Rabbit
leaping without understanding, it is not
a rabbit, but very
like one, another
planet, and we are full
of blood, only the vertigo
of science could
make her
giggle with awe,
not since god
the father burned it all
down, leaving
nothing,
nothing, nothing,
only the moon is
a planet, full
of blood
Empty Box
What do we
leave unfinished? And
where do we
keep our unfinished
thoughts? What you
don’t say is
what they will
guess—and guess
wrong. Like an
empty box stuck
inside itself, wandering
the halls of
its own echoes.
From This Height
I think everything
has an
explanation
and
everything needs
one But from
this height either
everything or
nothing
is
terrifying And
how will anyone
ever know the
difference or
believe
anyone
else Because
even words aren’t
always words Something
resembling panic
outrage
or
collapse Sunset
from the gallows
The Far Country
A silo rises
above
the drowning green
of the
enraptured fields.
Boxelders have branched
over
the rumpled ground
and
shrug beside
the river. The
river
is
silent
under the creaking
bridge,
so full
of
night
even in the noonday bulge.
The
river,
flowing
sideways
between its banks.
These
banks, falling
always
into themselves, into
the
river.
And all
of this,
here in the gross sunlit world,
beneath
the domed and carapace sky,
amounts
to secret
knowledge, secret
knowing,
knowing
which
knows itself.
The world is turned in
on
itself, as the sun
is born
secretly of the earth.
Impeded
by
the leaves, sunlight
crawls
from the soil and flutters
up into the sky. And
we
are at home here. God
is in
the far country.
We hold our stories close. We
do
not need god’s special
sight.
It is enough
that cloud and wind
caress
us, tree and
mountain
hold us,
sky and wisdom birth
us
in the yellow
stretches
of
our creation.
Sleeping on a Map
You asked me:
“What’s a day
made of?” And
I said: “Lanterns
and sparrows, femurs
and ivy, traffic
whispering of mulch
and black ferns,
bricks filled with
oceans, sunsets flattened
and stacked high
into tipsy mountains.”
You said: “Such
small creatures, mute
in the fluency
of their being.
Feeling forward softly
as shale settled
on them like
drizzle, embracing them.
A spiral stair
erasing everything and
remembering everything else.”
I said: “Without
expectations, we could
be patient forever,
like that sparkle
shaved from the
glacier, stacked on
the roadside, tipped
sideways, buckled like
wet books we
will never read.”
Then you asked:
“But what about
scale? Spiking like
tides, swerving like
drumlins, shrinking from
its own comparisons?
Is there really
no distance between
stride and gaze,
pulse and solstice,
sunshowers and cratons?”
I asked: “Remember
that wavering moment?
how we are
dizzy one second
then something snaps
itself back with
the clarity of
disorientation, when north
is left and
sunrise is down?”
You said: “Yes!
It is like
clinging to the
topologies of want,
or like the
legend of clarity
by the statute
mile.” You paused.
“Or like a
flying dream,” you
added. “How we
can see so
far, the cold
air over our
back, clean as
the parched suburbs
and stony farmlands.”
I said: “But
every question I
don’t ask, ash
replies in red,
with so many
pale fingers in
rows. A pilgrimage
begins with one
step and ends
with the same
step undone. Did
we ever leave?”
You said: “It
is like waking
up in someone
else’s bed, or
crossing someone else’s
border, or walking
someone else’s road.
Marking what’s missing,
erasing what’s there,
unable to fold
it back the
way it was.”
Robert van Vliet’s poetry has appeared in The Sixth Chamber Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Wine Cellar Press, Otoliths, Guesthouse, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook This Folded Path (above/ground press 2023). His debut book of poetry, Vessels, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in December, 2024. He lives in St Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Ana.