Indian Stars
I call them Indian stars
that flash in the sand:
Stars that drip down kernels
Darkly, secretly
on dune grass.
No, I have no name like Alden
Standish, Bradford or
English,
No skin that is truly fair;
No hands that can be
disentangled
from toil
But I have come to rescue you
From your cold-hot graveyard
My brother.
You are dark as the redness of this autumn moon
Before rain—
I move with your thumping rhythms
Each time my feet are planted on your soil
and feel your emaciated hand
digging for seed—
So I become drunk as the flowering maize you seek
Self-inseminating.
On this hill I take you, my
pathfinder
As my Rebel Red
Against the gray green
Dusty miller, Bayberry dune.
Like you in the night I turn
to silver fire.
Like you, I am loyal as forgotten
America.
Like you, my spirit is washed
But not quelled beside this
stealthy bay.
[Corn Hill, first Thanksgiving: stolen corn]
Alert
Dog eared sea's
Out again today, wagging its
tail
Listening to shore
Learning to receive foam's
Animated, cold nose
Or what the clam
Cockeyed explains
Slipped between two curtained
rims
Smiling with shadows of low
tide
Saliva's indeterminacy
As if old claw could dig up
sand
To find lost reef, anemones
Where once dreamed fish
And so crawled Man
Unlikely—evolutionary branch—
Who rails at the edge of
every wake
Where the exuberant, untamed
cur
Waits
But never fully sleeps
Upon its patient, generous
watch.
Rooming House, Kyoto
Fine lines appeared as her
eyes
Sped their tinsel through the
antechamber.
On the shelf she smiled in a
photo
beside another self:
her husband.
She told me he was kind:
I saw it in her look, the
loss.
Outside a geisha, new with
split plum coif1
Paused by the door:
"No time, today, to paint."
So we stepped back through an
emptied space
Except for the scuffed
formica tables where she taught
Something exquisite: Unblemished
paper.
"Calligraphy is easy if you breathe
as poetry—Deep
in. Then out."
She demonstrated:
"Just watch."
The numerals of lines
Aligned in perfect order
Then flowed, and stretched
the black.
My paint dripped novice red.
It chopped the air between my
strokes.
"The wind is good" she said.
(But the heart—I knew—misshapen).
[split plum coif: worn when the novice Geisha is first
broken, a day when she is excused from learning the other
arts; black is the expert's color]
Laura Manuelidis is a physician and
neuroscientist at Yale who found how repeated DNA sequences define chromosome
folding and structure. She continues to investigate infectious causes of
dementia, and to publish scientific articles. She has also published a collection of poetry, entitled Out of Order, contributed to diverse literary
magazines including Oxford Poetry, The Nation, and Evergreen Review, and been nominated for Pushcart prizes. These poems are from a new collection, One / divided by Zero, which has just been published.
