Thomas Bates

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Thomas Bates

No, Brother, I Did Not See

When we were small and lived in that blue house
with the hyacinths wrapped around it, kissing me
you said, When we are old, we will be afraid to die.
Then the cowbird, who lately had come to rest on our roof
hot afternoons like some Southwestern gargoyle,
set himself to cawing. I don't know what it was,
but you twisted your body up on to the awning,
cocked your fist, and let a smooth stone fly.
When the thing fell, you told me it grew and grew
until it was nothing left but hell the whole sky, look
you can't see anything, and somehow I knew you were right,
though I heard the hollow bones crack into themselves,
the empty black oyster crash among the garden;
that awful dead smell pouring from the cloister
sweet as frankincense, heavy as a new day
that falls into dusk too soon. We are sleeping
on the porch swing together with the smell of hyacinths,
a thousand birds springing from that one blood that saves us
every night. Here, I will look the other way for you.

The Argument

We will talk then of man's
first disobedience, and of the fruit
like a balled aorta pumping sunlight
in the garden. What sin?
All we know is the taste
of cherries, oddly sweet,
their color almost black, decorating
the air like easter ornaments.

No, those were eggs
we painted and hung, painted
and hung from limbs of aspens
with fishing line so twenty steps back
they were invisible, pure suspension,
and yes, they were also a miracle,

miraculous that our children
didn't see them swinging in plain view,
didn't reach and taste them
tart, the knowledge we pass down.
What in us is dark
but those cherries, brought low,

then lifted from the ground
by mortal hands, maybe even
fallen in the snow, an early winter
poured in four foot drifts against
the fence? And how the cherries
came to rest on top
we cannot know.

On those drifts
our children climbed, miraculous
they did not sink, up the fence
and plop into the bank
on the other side, we were envious.
And how our bodies came to rest.

Who first seduced us
to eat of them? Or was it,
who was first seduced?
We have stretched our arms
to the limits of their use, gathered
even those fruits that fell
beyond the slats of the fence,
chased birds, netted off the limbs

and even that
we did invisibly, indivisibly
human and dubiously,
holding the line
in our teeth, biting,
tying black stems with our tongues

spitting seeds
over the fence, someone
always watching us.
Oh, that we were birds
chased off, flung against the sky
like noisy black bells,
painted ornaments, or the thin
shells of eggs cast aside
when the yolk is broken.