Charlotte Innes
Photo by Jon Rou
(USA)
You Can Change the Shape of Almost Anything
Across the street, the agile digger rises
like a cat on two back wheels to feed
succeeding trucks with crumpled earth. Red,
white, red, they come and go all day
till half the hill has gone, a field of fennel,
home to feral cats, coyote, possum,
skunk, and coming soon, concrete slabs,
metal poles, plywood, wire, plaster.
You can change the shape of almost anything,
we thought, those early days among the pines,
scorning beachside homes for their distortion,
the extra floors and bulging sides that seemed
to beg the finger of God to topple them.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,
I said. And then, Is that OK? You smiled.
Oh yes—well, some might dispute the terms.
Those summer days. How easy it was to speak
of anything. Tell me about your faith.
And you, forgetting your natural caution, said
it was like a house, cracked by unexpected
aftershocks, craving restoration.
After that, I’m not sure why, I’d ask
about your faith at some of the oddest times.
Silly, maybe. I think you understood.
And like the spotted fawns nibbling hedgerows
behind the ugly homes who lose their spots
a few months after birth, our talk’s equation
shifted shape with ease, then changed again,
as if the hill’s new homes now housed the poor
or the homes beside the beach kept families safe.
The proof seemed indestructible but something
was missing, some formula, some factor x.
Unboxed
November’s Santa Ana heat. The leaves gleam bright
as steel, as if from rain, or knives in wait for sleep.
In harder light, in rooms across the way, a man
unlocks what seems to be a box of knotted hair
and broken beaks. It sickens me. Are we so old
the genesis of light in us can only flicker?
Silver cogs inside a clock of shining glass
lock and turn. And lock. The sunlight seems so cold.
Among Birds
i
Black, black, blackest bird,
astonishing me
to lightness
spinning me
out of grief
for whole moments
of clean joy.
To hear a song
sung sweetly:
the relief of it!
ii
light-haven
circles of air
striped and shaped
by birds wrench
and reach in
uncurl me
iii
as sparrows, flecked with fluff,
shake off, with joyous
flapping, sunlight and water,
the last drops of love—
then up, quick as a thought,
to fat cloud pillows
and back.
All morning
I’ve learned alertness—needs
met and fears dodged
in instants. Now the birds
are silent. But what of it?
Tomorrow—though I’ll be off—
they’ll be back. Splashing.
iv
And here’s an almost
dead tree, a few
leaves at bottom,
that’s all, taller
than anything,
with birds arrayed
like serious surveyors
along the grey hook
of the topmost bough.
Crows? Starlings?
Hard to tell
from curved backs
and hidden wings,
harbingers
perhaps—
Tree,
you’re an elegant whip!
Urging the eye
towards stones
and thin grass.
Allow me to keep
the rail of the deck
between us,
to watch
the sleek grey heron—
the one called “blue”—
rise up
from bulrushes
by a stream
quickly.
____________________________________________
BIO
Charlotte Innes is the author of Descanso Drive, a first book of poems, to be published by Kelsay Books in 2017. She has also published two chapbooks, Licking the Serpent (2011) and Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (2009), both with Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Raintown Review and Rattle, with some anthologized in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015) and The Best American Spiritual Writing for 2006 (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), amongst others.