NIGHT SELF

 

 

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It’s not too late.

I can still portray summer.

I still have time to want to play 

the saxophone, if I start now. 

To say to the houseplants 

I love you I love you.

Besides, 

I’ve just begun with Botticelli,

not to mention the cuisine of Malta,

and this biography of Blake

I’m flipping through: you know, dear,

the first time you saw God 

was when You were four years old. 

And he put his head to the window 

and set you ascreaming.

Nothing outside my window but

some branches, goldenrod, 

which I can’t see,

mist in the hills, 

stars like a box of fishhooks.

The beauty beauty beauty

of the crows quoting some

crow Hafiz. 

How strong the heart must be not to explode,

my wife to sleep, 

her eyelids not quite covering 

the falconry of her loquacious dream.

Maybe she loves me, but by accident. 

Maybe she doesn’t, but quite happily.

It could be worse. 

Think of the prophets 

whose howling had no end. 

Of the stillness achieved 

through the howling. 

I love you I love you.

Though, not “I” exactly, and not “you.”

It’s said that Shams of Tabriz could not 

see anything ephemeral 

without making it eternal.

Maybe I could do that. 

Starting now. 

No, now. 

Blue curtains. Sirens. Clouds. 

Shadows. Desire. Dreams. 

Things that I am, things that are here.

Pointings at radiance. 

What Blake called Visions in the darksom air.

  

 

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BIO:

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Michael Lavers is the author of The Inextinguishable and After Earth, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Kenyon Review, Copper Nickel, Blackbird, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.