Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls
~ Nico Alvarado

“You want to know what it was like?
It was like my whole life had a fever.
Whole acres of me were on fire.
The sun talked dirty in my ear all night.
I couldn’t drive past a wheatfield without doing it violence.
I couldn’t even look at a bridge.
I used to go out in the brush sometimes,
So far out there no one could hear me,
And just burn.
I felt all right then.
I couldn’t hurt anyone else.
I was just a pillar of fire.
It wasn’t the burning so much as the loneliness.
It wasn’t the loneliness so much as the fear of being alone.
Christ look at you pouring from the rocks.
You’re so cold you’re boiling over.
You’ve got stars in your hair.
I don’t want to be around you.
I don’t want to drink you in.
I want to walk into the heart of you
And never walk back out.”

Shaki Waterfall, Armenia; Image from Wikipedia

From “The Heavens”
~ Caterina Bon Brenzoni

[…] The heart has powerful wings;—take me by the hand:
Following the flight of high intelligence will come
This desire for knowledge that burns within me,
This love of truth that overpowers me so.
Speak to me your language! Oh, the raptures
Of a thought that turns towards the infinite,
Oh, the ecstasy of a heart immersed in it
Is a heavenly sight, and you shall witness it!
You shall witness my joyful soul reflect
That intimate delight that irradiates
The intellect at each new knowledge
And is but a small presage in this world of that
Which rains forever on the bosom of the Immortals
The brilliance of Uncreated Light.

Behold, to me you disclose the workings
Of immutable laws; behold, I comprehend
The harmony of portents where at other times
I urged my thought in vain. I see mysterious
Forces penetrate every atom and give life
To all existence. The same power
That draws to earth the drop of rain
Also draws Niagara’s flood; it raises
The sea’s spray to meet the lunar disc;
It binds the planets to the Sun, and to other Suns
Ours that shines on us; and a masterly skill
Admirable in quantity and scope
Regulates and holds in check all the
Gravitating masses worked on by that power.

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

White Ermine Moths: Image from http://www.moorhen.me.uk/index.htm

A Hundred Ways to Say Your Name
~ Tania de Rozario

I avoid speaking your name in conversation,
throwing it to the air as if it were nothing
more than an assumption of you; it is my last
mode of defence. The last item of clothing
to discard before I realise I’m naked in public.

Because they can hear it in my voice. I know.
Even in that one short syllable that means
everything and nothing; your name is as common
as you are rare. As easy as you are not.
As simple as love should be, but never is.

But when I’m alone, I tie my tongue softly
round the familiar sound, as if pronouncing
with conviction the phonetics of desire
will cause time to pause just long enough
for the earth to hear me naming my loss.

Those of Us Who Think We Know
~ Stephen Dunn

Those of us who think we know
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it’s enough to nod like shy horses
and come together
in a quiet ceremony of tongues

it’s in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between stars are nothing
to worry about,
it’s when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have.