Kristene Brown

Against Evidence

Some say you are there. Between 

the black   

                             absence 

of bare tree branches, 

and a dark scroll of crows startled 

into flight, you are 

the thing that rises. A shifting water  

            of bodies, 

moving and breaking, as the ocean 

moves and breaks 

in the muscle memory of waves. 

This, I believe.  I have been taught 

to believe  

          you are the one 

who put the pit in the plum, 

the fruit on the trees, the drift  

               and surge in the salt water 

sea. 

That part is easy. 

Just as it is easy to turn my face up 

to the grey streaked sky  

           oyster lipping against a wall 

cloud of rain 

and know it is good, perhaps even 

great. Just as it is easy to admit 

that the pulse in the hum of the sun 

and the breath in the moons cold rub

is you. 

When I look at all this 

I know there is a design to the finery 

and fuckery 

of merely being.  How could I not 

know this? Having faith in the divine 

is easy. And yet, I cannot believe, 

do not believe, you are the one  

               who made me. 

---

Limbo

That slim skim of space 

between ruined and saved, 

a defining   

                          divide 

empty of shimmer, 

where nothing banks. 

This is the moment before 

the first morning call 

of hawk and jay, before 

the open-eye 

of stretch and wake.  

         This is the vase 

of bent back stems 

without root or bloom, 

a thin horizon line 

of no-man’s-land  

            with no beginning 

and no end. 

And this is where I am, 

toeing the split 

both ways. Aching to know 

how low can I go? 

How long can I remain 

bunched in that black   

                         expanse 

of stuttering grey 

with my two dumb feet 

two stepping 

into a shoulder shimmy, 

stay below the pole, 

fool’s shuffle    

                          do-si-do.