This was on Interstate Ten in Los Angeles
and it became, magically, a slow two-lane road
with puddles of water. Stark white leaves,
white trees, leaves floating off the trees,
gravel white beneath, gritty and crunchy
with white leaves; I stopped the convertible
and lay down on the ground, my cheek
next to the water, weeping. And sunlight,
sunlight. Five birds one by one flew in,
settled on a single white branch in a row.
The branch slanted downward toward the water.
One by one the birds sliding down, lifted off,
wings flashing, and rose into paradise.
I lay down, my cheek against the water,
choking, sobbing, it was too beautiful
for the mind to bear. Suddenly the freeway
with its rushing cars just stopped
and here we were in this backwater road,
the sky blazing clear soft blue, the buildings
morphing back into light, water puddling the road
reflecting light, the grit and pebbliness
of white quartz gravel. White trees lining the road,
shimmery feathery lifting leaves, and white birds
only slightly darker coming in to settle.
Ah, one by one lifting, swoosh, then one,
then one, rapture of gliding then lifting
from the very tips of branches, cars passing
slowly on this two-lane country road. I said to my son,
I bet you can't believe I'm from here, can you?

Limen

            Now the souls gathered...
                            —Book XI, The Odyssey

Red berry of my heart
be the blood these shadows seek.

Where the tooth-edged dogwood blossoms
at the threshold of the pines

lie down among tall grasses.

Let the slow rains pearl your hair
let your snail skin grow translucent

and your throat's soft chirring flow
in the twilight's white-tongued river.



Freight Train

                    for Chuck


Your calm breaks. Once.
You tell Jon it's like a freight train
nothing can stop;
it's rushing South, black train,
and gathering speed. All night it nears,
all day while light
falls tender on the shabby
branches past forests and rivers
it nears; October opens,
sweetgum stars litter the dusty hillsides,
and when I walk in Bailey's Woods,
late cicadas shrill
among the heart-shaped
trailing vineleaves, but
what is it to you
if spiderlines trace the dazzle
of forested sunlight and shadow?

Boxes of food, warm blanket for your journey—



Dent de Broc

                Dîtes-moi où, n'en quel pays . . .

1

I am Claude
I am bending over a fish
who swims beneath the ice
this water that holds me on its plate
while the crows shuffle their black cards
and the stars spin
The night my mother died she said
"Claude, Claude, think of paradise"
and when my father returns, bearing the
rabbit, fur and blood
on his rust-stained jacket
I will know that snow-starved look so well

If you come to the Lion d'Or you will see me
When I lie on my bed the earth spins
like fire
like the miller's daughter's hair

I will never marry unless my mother takes me by the hand

2

I look at you and look at you
wondering what it is you are trying to say
I am Anne

I prayed to be burned because then God would speak to me
split heart, the yolk of lilies

burning glass to put out all the lights in all the windows

Though the women call me now to help with the fires I do not join them
I lie in my bed and dream of winter, dream of the crows
                                                                          in the terrible branches

dream my newborn daughter
with the blue vein at her temples has died

Barefoot I search the snow for her
the pond the fires
                    the mountain fields
search everywhere, so great is my fear

When I wake
I find on my pillow
a lump of coal and a sprig of red clover


For Anyone, For You*


You roll your burdensome days to the top of the mountain,
then walk home through the crowded city streets
full of the ache you know,
the small lines around your eyes
guarding against your humiliation.

Come to my table and drink my wine.
Then I will cook for you, veal paprikash on thick blue plates,
and aromatic rice, and slivers of blood oranges.
We will talk as we wait for night, watching
the shadows grow, the sun as it burns vermilion.

It is so little that I offer, is it all that I can give you?
Did I, becoming sage, give up the power that I once had—
One year the fire ran down my arms from the awakened
chakras, and my hands on the delicate spines
knew what they were doing.

"Your majesty," Cabeza de Vaca wrote, "encounters
have become my meditation." From long crossing on the desert
all his safety burned away and he found
that he could heal, with blind tenderness he
stretched forth his baffled, sunstruck fingers.

When I was young I knew touch was holy.
Delicate, small-boned spines of the bodies of strangers.
I was the lost and found, you could park your grief
and rise up new and radiant in me, as those whom
Cabeza de Vaca touched turned away into the desert, blossoming.



*Note: "For Anyone, for You":  Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was treasurer of the Narváez expedition in 1528, which attempted to conquer Florida with 400 men.  All but four died in a series of disasters.  Cabeza de Vaca wandered through northern Mexico until 1536, traveling from tribe to tribe, and in his solitude discovered his healing powers, which left him once he was reunited with the Spanish.  The line is quoted from Haniel Long's "interlinear" translation, The Power Within, of Cabeza de Vaca's account of his journey.

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ANN FISHER-WIRTH has recent or forthcoming poems in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Feminist Studies, Petroglyph, Natural Bridge, and other journals.  A 1997-1998 Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Council for the Arts enabled her to finish a first book manuscript of poems, "Blue Window."  Her chapbook Guessing at Distances was a finalist in last year's Center for Book Arts chapbook competition judged by Eavan Boland and Sharon Dolin, and she was a semifinalist in last year's Nation/ Discovery competition.

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