Fanny Howe - Second Childhood

Yellow goblins

and a god I can swallow.

Eyes in the evergreens

under ice.

Interior monologue

and some voice.

Weary fears, the

usual trials and

a place to surmise

blessedness.

Black winter gardens

engraved at night

keep soft frost

on them to read the veins

of our inner illustrator’s

hand internally light

with infant etching.

Children booked

on blizzard winds

and then the picture

is blown to yonder

and out of ink:

the black winter verses

are buds and sticks.

Stone walls and chalk scratches

for different ages.

None of us could be sure now

how many we were or where.

There were hurtful pebbles,

cracked windows

and bikes. We cut the butter

and the day’s bread evenly.

We were children and a metal bed.

Twelve loaves

and five thousand baskets.

Five baskets,

twelve pieces of dough.

Twelve times five and butter

for a multitude.

Bread made — that is—

with twelve thousand

inhalations of leaven.

A pebbled island

is a kind of barge:

seaweed blackened

another glacial strand.

White quartz.

Some green mermaid’s tears.

(A cask of bottles shattered.)

That home of mine

lost four inches

to erosion and great white sharks

but we kept floating.

I even found bedside stones

to play with in the night.

A colorful set to pretend

I could now see Ireland

from Boston.

Christmas is for children

on an English hill.

Simple, dismal,

and blissful,

a few little balls and crystal.

Dark by 4 p.m.

but you can ride your scooter

up the hill and down

in the arctic rain

each drop a dimple

on a—

and a silver handle

in a drain and a boy

can stand beside your hand

at the window

of a store full of cribs

and tinsel

before an icon

of the infant

with the news

rolled in his hand.

Odense is in Denmark and where are we now?

In a flying sleigh en route to Odessa.

The Black Sea is steaming below.

We sweep like snow-crystals every which way.

We who? My baby and me.

Off to the left, the sky is fleece.

In our warm sleigh and north of Norway,

away, away, what fun we are having!

More snow coming, more souls.

Baby lashes the dogs with a strand of her hair.

Her round face is circled with ermine.

You’re like someone crossing a border daily

a person who is to itself unknown.

You’re like a fragment that can’t find what has lost it

or illuminate

what’s going on or what it’s seeing through.

Are we a child or a name?

John, John, John and John,

you’re all so far from me.

Each like a walking stick inert

until picked up.

A person, the first I—

with few verbs left.

Vertical even when you laugh.

Sunset in DC comes at 4:56.

This is nearly the same time as sunset in LA

when the El Royale sign lights up.

Sunset in Shannon comes several minutes earlier in the day.

Sunsets in Hong Kong and Havana are just about the same but far away.

Sunset in Chile and sunset in New Zealand

are only six minutes apart on different days.

The length of today in Boston is nine hours and fifty-one minutes.

The length of today in DC is ten hours and seven minutes.

I knew there was a difference between cities.

Don’t worry. You didn’t have to tell me about the bulge in the circumference.

If the light is shining in the House, Congress is still in session.

Of course the shape of earth is an oblate spheroid

wider in the middle by very few miles.

Even here on 21st Street, I can feel the sun moving in Vancouver.

There are twelve hours of light on one day in October.

I only needed to exist to know that the sun turns around the earth

and everything else at the center of the universe.

Loneliness is not an accident or a choice.

It’s an uninvited and uncreated companion.

It slips in beside you when you are not aware that a choice you are making will have consequences.

It does you no good even though it’s like one of the elements in the world that you cannot exist without.

It takes your hand and walks with you. It lies down with you. It sits beside you. It’s as dark as a shadow but it has substance that is familiar.

It swims with you and swings around on stools.

It boards the ferry and leans on the motel desk.

Nothing great happens as a result of loneliness.

Your character flaws remain in place. You still stop in with friends and have wonderful hours among them, but you must run as soon as you hear it calling.

It does call. And you climb the stairs obediently, pushing aside books and notes to let it know that you have returned to it, all is well.

If you don’t answer its call, you sense that it will sink towards a deep gravity and adopt a limp.

From loneliness you learn very little. It pulls you back, it pulls you down.

It’s the manifestation of a vow never made but kept: I will go home now and forever in solitude.

And after that loneliness will accompany you to every airport, train station, bus depot, café, cinema, and onto airplanes and into cars, strange rooms and offices, classrooms and libraries, and it will hang near your hand like a habit.

But it isn’t a habit and no one can see it.

It’s your obligation, and your companion warms itself against you.

You are faithful to it because it was the only vow you made finally, when it was unnecessary.

If you figured out why you chose it, years later, would you ask it to go?

How would you replace it?

No, saying good-bye would be too embarrassing.

Why?

First you might cry.

Because shame and loneliness are almost one.

Shame at existing in the first place. Shame at being visible, taking up space, breathing some of the sky, sleeping in a whole bed, asking for a share.

Loneliness feels so much like shame, it always seems to need a little more time on its own.

The monk is a single

and so am I

but which kind?

All of them

from young to wild

and the boyish one

(mine) cared for the weak

until there was no one

to care for him

besides an old woman

who lived as a she.

I became a penitent

sequentially:

first in sandals

then in boots

then with a hood

and bare feet.

Now night-bound, now nude, then old.

Another brother and I took a train with a view of mountains

floating in water

out of Limerick Junction

to Heuston Station where Wittgenstein