Instead, there are shaded hollows beneath maple trees thick with
fiddleheads rolled tightly. Some fiddleheads are beginning to
unfold. The wood and cinnamon ferns are green like photoshopped
greens. There is no war. Or blood feuds or who lived in the land
when. Or who killed first or how to load bullets in guns or fire
anti-aircraft missiles. Or laws. Or studying laws and Talmud and
governments back to stoning. No lighting the night. Fiddleheads
and junkyards. The cruise ships collapse on the dark ocean floor.
The male Blue whale booms its song. Tell me. Will sunsets exist
without a memory of sunsets? What am I without words? How can
a poem exist without remembered words?! Is that even possible?
Where will the words go?? You caused this mess. You who will no
longer hear ghost stories under kerosene lamps with sounds of
crickets. And the crashing ocean. La Llorona in a flowing white
dress and her hair very long covering all of her face and crying for
her lost children. You cannot see her face. The wisdom lost from
creases and burrows on your face. Not the scent of your father’s
Aqua Velva, not his death. Not death. No memory of the infant
seeking the nipple.
Here are five wrinkled fingers.
white space
where I s wim
cav e rnous h ole of his mouth
pounding rhythm
rippling rise and fall
of voices
the press of snow
This is just to say.
The Blue whale sings
/after Claire Wahmanholm:
Poem with No Children In It
