Blue Oracle
I hear myself say oracle though I’m not exactly
sure what I mean. I’m thinking out loud. Not
a prophet, the staff, the righteousness stiffening
into judgement, the oracle lives with it, suffers it,
shunned because we like our knowledge in
small doses. I knew an oracle, and I could see
it was hard work, the way the squawking jay
descends, places pieces of whiteness on the branch
which drift then fall. But he picks them and
a twig back up, flies back to the same branch
where the twig balancing a bit of cloth or paper
is a foundation. For days he carries lichen grasses,
more twigs, white plant tags dropped in someone’s
garden after planting. In the dream there were
many nests, stacks of them in my arms. I’d picked
them from each tree as if they were fruit, intricate,
woven, each one different. Think of how
a school of painting determines the way we see
a figure, recognize it as, say the Umbrian Christ
or Madonna, but what I mean to say is how
the other day when I saw my name written on
an envelope I opened it while walking back up
the road. I was personally invited to partake
in the virtual rising of a Christ, the one whose skin
is white like mine, whose eyes were blue, whose
brown hair was almost crew cut, who looked like
the smiling Texaco gas station attendant of the late
fifties or sixties in uniform and cap, who was
ready to serve. I was born into violence, of word,
of body, but we did not speak of it outside our house.
We never spoke of it inside either. I didn’t know
what happened there happened elsewhere, the
failures of want, the blame of wounding, the souls
staggering on single-winged. We were shamed.
So much depends on the shame, the bright silent
whiteness woven into the nest.
* * * * *
We Forgot
We forgot what season it was. The sky
fogged with smoke, the hummingbirds
did not flit through the geraniums
drinking their nectar of ash. No birdsong.
The young jays pushed out of the nest
shrieked. We loved the river the fire burned
along. It had a boat named after it. With
the right hands on the oars, the boat stood
still in the current. On the drive along
the river glimpses of golden light, osprey
gliding, the rafts floating toward Martin’s
Rapids. The wind came from the east and
drove the fire along the river, left the road
and the river dense with charred firs. The
covered bridge survived. The town of Blue
River is gone. Elsewhere fire flew through
a canyon, where campers and bicyclists
and backpackers stood on the shore of the lake
waiting for a helicopter to descend. It could
not. The fire shifted, and they found their way
out by car on the burning road. Elsewhere
fire followed other rivers, followed the
corridor of the interstate burning through
two towns. There are those whose homes
are gone, those who are uninsured, those
now sleeping in city parks because they
had slept under the trees on the outskirts
of those towns. If you did not already have
shelter, you will not be given it now. The
darkness before rain is different. What is
lightning to fire when rain follows? This
was not one time, but any time throughout
time. It was the time we lived in. When
the rain came the wind blew from the west,
the air cleared, the fire still burned up river,
in canyons, in dry fields. The fire moved east.
The smoke moved east. It was the end
of summer. Then it was fall. Some trees still
burned inside, fire following their roots
and surging up elsewhere.