Driving home in the dusk
the old houses—too luminous
in the dark—
golden windows transparent,
grandmother’s table, drifts of curtains and
bedside armchairs—
lamps like sentinels shining with elegant life.
The bursts of bad news wash over us
as we drive home, chop onions
throw spice in the soup
stack pillows on the sagging couch
the ancient TV blinking on now sleepily
a film we’ve seen before,
we watch each other
grow old in the orange gold
light inside these walls.
Maybe we’ll light a fire,
make the soup more festive,
these actor’s faces—so beautiful—
young when we were young…
but wait—what was I
saying about the numinous life?
It does not disappear as we do, it fills
house after house
centuries falling gently
and we are humble inside it
thankful for its protection
from the dark.
One Tuesday, it just happens.
The weather stops being
your friend.
The temperature outside
is now 111. Not
75, and you are
caught up in it—
your plans inadequate—
your legs rubbery and
somehow not yours.
You had complimented
your own luck. That eternal spring
you seemed to live in—
and now, this new season
shrivels your grass
burns your mouth with its
unrelenting heat.
Everyone feels it
of course.
But you, it is your time
to know
that your timev
is not
what you believed.
Someday it will be discovered
that God exists in
an unnamed curl of the
inner ear of the human.
In the spine of the dolphin
the left forepaw of the wolf.
Someday it will be understood
that the Goddess lives
in an unnamed area
between heart and chin—
an involuntary muscle
that lifts the head
in joy.
Someday it will be found
that 2 of the 4 chambers
of the human heart
create language
another generates music
and the fourth — gesture.
When any of them is stilled,
heart attacks.
I have no doubt that
my great grandchildren’s
grandchildren
will take it for granted
as we take for truth
the cholesterol blocked artery
and salt hardened veins.
No doubt.
The neverness of truth
The way it is hidden.
only when it is
outside of us
do we believe it.
Jill Wright’s poetry books are A Child’s Christmas in Oklahoma, Wild Stars, an anthology which she also edited, and Longing to Light, which has been adapted into a play in verse and performed at Whitefire Theatre and Greenway Court Theatre. Her work has recently been published or is forthcoming in more than 30 journals including: Atlanta Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Phantasmagoria, The Distillery, PMS (poem/memoir/story), Hawai’i Review, Homestead Review, Eclipse, Eureka Literary Magazine, Spillway, Mindprints, Baltimore Review, Nimrod International, Xavier Review and The Texas Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and The Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2011
THE NEW
RULES OF
W R I T I N G
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