{ Ralph Black: A City Letter to the Country. }

[delga]

A City Letter to the Country
by Ralph Black

The fire trucks came again last night,
the stones of the city are burning.
And again the black wheels blow and crash,
weighted with the miles laid out
behind them, the litany of street names
naming themselves as they pass.

I want to try Alaska, the country’s other
edge, where stars come down to rest
on the tundra, and people leave
gigantic piles of rocks on the snow
to be certain of wherever they’ve been.
I want to breathe myself back
into the quiet, to stare and ease my way
glacially through the days, and make
my living under so many hours of darkness.

In the firelight of another building
finally collapsed beneath this wrought iron sky,
I watch the cellists scavenging
for their songs, the poets dying of language
to say one thing exactly right.
On a distant rooftop, a woman folding
immaculate sheets stops to consider
all the constellations she knows are hers
and will never be able to name.

I want to ask directions for places
called for what they are: Snow-Light,
Weather-Home, Denali. I want to stand
at the center of the swirling globe, miles
from the city, and know for once the unwinding
of a place, the patiences and passions:
how a river willow is cut and bent to a snare,
how a marmot pads toward it—
the whole morning blue with precision.