The house has been

under construction

For as long as she remembers.

She comes, she goes

And each time,

Something has changed.

One day the backyard

Is a jungle, the next

A cement playground.

The family portraits rearrange themselves

Or pose, smiling separately,

As though for a photograph.

Sometimes they look

Frightened, their eyes fixed

On something just behind her.

One day she comes home

And her father is gone.

“He fell into a crack

On the wall,”

Her mother tells the policemen.

“There are no cracks

On the walls,” they say.

“Just wait,” she says,

Runs her hand over the walls’

New smoothness.

“They were here

Just yesterday.”

The policemen leave,

Murmuring about

Crazy women, crazy girls.

The three sigh

Together. Under construction,

her mother promises,

Just a little while longer.

Picture the traveler,

Hermes even,

Not old, now,

Not ever old,

Sitting awake in his bed

Or perhaps not a bed,

But a cradle

In a cave

In the single day

When he was one of us.

I see him now, don’t you?

Dark curls, bright eyes

Already full of mischief

And — something like

Bitterness,

That Hope will not let

Harden.

He is so ready to leave

That he sleeps with

His shoes on.

His first words were

Real estate advertisements:

One cave, large enough for two,

Well-furnished,

Available by

The end of the week,

No cosigner required,

Will trade

For furs and food.

I wander by her shop near midnight,

watch as she sweeps and feeds the black cat

she insists is a stray.

She comes outside to blow out the candles,

runs her fingers over the flame. I try it, too,

and she cackles. “Closer, darling.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” I ask, though she is right:

there is no heat, so close our fingers

pass to the wick.

“Real witches never burn, of course,”

she says, her voice as distant as

a memory.

 

 

I asked my father once,

What is the most dangerous animal in the world?

And he replied

With the thoughtfulness of a scientist,

A tiger,

Or perhaps a wild boar —

And which would win in a fight?

I asked, so I would know

For certain

The more fearsome.

A boar, he decided,

For it could hide better.

And that was that — a boar,

The most dangerous animal in the world.

 

But think! An alligator can run,

Can climb, can snap its teeth, 

Can walk on land and swim in water.

Couldn’t an alligator kill

A boar? And a hippopotamus

An alligator, to be sure,

With one snap of its teeth.

And what about

Killer whales? Great whites?

The squids deep down under

The ocean, that feast on passing

Humpbacks? Are they not dangerous?

 

I ask my mother, the doctor:

Are we the most dangerous animal

In the world? We, who destroy 

Only by living?

She shakes her head,

Dismissive, endless in her practicality.

And tells me no. 

 

She says, Nothing spreads disease

Faster than a mosquito.

Across countries, continents, oceans.

And that is that. 

A mosquito

is the most dangerous animal

in the world.

A man sees Artemis bathing,

a mountain pool at midnight, her place of power.

Her hair is the black river’s glass,

her skin bone-white and moonlit,

her eyes the great twinkling dark of the night sky

and her smile filled

with baying hounds and

a child-like simplicity

a man might mistake

for harmlessness.

In this, our chosen reading

of the myth, he only pauses too long;

in others,

he will try to

force himself upon her.

 

No matter: the insult

remains the same.

The goddess sees him

his mouth open, catching flies,

his eyes glazed;

and Actaeon becomes prey,

a stag, devoured

by his own hounds. How

awful, how evil, I had thought,

when once I read this story. All that

for looking? How could anyone

fault him that?

But I am older now.

I understand.

 

I think sometimes

Of the uselessness of art.

A poem cannot

Feed the hungry —

Or make love

Where there is none,

Or raise the dead,

Or save the dying.

A poem cannot

Save your soul, 

(Can it?)

Though here, God

Or something like God

Will say,

Try not to raise

The dead, my dear,

But raise instead the living.

 

 

Can’t follow your own advice, can you?

But if you could, you wouldn’t need

A spell or books or

Castles in the air.

Very well, then —

A second spell

I’ll make for you

For which you cannot fail

To follow through:

A spell for growing up.

 

First stretch towards the stars;

Drink water and eat well.

Don’t worry if things ache or leak,

It is a growing spell.

Then say goodbye to childish things,

The things you’d wished to have

And leave behind all that you loved

Like lakes and lily pads.

The schedule’s quite important,

To becoming grown I hear,

You’ll have to wake up every day

With an alarm in your ear

Then go straight to work,

And never play

And finally return.

There are few new things,

In a grown up’s life, you’ll learn.

 

What’s that? You’d like to

opt out? Ha.

Then do what grownups do:

Deal with your mistakes

As you make them;

There’s no magic spell

For you.

Make your choices wisely, well,

and follow —

Follow through.

That’s how to be a grownup

And it’s a hard, hard, thing

To do.

Here and there, a set of footprints. Happisburgh, Acahualinca, Langebaan, Ileret, and Laetoli. When they are gone, what else remains?

I write because I am frightened, though writing frightens me too, sometimes: frightened to die without being known, without knowing. And I write because I am brave: brave enough to live, though living is harder, and at times worse than dying, which is after all only falling asleep in a large room, with good company.

Millennia pass, and we craft a one-sided knife; then the two-sided blade. How many more years did it take, to invent the flute? Or is music only another kind of fire, and language the predecessor of the wheel? Words will get you places.

I write out of gratitude, for the amber moon and the slowly opening jasmine, for warm sweet things baking in the cool dark night. I write for strawberries pressed into layers of clotted cream, a dessert shared with my mother in the blinding brilliance of the day.

I write because even the sounds we make are arbitrary, and because the universe is stretching forever outward toward cold dispassionate darkness.

Ultimate reality is unsalvageable; I can only change your world, one word at a time, with no guarantee that it will be for the better. Like Babel, my creation is untenably ambitious; and while I build bridges rather than towers with my words, the walls between our synaptic cities remain impenetrable.

I write because my mother will not always be here, and what will I have done while she shares the world with me? How will she know me?

I write because one day I am going to die, and I too would leave footprints.