Conjunctions:70 Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue

I drop the irrigation gate—each month

a woman crosses Havana Bay and, looking

at the open water, reclaims her mother—
I cannot see the bloodred strawberries

in the garden; at a flaking green tank,

I listen: yellow light shines at a neighbor’s
octagonal window; Orion dims as the sky lightens—

what am I but a wandering speck

rambling, smudging, stumbling, writing—
someone opens a car door and steals quarters—

across the valley, two lights flicker from houses;

standing before a sharp descent, I look
at a waxing moon—the Big Bang’s

always present—I latch a green metal

gate near the empty stable and smell
your neck as you turn in your sleep;

daylight reaches the porch post columns;

I open a glass door and sit at a table;
now no words: light pools onto the wood floor.
 A black butterfly opens its wings—

sitting in a bus on a metal seat, he notices the steel above the driver has corroded,
     and pinpricks of daylight stream through—

two destroyers moored offshore—

on a scaffold, he uses a roller and paints the building marine blue—

a mime in a silver top hat, silver jacket—hands and face, silvered—inches
     through a restaurant—

standing in the shade looking up into the branches and leaves of a
     thorned ceiba tree—

a street sweeper emigrates and founds a chain of restaurants—

two men push pig carcasses on a cart through the doorway—

a singer shaking maracas sways to the music—
 Russian sage scents the air—

          the aroma of flickering candles
          on the fireplace mantel—

that I am even here standing on a ridge looking at Venus low in the sky—

          a black bear overturns a dumpster in the garage
          and eats remnants
                                        of a chicken enchilada—

                              soldiers move through the airport with dogs on leashes—

                    I rub oil on your breasts—

          in Old Delhi, uncovered bins with saffron, cardamom,
                                        ginger, turmeric—

          a poster warns of an imminent terrorist attack—

                              I jot things down so that when I lose them in the darkness
                              I may recover them quickly with the dawn—

                              dancers emerge wearing Yoruba masks—

                    I taste the salt on your neck—

that the rivers of the world flow into the seas—

that I am alive and hear rotating sprinklers jet water onto the grass—

                    that we go through the day humming in our bodies—

Russian sage emerges out of darkness—
                             a mime dressed as a construction worker

                            with gold skin, gold goggles, helmet,
                            and sledgehammer stands on the shady

                            side of a cobbled street; when you drop
                            some cash in the box, he smiles and bows—

                            a woman gives you a book of poetry;
                            when you read la pobreza del lugar,

                            you bristle: no place is impoverished
                            if the mind sparks; if not, the dunes

                            of a Sahara have no end; the sun sets,
                            and a cooling range is under the stars—

                            when the mind seeds, a camel emerges
                            out of a dune and you ride it to an oasis,

                            where you imbibe ayahuasca: up all night,
                            when the man leading the vigil puts on

                            a jaguar mask and becomes a jaguar,
                            you raise your hands, and they spark butterflies.
 A singer shaking maracas sways to the music—

in the street, a black man pushing a cart with strings of onions dangling
     from the frame sings, “Onions for sale”—

a girl with silvered face and hands, blouse and skirt, holds a silver
     bouquet of flowers—

a purple 1953 Chevy with polished chrome parked alongside an azure
     Bonneville—

in the yard, a flowering boojum tree—

his mother’s father was the owner of a sugar plantation and disinherited
          his mother after she married a mulatto street sweeper—

sitting in the oven of a bus—

a mime dressed as a deep-sea diver, helmet in hand, inches up the stairs—

a black butterfly closes its wings—
                    Clusters of conical thorns on the tree trunk—
                   I recall screech owls perched on a post
                   protected from sunlight by wisteria leaves,
                   the hush in the courtyard during a snowfall,
                   cinders from a forest fire alighting on
                   the roof, and how winter starlight shifted
                   to summer sunshine within a single day.

                   In the eyehook between shelves, I see

                   the upright primary wing feather of an eagle,
                   the red and orange bougainvilleas,
                   entwined, rising from a pot pressing

                   against the ceiling and against glass doors;
                   twice I stepped on lye-softened floorboards
                   and caught splinters. Now I mark presence
                   in absence and absence in presence:

                   as a May snow landing on a walkway
                   dissolves as it lands, as surf rises

                   and sweeps across the plazas and boulevards.