Dalí’s Cricket

^{after Saeed Jones}

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is littlest lullaby, is tiny prisoner
is chirping a cantata, is sole occupant of a minute cage with bars the size of toothpicks
is stitched to the windowsill where it can still sense the sea’s weather, is thermometer
is lonely as a choir of one, a symphony of a single fiddle
is calling and calling to its mate in the growing dark, find me, find meis a night watchman is a knight in a little suit of armor, is a knitted net for trapping ghosts and nightmares like this one where all of Spain is cage is stained flag is
knight in troubled armor is Don Quixote without his Dulcinea, is Dalí without his Gala
is member in the menagerie of canaries, swans, goats, anteater, and ocelot
is holding all the stars in place with its many lenses, is compound eyes, is an array of telescopes
is listening with the tympanic ears of its knees for an answering song, is call and response, is the forepart to an echo
is playing the violin of its legs to summon sleep and beckon dreams for the painter, is vesper and serenade, is croon and cradlesong
is a concatenation of hives is a boat cresting waves of sand is towering on legs like stilts is reborn from egg again is puddled clocks is pareidolic rocks is a string of
hungry ants
is calling and calling to its love in the blooming dark, where are you, where are you
‍is lucky bug, is etching over present twilight anguish with memory of spring
is preferred by the painter over any other music, is stridulation and strum is hum and hymn is chirr and choir
is first in Spain to see every sunrise

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Summer Solstice

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and I’m chasing shade, crossing cobblestone to walk under awning,
cathedral shadow,
plane tree’s umbrella.

I remember this game I played with my grandmother
when she was living, when she was the person I called
mom. My small hand in hers,

we’d runrunrun
through the gauntlet of brightness,
slow   slow   slow

under the green grace of maples.
Now, years and miles away, I bend
my ear to birdsong: swallows’ scree, pigeons’ coo coooo, storks’ clattering beak.

Bend my tongue to new language. Albaricoques. Albaricoques.
Albaricoques. Wherever you are, Grandma,
I hope it’s a garden, un huerto soleado,

like this one
with every kind of flower: paradise
to geranium. Grandpa’s arm around your shoulder

under the mulberry’s
generous shade, a stone bench
reserved for lovers, Grandpa teaching you

a new language,
one that sounds like birdsong and the quiet
music of unfurling

pink petals like tongues
on the apricot tree. In the beginning,
we were all like this,

sounding the same notes over and over
till they grew in us
como un huerto,

like a garden perched on a cliff,
drenched in sun, ringing its periwinkle
bellflowers to the sky.

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You’re scooping up the bloody mess of your heart again

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It’s hard to scoop its pulpy meat all tangled and stringy and seedy like a smashed pomegranate

But when you do, you’re shellacking it you’re coating it in Teflon

Dipping your heart in hot wax

You’re fitting it with car parts, bumper and windshield and blade

It’s stomped and stamped and branded crumpled and scraped and slanted

You’re taking your heart to the cement factory for a cabinet a cloister an enclosure

You will not be wrecked by another poem or essay or end of a book when your favorite character is killed off or another news article about the end of frogs in the Amazon

You will not be demolished (again) by loss of partner or parent

No

You’re learning the art of tinsmithry and will fashion a candle holder to fit your heart inside and solder the door shut so no one will find it

Your heart will be shackled in the cellar of a house set gently in the middle of an ocean

But your heart is like a captive octopus a gelatinous oozing escape artist the most magnificent Houdini

Of course you’ll find it again on the floor desiccated nearly dead awaiting resuscitation

Ragabash heart     codswollop heart

Your wish-wash applesauce claptrap bric-a-brac heart

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