Alice Coltrane, her harp, fills in the cracks of me
With gold. The Japanese call it Kintsugi.
Where the vessel broken, only gold will permit
Its healing. Its history. It's How the Stars Understand
Us, lemon flowers on the skin of the earth,
Mosquito filled with the blood that sirens its fat,
Long life. Who isn't dying to leave this house,
To go masked only in the shadow of one's animal-
Breathing, lonesome, unprotected, knowing
Nothing lives as foreignness or death,
That the black dog with the sword in his mouth
Passing from house to house will not bring its itch,
Its ticks and locks clogging our lungs, a permanent
Quarantine—nothing that a little gold
Melted to ichor and spilled into the veins
Won't seam. Everything is a blue divergence
On a harp, the red bells in the purple
Crepe myrtle this morning forgetting
That soon they will be the corpses the spring
Tree kneels to observe. No, no, they remember,
As everything dying remembers its mother's
Name. Say your mother's name. Not for power
But for the glimpse of power, to be more
Than a hesitation, gold filling in the cracks,
A window thrown open for no other reason
Than to continue a blue feeling, nothing
Needed other than this devotion to darkness,
A Fire Gotten Brighter, my daughter holding
My small name in her mouth, light-broken
Beloved, my daughter—a window thrown
Open—her voice, gold filling in the cracked
Basketball court of me, announcing all
Nature, all nature will be dead for life soon.
Copyright © 2022 by Roger Reeves, Best Barbarian (W.W. Norton)
