You, Emblazoned by Cass Donish

You, Emblazoned

  

^{for Kelly Caldwell (1988–2020)}

Yet your voice was here—

                         just there-here in our house, shining eyes 

who dazzled twice, already timed,

a pulsing wind below the glass in spring, 

and coaxed, intelligent, stoic, touching everything, you stirred 

me to life, in spite of illness and damage

to the country, field laid waste, election blaze, illness 

wasting a brain, a mind. Mars, and ocean, canceled. 

Cream and streamers, canceled, 

                                     censored.  

“I am,” you said, 

                         though your skin flickered

to hackberry bark, or as bullet 

pierced pineal gland, blinking out 

your day-night clock. Your syllables

endure frail days, which blow through equinox, 

dissipate, time out—

            you imagined the planet 

            with you already gone:

a sad expression, no real loss, the earth still a wild salon,

yet the name you chose 

is etched into air, a violent wind 

parts my chest, tenderviolet, electric

nights in our sheets, no longer  

countable, unrecounted. You, here, again, 

my is-are-were, have-been-is, in my 

arms, bed is-was our house-eyes, in my  

only thought only root only gone, 

my big only gone still here voice 

blazing, I mourn you-her, 

her-you, who were born-dreamed into the world’s thicket 

yet reinvented through an inner radiance,  

the radiance of a name,  

the name that is yours, the radiance that is-was yours 

                                     that is-was you—