Upon Receiving the Gift of a Handmade Box

In the evening I drove home

through cold rain, headlights blearing

in the peripheries around me.

I saw them above the traffic light—

I might have missed them, they were so still.

Close to the sky, hundreds of grackles,

slash marks on the wires,

black and compact.

What drives anything to gather

in the rain like that, all of them in the rain

above such unease.

I don’t know anyone

content to sit like that.

_____

Once it held merchandise, personal

property. It was four-sided, made of wood.

Firebox, smokebox, spice box.

Jewel box—box of jewels.

Matchbox, ballot box, box of letters

and dice. Box of a person I might trust.

Box of coins or cash, box against loss,

burden of keys. Jury box, someone’s

house. Something gently shuts

as the lid shuts, to keep out injury and dust.

And no need for a lock or bolt,

it wears its jewels of woods—

turquoise at the latch. A box to store

the ghost-rain or paper-scrap,

a line someone scratched while lost to thought.

My friend worked for days on the box,

measuring and cutting,

always returning to the wood

that flooded his head with clouds.

When I am still, I can feel the labor

inside the wood, and hummingbirds,

and the years to come.

_____

I came this far—I walked out into the field

by the parking lot, in the moment

foolish with purpose, and tried

to read signs from the hills.

Hallucination of salt. Sparrows

in the distance lifting without sound.

To be placed forever in the high desert light,

winter brushing gold against nests of weeds.

Do I hold still because

I can’t go forward.

There are signs you can move

from stream to town and make amends.

There are chimes at dusk, silences

flooding the earth. What was

done to us, uncomprehending,

that we must fight our way toward the clouds

and lands that enclose us.

You can cross through a whole day

and not once take part.

_____

Today, some rivers are violet with mud

and curve out of sight.

Some animals burn. Women wake their children

and walk them to the bus. Like flowing gauze,

children race in the yards—they have only just arrived.

We hinge between the end of our lives

and their rootedness.

And a whippoorwill is pausing mid-call.

Someone practices cello—I hear it from the street

although no window is open.

At night, across the houses, the blue body of quiet

sways. One day the children might say

They stayed close to each other.

Who has heard the songs and not held out hope.

Who has wanted something only for

another—only that a burden be lifted,

that a stranger, or creature, survive.