The Curvature of Earth

Red beans in a flat basket catch sunlight-

we enter a village built in the shape
of an ox, stride up an arched bridge

over white lilies; along houses, water,
coursing in alleyways, connects ponds.

Kiwis hang from branches by a moon

door. We step into a two-story hall
with a light well and sandalwood panels:

in a closet off the mahjong room
is a bed for clandestine encounters.

A cassia tree shades a courtyard

corner; phoenix-tail bamboos line
the horse-head walls. The branching

of memory resembles these interconnected
waterways: a chrysanthemum odor

permeates the air, but I can't locate it.

Soldiers fire mortars at enemy bunkers,

while Afghan farmers pause then resume

slicing poppy bulbs and draining resin.
A caretaker checks on his clients' lawns

and swimming pools. The army calls

he swerves a golf cart into a ditch -
the surf slams against black lava rock,

against black lava rock- and a welt
spreads across his face. Hunting for

a single glow-in-the-dark jigsaw piece,

we find incompletion a spark.
We volley an orange Ping-Pong ball

back and forth: hungers and fears
spiral through us, forming a filament

by which we heat into cesium light.

And, in the flowing current, we slice
back and forth- topspin, sidespin -

the erasure of history on the arcing ball.
Snow on the tips of forsythia dissolves

within hours. A kestrel circles overhead,

while we peer into a canyon and spot
caves but not a macaw petroglyph.

Yesterday, we looked from a mesa tip
across the valley to Chimayó, tin roofs

glinting in sunlight. Today, willows

extend one-inch sh0ots; mourning cloaks
flit along the roadside; a red-winged

blackbird calls. Though the March world
leafs and branches, I ache at how

mortality fissures the lungs:

and the pangs resemble ice forming,
ice crystals, ice that resembles the wings

of cicadas, ice flowers, drift ice, ice
that forms at the edges of a rock

midstream, thawing hole in ice, young

shore ice, crack in ice caused by the tides.
Scissors snip white chrysanthemum stalks -

auburn through a black tea-bowl rim -
is water to Siberian irises as art

is to life? You have not taken care

of tying your shoes-a few nanoseconds,
a few thousand years- water catlaps

up the Taf Estuary to a boathouse
herring shimmer and twitch in a rising net

rubbing blackthorn oil on her breasts

in a shed, words; below the cliff, waves
where i åa d e ö means island in the river -

while a veteran rummages through trash,
on Mars, a robot arm digs for ice-

when the bow lifts from the D string,

"This is no way to live," echoes in his ears.
Sandhill cranes call from the marsh,

then, low, Out of the southwest,
three appear and drop into the water:

their silhouettes sway in the twilight,

the marsh surface argentine and black.
Before darkness absorbs it all, I recall

locks inscribed with lovers' names
on a waist-high chain extending along

a path at the top of Yellow Mountain.

She brushes her hair across his chest;
he runs his tongue along her neck

reentering the earth's atmosphere,
a satellite ignites. A wavering line

of cars issues north out of the bosque.

The last shapes of cranes dissolve
into vitreous darkness. Setting aside

binoculars, I adjust the side-view
mirror-our breath fogs the windshield.

A complex of vibrating strings:

this hand, that caress, this silk
gauze running across your throat,

your eyelids, this season where
tiny ants swarm large black ones

and pull apart their legs. Hail shreds

the rows of lettuces beyond the fence;
water, running through sprinklers,

swirls. A veteran's wince coincides
with the pang a girl feels when

she masters hooked bows in a minuet.

And the bowing is a curved line,
loop, scrawl, macaw in air. A red-

winged blackbird nests in the dark;
where we pruned branches, starlight

floods in over the earth's curvature.