G. C. Waldrep

 

THE RIGHT DIFFUSION OF HISTORY AND LONGING AT THE FALLOW NEXUS OF BOTANY, COMMERCE, PHYSICS, AND UNPREDICTABLE DESIRE

 

Following the path the moon makes on the turnpike I meet trees

         for the first time: the length of them, I mean, not abstracted

                  from xylem or phloem, panicle or leaf but all the more intimate

 

For parallel vectors sending the last rays of evening sun

         pinging out between us like glass beads on a tablet, like glass

                  beads about to be released from a trader's leather pouch, snug

 

In that holt then passed hand to greasy hand in the dapple

         of the clearing trust makes. The moon has seen this, she understands

                  a bad bargain whispering again to the space beyond the twin

 

Drums where balance is maintained, where particles one step

         up from the atomic rise and fall and rise in scripted mediation

                  between what is known and what is not, curve of the earth

 

And solid ground packed underfoot in August heat, the haggling

         in languages some want to believe are mutually exclusive.

                  Therefore calque. Therefore the coined word, lingua franca

 

Radiating into pidgin as the immune system of one party fails,

         starting with the vowels—the consonants broadening—smoothing

                  out into a kind of onionskin, translucent.

 

By then there's a house standing with glazed panes separating

         each window from its function. I call to you from behind one

                  but you're ten, a hundred, a thousand miles away.

 

Night falls and the moon whispers Love, as she does,

         skimming over the treetops so that each leaf moans half-awake

                  from its photosynthetic dream, stirring in the warm

 

Breath of a breeze the same way flesh in its second sleep

         comes faintly to itself when touched, when nudged not quite

                  to the limen of external genuflection: I open the window

 

And the breeze comes to me too, and I moan with the leaves, a little:

         shutting my eyes and pressing my hands to the lids until the phosphenes

                  begin their command performance, moire of pale cream shifting

 

Into violet as if the spectrum could be keeping more than mathematics

         from us, that cold logic with its synaesthetic sheen. The moon sinks lower

                  beneath the trick of perception distance confers, still troubling

 

The fresh buds at the tips of the sugar maples which reach out

         asking what it is she wants and how much it will cost, they would

                  pay anything, surely a betrayal is at hand—this moon

 

Will return tomorrow with her bill set down crazed in blood

         like a treaty, any torn indenture, the only bargain I can live up to,

                  easy as sap rising now. This time I promise. I'll try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

G.C. Waldrep's books of poetry are Goldbeater's Skin (Colorado Prize, 2003) and Disclamor (BOA Editions, forthcoming 2007).