Now All Mistakes Conspire, and: Between the Shore and the Open Water

NOW ALL MISTAKES CONSPIRE

It’s almost starting to ring true again,

about fear being the sturdiest bond possible betweenany two people: I’ve never beenso frightened; I’ve never feltmore close. You make shelter—I mean the kindthe mind sometimes misses especially—seem noharder to find than those

      stranded-looking nests I seeeverywhere, now the orchard’s leaveshave all but finished falling, what’s a nestanyway, but a weaving together of stray weeds,lost remnants found, whatever jetsam mightmean here—something, I hope, though the sea’sfar away—what’s

      shelter, anyway, if notonly for now, while we need it. You’ll have seen howthe present tends at once to eclipse and

reinforce the past. What’s the more usefulquestion, though—how?

      or why? Sometimes, whenthe backdrop of winter sky behind the trees’bare branches goes red at sunset,I think equally of stained glass and of one thingmaking up for another—and I can’tdecide. Is the most difficult part of lovewhat can look like the simplest part—staying,when love as a fixed requirementdisappears, and no one asks where it went to? Oras with certain

      ones of the wilder animals,for whom superior power comessecond, finally, to discernment, being ableto pinpoint the enemy’s weakness and withneither warning nor thought exploit it—what if that’s it?

BETWEEN THE SHORE AND THE OPEN WATER

What injures the hiveinjures the bee, says MarcusAurelius. I say not wantingto hurt another, this late,should maybe more thancount, still, as a formof love—

        skull of an ox,    from which a smattering of stars          keeps rising . . .

Did you knowthere’s an actual plantcalled honesty—for its seedpods,how you can see

straight through.Who I am. And how I treated you,and how you feel. Tell me everything.

Rigoberto Gonzalez, Sharon Olds, and Carl Phillips

Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Nichols

Airea D. Matthews and Rigoberto Gonzalez

Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Nichols

Yusef Komunyakaa, just before receiving a Callaloo Lifetime Achievement Award

Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Nichols

Gregory Pardlo

Photograph courtesy of Jerriod Avant

A rapt audience at NYU.

Photograph courtesy of Stacy Parker Le Melle