above all
I’ve cosmically transmuted the atmospheric bone
the dementia enveloped by protest
by turquoise weight
& somnific solar inclusion
singing by eclipse torrent
by waves of flame erupting from mirrors & dreams of post-
extinction
– from “Song in Barbarous Fumarole of the Japanese Crested Ibis,” by Will Alexander
Then, there! We watched the thin edge disappear—
The obvious stole over us like awe,
That it was our own silhouette we saw,
Slow perhaps to us moon-gazing here
(Reaching for each other’s fingertips)
But sweeping like a wing across that stark
Alien surface at the speed of dark.
– from “Sublunary,” by A. E. Stallings
Last night my sweetheart woke up just long enough to see the earth’s shadow slip up onto the surface of the moon and take a bite, but we missed most of the libran lunar eclipse. This morning I sit in front of the low illumination of the computer screen, listening to the candleflame flickering in its glass containment, and imagine what magic was cast over our sleeping bodies when the whole of the earth passed between moon and sun. What new songs did the garden plants learn to sing from that shining halo of refracted light? What leftover glow will catch itself onto my fingers when I reach for those new leaves today?
Yesterday afternoon I weeded the garden just a little, and watered the new plants. I watched the honeybees in the orange tree, watched the black guard bee protect the blossoms — what an extraordinary task for such a small animal: make sure only the right bees get to this pollen. He flies around and around the tree, buzzing close to anyone who approaches, human or dog. He does not sit down for a coffee break. He does not rest. Later in the afternoon, on the phone with my sister — in which I live in the future and can look at a box in my hand and see both her and her new son in their home far away — a stellar’s jay drops into the middle raised bed; he perches on the wooden edging and pulls something up in his beak, shaking it hard. This is just where I’ve planted my little lettuces, and so I holler at him to leave the lettuce alone. He ignores me, because I am all the way up on the deck, and do not speak his language. He keeps shaking the thing in his beak a bit, then gets what he wanted, and flies over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. I suddenly picture him shaking a snail out of its shell, and the jay becomes my ally with his sharp raspy cry and his too-big feet. I want him to come back and get all the snails out of the garden, away from my lettuces. We will work together – me and the jay and the guardian bee and the eclipsed moon and the early morning songbirds.
I wonder how to make it clear that this writing is about survival, how this writing connects to the larger work of this blog: then I wonder if that’s necessary. This morning there is a new and quiet longing that’s lodged itself in my body, behind breastbone and breath. Its voice sounds like something more than the daily work of just making it, of pulling the ends together, of barely yanking the shamed body up into a sitting position before the night falls and we are left to do it all over again tomorrow. The voice of this new longing is for a place that is substantial and rooted, is for growth that doesn’t struggle to rise out of the desecrated ground of trauma. The point is that life is continuous and regenerative. The point is that bodies can recover. The point is that nothing is the same after we are harmed to the point of breaking open, but also that we can still open the blinds to look at the wonder of the simple movement of the sky’s body, that we can be more than the aftermath of one man’s madness. Our lives are forever greater than that.
