A place in Africa

It was the sort of night that freezes strawberries.
Special things often come as invasions, like losing a whole field.
Yet, the crop when it's there, is a fact, simply evident.
Real invasion is, I know, more than losing a field of strawberries,
more like my friend Layah struggling again
with cancer now moved from
the lung to the brain.
I tell Layah about the strawberries.

You look well today, I tell her. I'm scared.
It's crazy to tell her that
but I'm hopeful - so I lie, she deserves better.
She gets up slowly, stumbles.
See? I can't move like I want, but still
I'd like to take another trip before…
I've heard there's a place in Africa
where the horizon curls up.

Paying my respects

In a bitter rain, I crowded up with other wet visitors, to enter Shakespeare's house. I pass a display of shoes from that time,
no right or left, the guide points out.
Leather uppers and metal platform lowers.

Good for a day like this, he chuckles.
My shoes have softened in the rain, wet seeps into the carpet.
The house stayed dry, I hear, with Oak from the forest of Arden
and stone from Wilmcote.

I lean forward, see writing fragments
a 1594 edition of Venus and Adonis
hear the man in front say: Shakespeare couldn't spell.
He took part in his own plays
the guide says, there was no full manuscript,
each actor received his own part with
stage instructions.

I go toward a window with shriveled frame, move
closer, see Thomas Carlyle, 1800 scratched below, then
Walter Scott. Keats in the center
Hardy marked in the right hand corner.

Damp and chilled, I join the procession - pay my respects,
think of my own writing, how I forget
most of what I've written once it's on the page.
Only remember what needs to stay.

In the rain again, in the rose garden, a Noblean
wide as a chrysanthemum and a short Tuscany bloom
withstand the wind. Hazlenuts, surfacing the yard
curve under foot.

Between the shutter slats

The gap between night and day is frail, hardly there at all.
There are only a few clear moments when day
moves into night. Not really a matter of time -
the space is so transparent.
I read about a man who planned his death, then on a mountain road
where wild birds confirm space, he turned to living.

It's been a long time since I had dark plans when spaces overlapped
didn't leave me air nor light. I used to think I knew enough
but I'm shocked into knowing what I didn't know
the way cold blasts when a door opens - like that man
on the steep road.

Today the day warms as it rounds to noon. At the turn of warming
I think of how another man's hair rolled against his neck
began slowly like words leaving a pen. I felt pretty
wanted to stay.

There are mangoes now, avocados and pears. The rain
has started again, hits the top of the hedge, then slaps the window.
Smells of summer are cleared away
then night comes, scratching.

I think of radishes bulging red, know that bland men
do not brood nor baffle like the cold shuffling by my bed.
I measure myself,
match up pictures.

Want to save things, get lost in details. Stay away
from days that bring the same thing again
shake off memories
going the wrong way.

Night covers me with a tight lid. I fall between the shutter slats
plugged into a moving space where
everything is equal
but never the same.

Home is where you go

Clouds flat as English dinner plates hang in the slick sky.
Still wrapped in British wool, my boots are marked where snow
crept over the sole, where ice licked the pavement.

The light is blinding as I look at the Alps. The snow looks necessary there, settled in buttermilk. The sky, starched and scalding: I turn
away as coffee is served: a small muffin, mint wafers also.
The man across the aisle laughs - ragged, rum-filled.
I push the window shade higher, yank the blanket to my shoulders.

On the screen – a woman says:
I've never lived in a place that doesn't have wheels, now I want
a place with a patio, overlooking the sea – a table with an umbrella, drink chocolate milk as the sun goes down.
Home is where you go when you fall she says.
No one can tell you how to get there.

The sky bleeds white, points to the shore, then steadies.
Tel Aviv is bathed in noon, shades of citrus; tops of trees
are where they should be. Cars twitch along.
The ground crunches.
Blue slips away to let the runway in.
Dry bushes mark highways on land
waiting for rain.