I. UP/DOWN
MOMENTS, CAUSES
Modern man has used cause-and-effect as ancient man used the gods to give order to the Universe. This is not because it was the truest system, but because it was the most convenient.
âHENRI POINCARĂ
Moments arrive like mothers, inevitably
seamless and charming. History
is thunder following lightning,
two moments from one cause,
the seen and then the heard.
Even the blind, when a light is shone
from a heatless, strangered distance,
know the silent lightâs direction:
up or downâthere, there, now.
But wait! When out of time, out of place,
one particular thing becomes another
unseemingly: the overlapping
like tops and bottoms of waves that is metaphor.
What are mothers for,
if not to teach us to swim
by showing us the motions of arms and legs
and planets, of flavors and colors, fathers and lovers,
and holding our young bellies
until we put our faces in the water
with our breaths held?
Water, then, is breathtaking,
and we float, suspended
in we know not what
until, knowing, we glide.
THEORIES OF HANDWRITING
Remember the writing tablet,
each line wide with its dashed center.
Remember the cursive alphabet
circling the classroom
above the blackboard where everyone
could see it, white letters on green,
and the word cursive itself
such decadence at seven years old.
Remember the patience,
moving pencil to top of line,
the curve, the half-heights
of lower case, repetition.
Remember how hard
the G, the D, how easy the I.
The balance, remember the balance
above and below, up and down,
the importance of length,
and the looping, so unnecessary
but lovely and full
and correct.
~
In Latin class, who am I
to tell the difference
between accent marks, to know
which are simply innate sound,
to mark other syllables with import
like stamens
dashing visibly from orchids?
I sit at a table alone in a next-door room
with a nosebleed, small clots in my throat
let loose, red-soaked tissues,
a bouquet in my hands
while the rest of class conjugates
unwildly and without
the inflection I think possible
if markings mean anything.
~
I cannot tell one nunâs handwriting
from anotherâs, nor from my grandmotherâs.
All the same, all perfect.
I guess, though, at their years,
the now-thoughtless focus.
~
In written Mandarin, autumn is crops on fire.
The language is tenseless, numberless,
and, therefore, open to suggestion,
suggestive. In Latin, suggerere, to carry under
so that metaphor is what underlies,
a tunnel burrowed beneath one thing
to another, the meaning carried through.
Juxtaposition requires no tunnel.
And Mandarinâs sorrow
is autumn on the heart.
~
I was reprimanded for printing,
told that I was not revealing
what God had made me.
Cursive is from course, as in flowing,
as in blood coursing through your veins
like sepals and petals loosening
to bloom, taking shape.
How perceptive of someone to recognize
that handwriting is self-expression,
how bold of some nun to say this
to my face.
~
The thumb down the jaw
like a bonnet string for female
and then the hands held out
to hold the imagined baby
for mother. And male
is the fingers coming together
with the thumb as if
grasping the brim of a hat.
The father I know
is the thumb tapping temple,
fingers wiggling.
The question is merely a stroke
with the right index finger
across the left digits
or the index finger circling
in front of the lips
as if applying lipstick
on a round mouth.
And the answer,
three extended fingers
moved in an arc
across the heart,
shoulder to shoulder: we.
~
A friend confides in me
that the Chinese character for factory
is now just a roof without machinery,
that immense is full of emptiness too,
that the written language now confuses
after, behind, and queen.
In writing, nothing is unintentional,
not even confusion,
and revolution can be simplification.
~
Remember handwritten stories
with crayon drawings. Remember
doodles in the margins during class,
the flowersâ five-petal corollas
and curved petioles, pointed leaves
and the words on the page, lighter,
less planned
but wholly ordered by something
beyond hand and pen,
the words unthinking
next to the bursting, marginal ivy.
Remember a grandfatherâs recipes,
a list of ingredients
without instructions
on large index cards: French toast
with thick bread left out overnight to dry,
salad dressing with lemon juice
squeezed fresh into the oil,
chicken salad with capers.
Remember his hands, holding
a fork, reading, and, after, a cigarette
drifting curlicues.
~
The handwritten gives way,
eventually relinquishes fingers to keyboard,
as if to first frost.
Still, I remember and begin with pen
and ruled paper and their ability
to strike through
and allow me to still see it
there under the dark line
of my new intentions.
Jo...