Native

Native

Rain has so much room. A whole life.
The room looks onto a field, then a
crossing of electric line, then a lake
that never freezes even when winter
freezes all the other things.

It was Christmas, he had been in, this
time, for five weeks. Loony institutes
always recognised you, the way your
handwriting changed, the shakes you
had in both your arms but especially
on one particular side, getting worse.

He could’ve sworn he was teething,
except he was twenty-nine. He had
taken a plane across the ditches of
his country and crashed it, almost
killed his dad crashing it, because
in that episode of his sorrow, its depth,
its transparency, its lifeless shrine
of aching that another prayer would’ve
filled to the brim with bluebirds,
he could’ve sworn he was a ghost.

Can ghosts stand in rooms, looking
at the emptiness of a swing strung
like a torture victim between two
tree branches and two thick ropes?
Can ghosts rest? Or is the most
important part of death the fact
that you cannot stop experiencing it?

He wrote a song with his scratchy
piano and his scratchy guitar
about Christmas, the way it tends
to pass. The lyrics were about
stars, because they were what
God had intended us to mistake
for angels, because of their
brightness, because of their
distance, because of their
unreachable place.

Without their clothes, they would
all be naked. They would look
like they could cry more than
a single tear. Passers-by. Floods.
Metamorphosis. Shame. Trains.
The ditches that people dug. Rain
had so much room.