The Author to the Dead, and: Luam & the Flies, and: Luam Mending Clothes, and: Luam to the Dead

    Beloveds, beneath the surfaceof your last place, the tiny, oblivious fishes

form wreaths above the sea grasses& their long reach—

Some mornings, in my own city far away,I run to greet “you” come to me as sea, & carry

myself out into your long, dark time like a child meetingits older cousins. I touch your teeth & give you the single word of my body.

I am a woman again, at the side of Aboy Haile’s bed. Aboy who is 96.He is brushing my acacia hair. He is holding my arm.

He says, moving his hand to mean “all around us,”that this is my home. He means Adi Sogdo,

but he also means the world.Though I think, in “America,”

that I am There &he is Here, that we are different, or far,

really, we are each other. My bones areyour bones, he says. His teeth are my teeth

& my smiling is his smiling.He holds my arm tight, until it is a stone, a bone.

He smoothes my hairwith force. I am a horse.

The long, dark skin of the water,the talk, talking Aboy of the water,

the brushing back, brushing back my acacia hair,washing my face. When we are done

I cross the sea back into air& return to the traffic of the streets I know.

I am marked by the dead, your sea-lettersof salt & weeping.

Now I am ready to lay my self downon the earth, to listen to the instructions

for how to talk of love & land, to singof home in the horrible years, & to fill

my language, like the stars do,with the light, anyway, of a future tense.

Luam & the flies

umbertide, asmera, new york, october, 2013

It was the end of the world.The world was ending. I sat

in my house with the flies. Thoughthe night was dense, was long, we

tried to wait for light, to last.But the wind at the doors. &

darkness knuckled, flashed its teeth.Outside, the other houses,

outside, the solitaryfield, tall singularity

of the mama tree. What wasstrong was razed, what was alone.

I thought we would, plural, survive.But I saw the deaths of flies.

I watched them clean their wings &faces, then die in the night,

watching quietly out &,looking, facing it. Morning

I saw them at the windowsas though remembering the

green, last world. Their legs curled inthe syllable of struggle,

or sleep. I counted six aweswho died in the night, whose sounds

died in degrees. Trying to learn,I picked them gently up by

their wings & studied, then placedthe six onto one, white plate:

six corpses or comas, sixI tried to see but took to

the window & poured them outfor the dirt & rosemary.

    If I were moored to place, ifI had believed that this would

always be my home, if Iwere to be lucky. One day

their descendants would be mine,would handle my death, too, with

their small legs, yellow mouths &wound-hungers. Powerless to

brush them from my teeth & eyes,I’d be bright finally with

their taking, a city ofeggs, a harvest, an “&”; the

emerald signage of bodies.I would be a kind of port

or harbor—Finally, themagain.

Luam mending clothes

umbertide, italy

The life of my thread,as I pull it through the clothes I mend,is long.

The life of the cypress rows& the roof of the housein a time of peacein a country that bledours dry for its peaceis also so long.

But the life of my fliesat the windows, in the yard,covering the fruit,bringing messages, always,of the dead, their livesare not long. Every secondthey acquaint me & acquaint me withthe littleness of their deaths,the ticking we are, each, built with.

It is true. For now, I live& must love everyone.

Second I Borrow,Breath I...