Period
You are the darkest expression of a full stop.
You are a flow of life and death in the blood of a woman.
You are the tabular definition of the elements of the universe
as discovered and expressed by Mendeleev —
metals to the left, non-metals to the right,
with the noble gasses aloof and alone in their own
rightful column. Elements increasing with atomic mass and shells of electron
clouds, unpredictable except by probability.
You are the perceived oscillation of a star.
At my end, you will be the ink spot: dark, final
admitting no further comment at the end of my obituary.
Away from the House
After Joseph Bruchac
Dogs smell time, & Clooney knows the seasons better than the seasons do.
On an orange afternoon, with no clouds and big sun— the seasons pretended to change, then changed back.
Clooney doesn’t care. Outside is outside; wind, unpredictable moving air, is what he’s looking for.
The Coke bottle has been in the acequia path so long no human smell remains.
Clooney sniffs footprints of all that beached on this inland shore, sauntering toward every clue to what lives or moves away from or toward the house.
A Return
Les Ponts-de-C. to Simi Valley,
via Paris, New York & Los Angles
June 1989
On the third of June, in Ponts-de-Cé,
Boötes crossed the night, yet again hunting
with his hounds.
I planned my own journey across the sky,
against earth’s rotation and toward
what had been home:
from a town named for a legend of ruins
of Roman bridges, Les Ponts-de-Cé,
to Shimiyi, “little wind cloud,” the Chumash
village that became a Spanish rancho
& later, Simi Valley, a bedroom community
of cops & host of the Rodney King trial.
Like most who have seen fog kiss
the slow broad Loire waters,
I will be forgotten.
So, goodnight, Boötes. Goodnight, Arcturus.
Goodnight to the sky, immaculate above the wide valley.
I must arise early for the journey,
first to the city of Lutetia
then, to the city of the Manhattoes,
eventually, to the city of the Angels:
every arrival, a temporary terminus.
After I & all those I have known are gone,
Boötes & his dogs will continue their restless climb,
daily driving bears across the sky.
Jordan Jones has published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and works in translation in magazines and anthologies, including What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop, a recipient of the American Book Award. He is the author of two books of poetry, Sand & Coal and The Wheel and a two-chapbook translation of Le Contre-Ciel by René Daumal. He lives in the Rio Grande watershed of Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife and dog, where he and his wife publish books under the imprint Coyote Arts.