Klink - Circadian

Table of Contents

Also by Joanna Klink

THEY ARE SLEEPING

Whatever the landscape had of meaning appears to have been abandoned, unless the road is holding it back, in the interior, where we cannot see

Elizabeth Bishop, Cape Breton

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BOSTON REVIEW Sea by Dusk, Winter Field

THE CANARY Sea by Flowers

CITY ART JOURNAL Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy, Hourglass

COLORADO REVIEW Studies for an Estuary, Draftsmanship, Fisherman, Flicker, Farm Soil, Auroras

COLUMBIA: A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE & ART Sea Ice, Beehive, The Eventides

CROWD Day Window

DENVER QUARTERLY Raven

FENCE Prism

GULF COAST Mariana Trench

THE IOWA REVIEW Whoever like you and all doves (three poems)

JUBILAT Sea Levels

THE KENYON REVIEW And Having Lost Track, Thoughts on Fog

THE LAUREL REVIEW Vireo

NEW AMERICAN WRITING Should I call it mechanical,Forgetting the northern sun, And when I asked

NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Antelope

POETRY NORTHWEST Blue Ice

PLOUGHSHARES Apology

POST ROAD River in Dusk, Shooting Star

SMARTISH PACE Porch in Snow

SONORA REVIEW Four Messages

WILDLIFE Grassfield

And Having Lost Track, Porch in Snow, and Mariana Trench are reprinted from LEGITIMATE DANGERS: AMERICAN POETS OF THE NEW CENTURY, edited by Cate Marvin and Michael Dumanis (Sarabande Books, 2006).

Apology is reprinted from ISNT IT ROMANTIC: 100 LOVE POEMS BY YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS, edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer and Aimee Kelley (Verse Press, 2004).

Day Window is reprinted from THE PIP GERTRUDE STEIN AWARDS FOR INNOVATIVE POETRY IN ENGLISH: 2005-2006, edited by Douglas Messerli (Green Integer, 2006).

Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy is reprinted from LONG JOURNEY: CONTEMPORARY NORTHWEST POETS, edited by David Biespiel (Oregon State University Press, 2006).

Porch in Snow, Antelope, and Winter Field are reprinted from MONTANA WOMEN WRITERS: A GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEART, edited by Caroline Patterson (Farcountry Press, 2006).

Sea by Dusk, River in Dusk, Sea Levels, and Shooting Star are reprinted from THE IOWA ANTHOLOGY OF NEW AMERICAN POETRIES, edited by Reginald Shepherd (University of Iowa Press, 2004).

Grateful acknowledgment to the University of Montana and to the Rona Jaffe Foundation.

Thank you to my family for their immense support.

Thank you Paul Slovak, Allen Grossman, Beth Murray, Kelly Barry, and John DAgata. Thank you Matt McGowan and Erik Herzog. For help with my eyes, thank you Karin Stallard, Nan Dunne, and Marina Zaleski.

To my students at the University of Montana, my gratitude and amazement.

For Baker and our time together, abiding love.

AURORAS

It began in a foyer of evenings The evenings left traces of glass in the trees A book and a footpath we followed Under throat-pipes of birds

We moved through a room of leaves Thin streams of silver buried under our eyes A field of white clover buried under our eyes Or a river we stopped at to watch The wind cross it, recross it

Room into room you paused Where once on a stoop we leaned back Talking late into daylight The morning trees shook off twilight Opening and closing our eyes auroras

Beyond groves and flora we followed a road Dotted with polished brown bottles, Scoured furrows, a wood emptied of trees

It was enough to hollow us out The evenings left grasses half-wild at our feet Branches with spaces for winds

The earth changes The way we speak to each other has changed As for a long while we stood in a hall full of exits Listening for a landscape beyond us

DAY WINDOW

Into the kitchen a thread of sun
floats down quiet. A private
sense of absence in my
everyday patternsbreath
pulled into my ribs prying
me apartand outside
the window coated in soot
from winds that came
all winter, some process has
ceasedalthough birds
drop and lift off the roof,
aerial sweeps, or just bursts of
feather, wings, claws, and the leap
of heart I would have,
should I be so brightly altered
with the chances of life,
a reparation I feel gathering
in the pitch, scarlet wing, most
unnatural sound held in the dim
threshold of my throat
or am I less than I was
and fear I cant distinguish
the thin blue current inside the light
from the slant in my voice
or the early morning fog laid over
the grass from the voice
that underlies everything.

RIVER IN DUSK

What wind there was
What sky there was was not
enough, I could not
hear beyond a cry a signal
beautiful idea to touch
you or wince where
faint against the glass you
sensed my handumbra
icy with bellshow
in the answer we felt
a sweeping diminishment
of things, fleets
of noise, faraway
wash of sequoias, and separate,
clouded, flat, haunting
river-surfaces torn in cool
air against the late
afternoon
Who told you time will come
Who finally seized the wind-rills
dragging aqueous regions inside
And inside the warrant
And inside the indifference through which
you are invited to pass, what
would occur in the half-second of
your leaning to
speak me that music
(Isnt it better to live)
You are right here
You are part of my persuasion

APOLOGY

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me
and I believe you. How could I not feel
you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass,
or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving.
If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you.
It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant.
Maybe you darken, already too much changed,
maybe in your house you would be content where
no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air,
such things held simply to be voiceless.
And if you mean me, I believe you.
Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent,
and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager
incidents the words. Some books
should stay formal on the shelves.
So surely I heard you, in your complication aware,
snow holding where it might weightless rest,
and should you fold into metrackless, misspent,
too much arrangedI might believe you
but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow,
here where it seems no good word emerges.
Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance
could lose these blinking hours to simple safety.
Here is an inwardless purpose.
In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty,
amounting to something. How could I not
wait for those few words, which we might enter.

DRAFTSMANSHIP

Draftsmanship, what we once called
desire. A black quality of light within
the clouds, the shadows filtering like wind
around each outlinethis poor stack of twigs,

a hanging wire looping toward the earth.
I speak to you because I do not know you,
and having lately made waste of what I care for,