
on its knees, bowing
its way toward home.
Now the rain falls fast
on the the lake, a flash
in the gauzy light. Memory
of first meeting gutters
from the roof, rapid, the sound
of stones, a brook from the eaves
to sustain a break from sunlight.
* * *
Whatever I am
is written in the diastole,
what opens when
the heart can hold it,
* * *
when the stars burn
naked on the grass . . .
* * *
the moon reflects
a borrowed light,
* * *
the moon quiet in the leaves,
touching the face
of a stranger trembling
with recognition.
* * *
Purple iris cast among the rocks
refusing to bloom at home,
unlike these weeds in bent grass,
daisies in their poses.
* * *
If all you become is a pleasant sound,
tune to the music of falling, sing
like rain until the seeds wake up
and take off their coats.
* * *
White-washed walls, this blue,
blue day, I walk the labyrinths
in Arcos, Spain, my plaid shirt glowing
yellow, alone in the pueblo.
* * *
What you and I might be
in some other world, a world
where I could reach you
right before you disappear
forever, this blue day.
In the pueblo, following light
as if to discover a new way
to exist in this world,
I hurry on to see what’s next,
what might appear with time
running out. These walls
have stood 1,000 years.
They’ve seen this kind
of ache before. They know
how it ends.
* * *
This morning the smoke tree
caught fire, its blossoms
setting off the starling’s alarm.
* * *
Seeds fall and open,
they rise to find their shape.
One seed, the shelter
we need to wonder.
What belongs here, in this garden,
what takes root in any weather,
this love, the truth.
Can you feel the ache of a rose
that’s closing too soon,
wary of thorns?
For now I have some way
to stretch for a heaven
I can’t yet conceive.
* * *
When we walk in the pines
or in the water, golden light,
loons at dusk,
words I need to hear
greet me with silence.
What scavenges the gladiolas?
See what’s buried there
and stored up for winter?
When all desire withers,
water softening the edges,
letting go of wind in cattails,
the moon its waxing, the sky
never has to say one word
to sing its blue.
The dew and clouds carry on
their daily conversation with lakes
and gravity, what settles
every morning towards this next
ending, the ripest season
when pears hang heavy on the limbs,
when last night’s embers
cool and grey like pages,
a book I finish
far too late to awaken
the imagination.
* * *
Who you’re meant to be empties
like a mirror, a basin summer mornings
when the swans glide toward the grass,
our love in the weeds, the calm birds
swimming oblivious to what we meant.
They graced the marsh with solitude
and did not skim the day for excess treasure,
did not ask for more than what they’d need.
The loss we suffer in a word
misspoken or too soon,
the questions darkened on the tongue.
When I’m stunned and dumb, alone
at the window, a cardinal
pontificates in the branches.
The round world reddens,
quails with anticipation.
* * *
Would you rebuke the wind,
the rose its thorn?
One lily blooms in the garden,
opens to a purple congregation.
The robins usher down the stalks for alms.
What do you believe
when the feeder empties
and God shines forth in hunger?
Appetite opens like the hyacinth
and that word blossoms
on the tongue and falls,
spills its blood and grows.
It loves the sound of lost,
what’s hidden in the wind,
the heron’s stillness by the reeds.
The wind takes us, always,
home, past grass higher
than our heads to shelter
this conversation.
-Charles Coté
——
Charles Coté is the winner of the NinaAlvarez.net + Cosmographia Books Poem of the Month Contest, December 2017.
Charles Coté is a clinical social worker in Rochester New York. His chapbook, Flying for the Window, was published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press. A forthcoming full-length collection will be published by Tiger Bark Press. He teaches poetry at Writers & Books in Rochester, New York.
——
Many thanks to all those who submitted your beautiful and transcendent work.
You can still submit to the Poem of the Month Contest (ongoing), and to the Cosmographia Chapbook Contest (until Dec. 21, 2017).
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