Selections from a Book-Length Sequence of Poems Titled The You That All Along Has Housed You: Lighter Than Air, and: For a Time I Believe I Can Touch Them, and: The You That All Along Has Housed You, and: Next Time Around

Lighter Than Air

I came into the world as a fistof cells, a pebble, aware of its weighteven as it floated in a night sea.And part of me remains

in the dark, astonished by the lifeI find myself in—its cities, its lights,swift travel, love, lies, heated roomsand soft places to sleep—wherewas I before?

I watched my father relinquish, in hisninety-sixth year, whatever hadanchored him to this world—the woods,the smell of motor oil, lake water,tools, the remembered tasteof tobacco—leaving the weight ofwhat he would be after fire changed boneto something like sand, and the resthad moved somewhere else.

Somewhere else.

I think I’ve been a boulder in other lives.Harder to move than I am in this one. Perhaps I’ll be finer in my next—at times I can almost silence the particulategoings-on in my head, noise of here-and-now,a granular frequency that may not be allbut is mostly what I hear.

I would like to know what my fathersaw while I sat beside himand breath and warmth left his bodyimperceptibly, with surprising gentlenessas though a feather had passed over us both.I would like to know if it changed me too.

For a Time I Believe I Can Touch Them

when silence and the absenceof ambient light conspire to removeall interference between meand the stars. It helps if moisturetoo, is absent, its molecule chainscondensed or broken apart,no longer weighing down the lighterelement, air, or blurring the scrimof night itself. Once I saw the wholeof a new moon, as though my eyescould touch the rest of what held aloftthat eyelash of light—as though my eyeswere hands restoring the whole vastshadowed sphere, adoring. It was midwinterin Vermont and minus seventeen,the air all clench and crystal, the coldhaving subtracted everything. Just meand the moon, held in an arctic fist, ourdark sides showing themselves each to each,me tired and a little tipsy, the moonperhaps wanting to share with somethinga part of itself long invisible and untouched.And I happened to be there. Touchedtoo, in my own invisible places, whichare many, and were consoled.

The You That All Along Has Housed You

was once a Druid, an unwed mother, a teller ofwhite lies, and a friar’s apprentice; prefers movementto meditation, altitude to ocean; has no tolerancefor overhead lighting but is drawn like a crowto glittery things—also to spiral-shaped things—can read people like tea leaves but can’t findthe scissors or the milk or clean socks even whenthey’re in plain sight; was once a painter insidea cave, and a healer slipping quiet as a spider froma wooden hut at dawn; knows how to work leatherand name the gemstones; knows that a teak bowlis not the right vessel for holding coins; grew angry at Godlifetimes ago—heartbroken—died broken—and nowgropes its way life after life toward light it still can’t define.

Next Time Around

I will master the pirouette and the splitsbefore the age of six (in this life it wasthe headstand). Or learn to typebefore I can write. Or climb frommy first glimpse of a riverbearing a clay jar of water on my head,my head proud on its stalk, the watersupple, alive in its enclosure.I might hear an ancient song risingunbidden in my throat. Or playa small stringed instrument while perchedin a tree. Beside the river. Singingwith the river in its own language,having stepped withoutlooking back into the lifeI...