The One You Wanted to Be Is the One You Are by Jean Valentine

She saying, You don’t have to do anything
you don’t even have to be, you Only who are,
you nobody from nowhere,
without one sin or one good quality,
without one book, without one word,
without even a comb, you!

The one you wanted to be
in the one you are. Come play…

And he saying,
Look at me!
I don’t know how…

Their breath like a tree’s breath. Their silence
like a deer’s silence. Tolstoy
wrote about this: all misunderstanding.

Poem by Nikki Giovanni

There are fields where once we walked
Among the clover and crab grass and those
Funny little things that look like cotton candy

There were liquids expanding and contracting
In which we swam with amoebas and other Afro-Americans

The sun was no further than my hand from your hair

Those were barefoot boy with cheeks of tan days
And I was John Henry hammering to get in

I was the camel with a cold nose

Now, having the tent, I have no use for it
I have pushed you out

Go ‘way
Can’t you see I’m lonely

Linda Nemec Foster

In the Vicinity of Orion's Arm

"like the star beaming outward past its death"
-Robert Wrigley

Every day we die
a little more.
My young son
doesn't believe me;
with the telescope
he got for Christmas
he points to the stars,
unfailing lights of the past,
as examples of how difficult
it is to kill anything.
Infinity has not yet
begun to trouble him.
As if Pascal's true
fear of the eternal
silence of the heavens
was all a hoax.

How can I tell him
he's wrong. That death
is one theory of celestial
movement. And there
is no other. That what
we see in the sky
are ghost images:
the moon a blank
mirror, the galaxy
an open wound,
the universe a thin
veil of dust hiding
the empty mind of God.

I only know what
I know. How the universe
looks the same in every
direction. Layered petals
of rose or bleeding
womb. I only know
this night in late
January, sub-zero
temperatures, his
father positioning
a telescope in the frozen
snow of the backyard.
As if he could count
the endless blur of stars.
Imagining the faces
of everyone he's ever
loved who has died.

Rhythm Method By Yusef Komunyakaa

If you were sealed inside a box
within a box deep in a forest,
with no birdsongs, no crickets
rubbing legs together, no leaves
letting go of mottled branches,
you'd still hear the rhythm
of your heart. A red tide
of beached fish oscillates in sand,
copulating beneath a full moon,
& we can call this the first
rhythm because sex is what
nudged the tongue awake
& taught the hand to hit
drums & embrace reed flutes
before they were worked
from wood & myth. Up
& down, in & out, the piston
drives a dream home. Water
drips till it sculpts a cup
into a slab of stone.
At first, no bigger
than a thimble, it holds
joy, but grows to measure
the rhythm of loneliness
that melts sugar in tea.
There's a season for snakes
to shed rainbows on the grass,
for locust to chant out of the dunghill.
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes
is a confirmation the skin
sings to hands. The Mantra
of spring rain opens the rose
& spider lily into shadow,
& someone plays the bones
till they rise & live
again. We know the whole weight
depends on small silences
we fit outselves into.
High heels at daybreak
is the saddest refrain
If you can see blues
in the ocean, light & dark
can feel worms ease through
a subterranean path
beneath each footstep,
Baby, you got rhythm.