Findspot Unknown

Peter Gizzi

Thus far we have spoken

only the codes,

a litany of survival.

Thus spoke the silvered asphodel

next to the factory ruin.

Sound carries on water.

My subject is the wind.

To take umbrage at what a tree can do,

watching one single birch

become lightning stunning the sky.

Landscape is a made thing,

to see the mind seeing itself.

To see thought, a wing

in night, the long brooding.

Take it, listen, the night is orchestral

when the power’s on.

Everything disporting.

A furred wand upon nothingness.

I get it, it was good to leave the world,

to find myself in thou.

There’s a lot to be said

for seeing in the dark

and more to the light

when there’s nothing to see.

If I write about the moon

it’s because it’s there.

I am landlocked, surrounded

by rivers and lakes, pills and leaves.

I saw a better life, it was far off,

sun on moss next to a friend,

the softening air, the dandelion fluff.

It was kinda real, and kinda not.

Can’t see it today.

And out of nothing, breath.

A beast-like shadow in the glass.

If I brought back every feeling I had

where would I put them,

what could they mean

to this world on the floor.

It was best to let the moon unravel

and focus the truth of the music.

It was best to let the music

unravel and focus the truth of night.

Like when I found you

in the back of my mind.

I am talking about people

and the night.

People inside the night.

The night and what we are made of.

The things and the people.

The signal and its noise.

Peter Gizzi is the author of Now It’s Dark, Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems, and Archeophonics, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award, among other collections.
Originally published:
September 1, 2022

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