Maxine Chernoff
AS IF
if loved--could change the weather, could send-- if loved-- aspen through rooftops and make rain, could if loved make shiny petals spin, could if loved, change matter to attention. Plants blink and stars send energy toward the lonely billions, who, if loved, love as no others, love as themselves in patterns of tongue and lips, if loved send roots, send arms, send the tumbling grace of notes, if loved send grasses from brackish water toward salty air, send, if loved, attention, send, if loved the brassy strings of noble firs and the harmonies of roots maintaining ground: if loved, all possible gatherings spring from the eye, the hand, the blessed words of vapor and truth. If loved, the hummingbird asks the flower the hour of closing, not a grief but if loved a testing, a grace note.
LOCATION
Under an alphabet of clouds, earth's sweet breviary. We launch paper boats in light beam and shadow. Skilled at turning, able as elephants feeling the cold bones. Fumbling leaves on their junket to nowhere have their place in the story of days' steady grace. When you leave, the grass will cover my eyes. And under my eyelids, dark orchids and wild grapes climbing. The air will stir in its shroud.
Emergent
Like wasps stinging the unkind world where love is stretched and painted green the dumb world gleaming like bells from a tower in a painting of a valley, where a single puff of steam translates the scene. Where to travel on the empty train? To sonify a spinoff, to spin a pearl until its oyster closes on resistance, until its rock finds a ready landing in dark water, submerging to a place beyond eyes and the soft underpinning of words. In spring you want more, the pale leaf's beckoning, the heart's easy notice, sky and belief paint a notion. The crisp, unseeming world readies for the task. Tell it something it can believe.