Brenda Hillman

Extra Hidden Life, among the Days


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shade sense

      blind made what tense

      pigmy cypress trill or hill

      (knowledge did not wreck experience—)

      weather warped & nations fell

      over the edge of the miracle—

      —What thus doth keep love safe, brittle rhymer

      —Depends on what you mean by safe, little climber

      (To know without fear the mind of another)

      Some friends had broken up—;

      i didn’t think they should,

      but still… (The bees had also

      flown away to the chrome woods—

      maybe the workers went ahead, but how?

      No one understood—) The lovers

      lifted yeses then a no …

      Why? (let’s not get into

      a whole thing about it …) Their hours never

      snagged despair; why could they

      not have loved each other more?

      One day the hive returned,

      like a gold thought in the gray

      context of an oversight …

      the lovers would find others

      all too soon with basic need less

      passionate than the first; i went on

      with my reading & the bees worked

      right up to the finished dusk

      as if their house

      would stay near mine in a drought-

      tested thicket remote in time—

      Transfixed by the bow

      only simply above: sighs of wood

      & horsehair breath of the cello,

      your azure perceptions /// …

      (does it perceive also?)

      as if pierced by saudades!

      This night far from your pain tangled

      with frog song

      (such distance to the next town)

      & your suffering cannot be measured—

       não a luar

      in this universal background—

      —to have made the mistake

      of not caring —for one day! —

      you stood in the parking lot …

      where, on the ground: globe

      of the wasp gall (the pupae

      cannot peek out

      through tiny Garamond ellipsis dots

      of the outer shell …)

      when suddenly, above:

       grrr rrrrr gimme gimme gimme

      squirrels trying to mate

      in the oak, the dire twain

      of their warring tails …

      (sex is so much trouble outdoors!)

      —the fear the loved ones

      would end up alone

      since humans will not modify

      desire, & nothing

      comes together anymore—

      democracy & time,

      from da: to divide—

      there was the love you could not

      live without, & you

      had lost it, though you stood

      inside the life

      that gave you life—

      —& heard a humming, like the

      start of time …

      & when the wind agreed,

      the knobs of song molecules fit into

      the frog, a knowledge heard

      the humming, without fear—

      (puffball, spinning, among

      the dimensions: —

      wears itself out,

      wears itself out, by evening …)

      to know, what, in a day?

      to have thought

      the children safe, & the little woods—

      that thought must be given back …

      not safe, & lost — you could

      text but they might not text back …

      Not to be undone by this.

      (even if?) even if.

      (even if?) even if.

      … to rest

      with what must be given up: there was

      a breaking at the start of time,

      then love that

      broke the breaking …

      —Listening,

      past the hazel bank…. the changed life

      lies under, prior

      to purr—; new species grow

      cold spores, inside

      casing strewn … Groups & nations

      howl unseen … The mind

      god-labors

      pumping itself green. It’s

      then your true eye

      gathers its half

      loves; pollen floats

      upstream in doubt,

      in the shadow of a drought;

      (put the phone down,

      you’re just about

      out of opposites, oh,

      dark evening— sink …)

      In brief

      woods, there’s lignan

      at work, past profit,

      such comfort to decay, wood

      mind would, so small

      to say: “apart, fled” —!

      Hold in hope, not … out! not to go

      out among them, yet …

      (to have important work

      among the dead—)