Brandon Cesmat
June 11th, 2017 by admin
From our 20th Anniversary Anthology
Light in All Directions Brandon Cesmat
Light in All Directions
I felt your gaze all day as you drove the road toward me.
That night in the observatory, we leaned into the telescope,
held our breath to focus on Jupiter with five moons
each lit like half-closed blind eyes,
all that old light taking eight minutes to reach us on
a planet close enough to catch light from a star.
Then you found Saturn, made out the rings standing on knife-point
and the band of shadow
the dark older than the light
the same dark just beyond the porch lamp,
the same constant dark between any two people.
A star sends its light in all directions
like a king dispatching navies that sink in the crossing except
one ship that arrives as you have
to make new whatever light survives.
Under that dome, dark so people could see stars,
I leaned against the wall and only your light fell onto me.
New Poem
Howl, Hoot and Poem Disguise
for Leonidas
1 a.m. and I can’t sleep like the owl
in the pine outside the front door.
He hoots a five-beat song with three notes.
and then rests while a car passes over the hill.
A coyote above the hum of
the air compressor on the casino roof.
He cries again at the top of the canyon.
I harmonize an inversion;
owl adds his refrain.
All of us nightsinging out,
then breathing in and listening.
What have we rustled out of cover?
I’m hungry for sleep but too tired
to tear the night apart and swallow it
as the dawn will.
At noon the canyon caves hold night’s tongue.
Singing is the sound of hunger.
It’s what we do with empty mouths.
It’s what we live on when silence is not enough.
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