The Swarm

I wanted you to listen to the bells,
holding the phone out the one small window
to where I thought
the ringing was -



Vespers scavenging the evening air,
headset fisted against the huge dissolving



where I stare at the tiny holes in the receiver's transatlantic opening
to see evening-light and then churchbells



send their regrets, slithering, in -
in there a white flame charged with duplication - .
I had you try to listen, bending down into the mouthpiece to whisper, hard,



can you hear them (two petals fall and then the pppppppppp is wholly
changed) (yes) (and then another yes like a vertebrate enchaining)
yes yes yes yes



We were somebody. A boat stills on a harbor and for a while no one
appears,
not on deck, not on shore,
only a few birds glancing round,



then - before a single face appears - something
ppppppppppppppp announces itself
like a piece of the whole blueness broken off and thrown down,
a roughness inserted,



yes,
the infinite variety of having once been,
of being, of coming to life, right there in the thin air, a debris re-
assembling, a blue transparent bit of paper flapping in also-blue air,



boundaries being squeezed out of the blue, out of the inside of the blue,
human eyes
held shut,



and then the whisking-open of the lash - the be thou, be thou -



- a boat stills in a harbor and for a while no one
appears - a sunny day, a crisp Aegean blue,
easy things - a keel, a sail -



why should you fear? -
me holding my arm out into the crisp December air -
beige cord and then the plastic parenthetical opening wherein I



have you - you without eyes or arms or body now - listen to



the long ocean between us



- the plastic cooling now - this tiny geometric swarm of
openings sending to you



no parts of me you've touched, no places where you've



gone -



Two petals fall - hear it? - moon, are you not coming soon? - two fall



From SWARM (Ecco Press, 2000)