Bluebells

“The temple bell stops—

but the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers.”

– Bashō

 

Truth is the quiet color of   the

wind over the ocean, the   temple

on the cliffside, the oxidized   bell

that sweeps clean the plain. It   stops

the dust from building up as a patina,   but

its mission is endless. For under   the sound

lies involuting earth that   keeps

unmaking itself. Its shape is always   coming

into being. Its roar is muffled. Its heat seeps   out

onto the plain, seeking the sharp smell   of

openness, someplace to pretend it’s always known—  the

chance to lie through the mouths of   flowers.

 

How to Stop the Bleeding

               Hook yourself        as a drying stag, blow 

                     and kick        away the stool, flail

            your soul        far from words

                             from here        to the long high window.

            The sky has never been       like the whites of mean eyes,

this pale cast of       blank wrists—

             imbalanced humors—       when there is none left you

unreddened, unredeemed       will be the blank             

        cumulus underbelly,       witness                           

the hard graft of gravity        to all you are left;      

                pulls a life down like       iron scraps on a magnet.  

  the river slips underground       the trout flail in the sand 

and there are young eyes in his palms,       and these nearly drained:               

            the new stigmata:       like you whose skies

                          those wounds       will never close but they

    will empty.

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Claire Beeli is a contributing writer and managing editor for the Nassau Weekly.