COMPASS ROSE (excerpts)

2 FAULT LINES

He pours water into a cup: at room temperature,

the cup is white, but, after he microwaves it,

and before steeping a tea bag with mint leaves,

he notices outlines of shards have formed

above the water. As the cup cools, the lines

disappear: now he glimpses fault lines

inside himself and feels a Siberian tiger

pace along the bars of a cell—black, orange,

white; black, orange, white—and feels how

the repeating chord sends waves through him.

His eyes glisten, and he tries to dispel the crests,

but what have I done, what can I do throbs

in his arteries and veins. Today he will

handle plutonium at the lab and won’t

consider beryllium casings. He situates the past

in the slight aroma of mint rising in the air.

Sometimes he feels like an astronaut suspended

above Earth twisting on an umbilical cord;

sometimes he’s in the crosshairs of a scope,

and tiger stripes flow in waves cross his body.

3 GLIMMER TRAIN

Red-winged blackbirds in the cattail pond—

today I kicked an elk hoof off the path,

read that armadillo eaters can catch

leprosy, but who eats armadillo and eats

it rare? Last night you wrote that, walking

to the stables, you glimpsed horses at twilight

in a field. We walk barefoot up a ridge

and roll down a dune; sip raki, savor

shish kebab and yogurt in an arcade.

Once we pored over divination lines incised

into tortoise shells, and once we stepped

through the keyhole entry into a garden

with pools of glimmering water. In the gaps

between my words, peonies rise through hoops

behind our bedroom—peonies are indeed

rising through hoops behind our bedroom—

you comb your hair at the sink as they unfold.

4 ORCHID HOUR

Orchid leaves are dark against the brighter glass;

two translucent blooms expand at the tip

of a segmented stalk, and, through the window,

an orange hue limns the Jemez Mountains.

At the lab a technician prepares a response

to a hypothetical anthrax attack, and what

is imagined can be: lionfish proliferate

in the Caribbean, traces of uranium appear

in an aquifer, and the beads of an abacus

register a moment in time: the cost of cabbage,

catfish crammed in a bubbling tank—and words

in the dictionary are spores: xeriscape, fugu,

cloister, equanimity. In the orchid hour,

you believe you know where you are, looking

before and through a window, but a pang lodges—

out of all the possible worlds, this, this.

5 THE CURTAIN

Inside each galaxy is a black hole—

           we will never see your birth mother’s face—

our solar system has eight, not nine, planets—

           we will never know the place of your birth—

who anticipated five dwarf planets

           in our solar system

           or that ice lodged on one of Jupiter’s moons?

When three caretakers brought three babies

           into the room, your mother leapt out of her chair,

           knowing at a glance your face.

We do not want anyone to be like the rings of Saturn,

           glinting in orbit,

           or inhabiting the gaps between rings;

we do not want anyone to be like Uranus.

On a whiteboard, you draw a heart, an infinity sign,

           star, and attune to a gyroscope’s tilt.

At night I’ve pulled the curtain

and stopped at the point

           where you twirled and transfixed—

           but tonight I pull the curtain to the end:

inside our planet is a molten core.

7 COMET HYAKUTAKE

Comet Hyakutake’s tail stretches for 360 million miles—

in 1996, we saw Hyakutake through binoculars—

the ion tail contains the time we saw bats emerge out of a cavern at dusk—

in the cavern, we first heard stalactites dripping—

first silence, then reverberating sound—

our touch reverberates and makes a blossoming track—

a comet’s nucleus emits X-rays and leaves tracks—

two thousand miles away, you box up books and, in two days, will step

           through the invisible rays of an airport scanner—

we write on invisible pages in an invisible book with invisible ink—

in nature’s book, we read a few pages—

in the sky, we read the ion tracks from the orchard—

the apple orchard where blossoms unfold, where we unfold—

budding, the child who writes, “the puzzle comes to life”—

elated, puzzled, shocked, dismayed, confident, loving: minutes to

           an hour—

a minute, a pinhole lens through which light passes—

Comet Hyakutake will not pass Earth for another 100,000 years—

no matter, ardor is here—

and to the writer of fragments, each fragment is a whole—