Blessing the Torn Skies

A few hours ago, I learned it was Lucille Clifton’s birthday, and thought immediately of her beautiful “Blessing the Boats.” Then I knew what to do with what I was meaning to notice, from yesterday’s time at Balboa Park, which is right near San Diego’s airport, where the planes fly very low.  

May the sky

that tears above us

every ten minutes

with the next landing

hold you still

in its infinities, barely

contained. May you notice

the webs noiselessly repaired

in the shade-giving tree. 

May you hold the noise

and feel its impact, understand

what it means to live

in the time of tearing skies

and then turn your ears 

to the hush of leaves against

leavings, expanding in chorus

above you and to the hawks

overhead, and then to the drums

beneath the tree down the hill. Watch

––the dancers in unison and each 

their own, leaves singing the leaving 

of an ancient dance, remembered

in chorus in ways that it may never be, 

alone, in the place you go first to notice

the dead 

        before they are named. 

May you see 

        the bird on the low, long branch,

how violently its blood-red breast sways 

with each new tear in the still-aching

sky. May you study like these near the drums,

those songs that time and distance and generations

of death would have killed by now if they had not 

recognized, first alone and then in chorus, 

how the only way to mark the days of 

separation by sea and torn sky

is by gripping what moves beneath you

as you grip what moves through you, as

the same song, the same flight, holding

first until you can move into it, even as

you notice each fresh wound, tearing a 

body you once thought eternal, prone to 

capricious moods but never injury, and 

may you know how something new happens

now, even if: the wound is real and yes, it is

another man with a sword, eager to pierce

the next heaven, and you know what this

is because flesh won’t forget, insisting against

its own small space, on dancing eulogies in 

concert 

with the still uncounted souls waiting

here, beneath this torn heaven, for the next 

sign, and may you trace it, holding the line and

waiting to carry it, may you wait and hold, listen

and then cry out when the time is right, as the hawks

above have been doing ever since you arrived, finding

in the act of swaying with each pointed arrival, each

still-dripping wound, some way to recognize, 

even as you feel each cut from your crown 

to your feet, how none ever sever you from it. 

May you hold your hands up, open to 

these wounded forevers, 

and sway.

Image: "Tonight . . . Thunderstorms!" by Carol VanHook on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic license.