Rock Harbor by Carl Phillips

AS A BLOW, FROM THE WEST
    Names for the moon:
    Harvest; and Blue; and
    Don’t Touch Me—
    and Do. I dreamed I had
    made a home on the side
    of a vast, live volcano,
    that the rest was water,
    that I was one among many of
    no distinction: we but
    lived there, like so many
    birds that, given the chance
    not to fly for once in
    formation, won’t take it, or
    cannot, or—or—but
    what of choice can a bird know?
    Down the volcano’s sides,
    in the pose of avalanche
    except frozen, and so
    densely it seemed impossible
    they should not strangle
    one another—yet they
    did not—grew all
    the flowers whose names
    I’d meant to master;
    it was swift, the dream—so
    much, still, to catch
    up to—though I could not
    have known that, of course,
    then: isn’t it only in
    the bracing and first wake of
    loss that we guess most cleanly
    the speed with which what held us
    left us? In the dream, the world
    was birdless, lit, yielding, it
    seemed safe, which is not to say
    you weren’t in it. You were, but
    changed somewhat, not so much
    a man of few words,
    more the look of one who
    â€”having entered willfully
    some danger, having just returned
    from it—chooses instead
    of words his body as
    the canvas across which to
    wordlessly broadcast his coming
    through. We lived
    in a manner that—if it
    didn’t suggest an obliviousness
    to a very real and always-there
    danger—I would call heady;
    it was not that. Think,
    rather, of the gods: how,
    if they do in fact know
    everything, they must understand
    also they will be eventually
    overthrown by a new order,
    which is at worst a loss
    of power, but not of life,
    as the gods know it. I was
    not, that is, without
    ambition: the illicit, in
    particular, I would make it
    my business to have studied;
    and of that which is gained
    easily, to want none
    of it. Flowers; names
    for the moon. It was
    swift, the dream, the body
    a wordless and stalled
    avalanche that, since forgivable—
    if I could—I would forgive, poor
    live but flagging, dying now
    volcano. And the water
    around its sides receding with
    a dream’s swiftness: everywhere,
    soon, sand and sand, a desert that,
    because there was no water,
    and because they missed it,
    the natives had called a sea, and
    to the sea had given a name:
    Friendship, whose literal
    translation in the country of
    dream is roughly “that which
    all love evolves
    down to”—
    Until to leave, or
    try to—and have drowned
    trying—becomes refrain,
    the one answer each time
    to whatever question:
    what was the place called?
    what was the house like?
    what was it we did inside it?
    how is it possible that it cannot be enough to have given
    up to you now the dream as—for a time, remember—I did give
    my truest self? why won’t you take it—if a gift, if yours?

THE CLEARING
    Had the light
    changed, possibly—or,
    differently, was that how I’d
    seen it
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â always, and not
    looking? Was I meant for
    a vessel? Did I only
    believe so and,
    so, for a time, was it true but
    only in that space which belief makes
    for its own wanting?
    What am I going to
    do with you
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€”Who just
    said that?
    Whose the body—where—that voice
    belongs to?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Might I turn,
    toward it, whinny
    into it?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â My life
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â a water,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â or a cure for
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â that which no water
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â can cure?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â His chest
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â a forest, or a