Silvia Passiflora

I wiggle my way through this old garage —
car bumper against salvaged old-growth pecan planks
stacked like old journals
waiting for a garage sale.

It would be easier to let them go.
But I know what pecan becomes
when someone finally cracks it open.

I've done this before
and will do it again
and that's not hope with flowers
just the record of a woman
who has run out of the luxury of stopping

They came in the hours as I dreamt —
no knock, no name slipped under the door
only the sound of pages turning
in a house that was locked

They tried to scrape the cadence
the way a thief palms a gem —
not the thing itself
but a rubbing from the nameplate
the domicile from where I dwell

I still accept visitors but
I wrote the Terms
I named what could not be borrowed
and signed it with the year

The fence does not stop weather —
it keeps the wolves polite

I am the archive 
and the archivist
the instrument
the hand upon the wrist
the song exists 
before the publisher's list

The journey is the catalogued 
and still I go

My journal slept with its palms open
 

After hitting glass
the bird builds her nest nearby
the bald cypress sways
 

Saturday pours me coffee
Friday fell asleep before finishing
today I gift the book
to my future readers
 

I’m afraid
this pen is no match 
for this fear I can’t unlearn
knowing
silent witnesses
who left their footprints
in the clay
a year ago
when I wrote the poems
that are now a book

I’m afraid again
the same silence
this time 
another gift
unopened
 

For more poetry, here

I.

The first book still smelled
of fresh glue and wet ink
when the second began whispering

Half the world asked for blurbs
while the new pages arrived barefoot
dragging rain through the kitchen

II.

I barely look up anymore
from the next dark little screen
with its urgent blue messages 

Outside the old book waited
like a coat left on a chair
still warm with the scent from the body

Customers passed it by
looking for medals 
bright stacks with famous names

Yet every closing shift
I found myself touching the spine
as though it might answer back

By morning only pages remained
stacked like burnt toast on good china
still warm from her hands

No launch
no chorus of borrowed names
just the dangerous weather of truth

Tonight I choose the lamp
the unwitnessed page
the long forest of ink

I no longer wish
to fold myself into envelopes
crossing polite desks

The orchard does not ask
for endorsements from rattlesnakes
before bearing fruit

I no longer wish
to outshout the highway

every passing wreck
already has spectators

I would rather carry
fresh water uphill

show young songwriters
where the forms are hidden

how to keep their names
attached to their own work

because the loudest room
is rarely the safest one

and every season
another artist disappears

beneath applause
beneath contracts

beneath the exhaustion
of becoming visible

I have no hunger now
to become more noise

I want to become
safe passage 

beside the narrow places

so somebody else
makes it home intact

I stopped saying Appalachia
when one mountain answered
by its real name

Blue Ridge —
blue shale underfoot
hawk above the tree line
rain held in pine bark

I came to conquer it
and learned instead
where my breath returns

The wheelbarrow leans by the shed
still carrying traces of earth
her gloves folded like tired birds
beside the last unopened gate

The manuscript leaves in silence
no trumpet follows the crossing
the screen snaps shut 
and one dog shifting in sleep

She thought completion would thunder
would split the rafters with light
instead the room simply widened
enough for breathing to return

Outside, the trees keep their counsel
Sweet bay magnolia buds whisper
and somewhere beyond her seeing
another pair of hands has opened the door 

The manuscript is in
like bread slid gently from the hands
into the village oven

no longer kneaded at midnight
no more flour on the wrists
counting commas like rosary beads

the pages go now without me
wearing their Sunday shoes of ink
crossing the threshold alone

and somewhere
a bell neither loud nor sorrowful
begins to ring

I realized too late 
the catalog had split its river twice —
one hand reaching for royalties 
another already claiming the toll

So I took the albums down myself

Thirty days, the warning flashed,
after I was already in the water — 
but the entry portal was already closing

Here? one platform still dark

Here? the ford — 
transit blurred beneath the streaming

Here? I could not tell 
I'll watch again tomorrow

I could not return the way I came 
by then the debut was already sworn upon my hand

no safer going forward than turning back — 
on the banks behind me 
witnesses hands covering their mouths

no label 
no manager 
no coachmen waiting at the gate

only the crossing and whatever courage remained

Each morning I searched the banks — 
one title clearing, then another 
I read the patterns in the water

So I gambled on the crossing anyway