I do not live in a seashell’s heart

“When I arrived in that town, everyone greeted me and I recognized 

no one. When I was going to read my verses, the Devil, hidden behind

a tree, called out to me sarcastically and filled my hands with newspaper clippings”

– J.V. Foix

I do not live in a seashell’s heart, but I pick up Coco and Desmond at school

and imagine with fellow parents that a groundswell change of public opinion is 

enough to end the relationship between wage labor and time while our children

play hide and seek. When I sleep, I see clearly, and when I wake, I go to campus 

and forget to pack after-school snacks the day before a full moon. Empty freedom

from fear, I made a list like a border and another like desire, I await the stars

and moon like a good poet dabbling in vatic verse. Not as in Vatican but as in vates 

or wood, woden, Oden. Some distant ancestors probably worshiped him and his ravens, 

mead and runes. Narrative is always strange: drink this mead of fermented blood

and honey to answer any question. Walk back to the car through the little forest

carpeted with fig buttercup, a beautiful invasive spring ephemeral my ancestors

brought from Europe, not knowing it would crowd out bloodroot and wild ginger.

There is nothing to write about, and Coco asks how many things there are 

in the world. “A thousand?” She guesses. Trevor tells her it’s all about what counts

as a thing, the politics of aesthetics. There is one Desmond with ten toes.  

I go outside to look at the moon. Whatever I count can’t matter, but I’m looking 

at the moon, and looking is a kind of counting. I mean storytelling. I mean reckoning.

In this season of misrule I pick up my babies from aftercare, my babies born not within

a seashell’s heart, but within the territorial dominion of this country, not murdered and

left unconsecrated. Sometimes I go to a desk in a shared office or wrapped in blankets

work in a cold studio. I try to get Desmond and Coco excited about visiting the arboretum.

I’d never be the ambassador, but I might be the aging charge d’affairs, writing her memoirs,

getting drunk most evenings, free to actively undermine Empire’s tenuous mandate. 

Settlers don’t prioritize how their own ideas of nationhood and haven-making

undermine even their own ideas of nations and havens. Post-bloom redbuds

across the street not quite yet leafed out. All of this is true. I am not an allegorist.

UMD students started an encampment but no one from central mentioned protestors. 

A coworker pings me saying bla bla bla, but I pick up the phone as if I want an injury.

I pick up the phone and almost read the message. Coco and Desmond argue in the car

about the school playground, and I know any coming to account for this day

requires details about bulldozed farms in Gaza and my piled unfolded clean clothes 

half off my desk. When I hike I look down every cliff and imagine losing my footing,

worry about the dove nesting over our door and her future fledgelings.

For Jerome Rothenburg