by Alison Shaffer
The Naming of Prophecy
I.
"These two assertions, that metaphor [a] teaches or says nothing new and [b] serves only to ornament language, proceed step by step from the initial decision to treat metaphor as an unusual way of naming things." – Ricoeur
II.
I say the sun makes war with the leaves, sharp
and unrelenting against a delicate net and weave
of their crusted veins. I name it war, and so it is.
There is no peace, only the maddening process
of treeflesh shot through with arrows of light,
quantum ammunition embedded in the very being
of wood. (A heart cleaved open, the treeline will bleed.)
III.
(She will be lost the way the earth, or a child, is lost, who turns
about the same familiar space without knowing
in what way it is familiar.)
II.
Dissatisfied, I unname the moon.
I unname the sky (even movement will lose its tongue).
Perhaps locket, clipped shut against night, making heavy
the damp veil of time that pulls along roughed
edges of a cusp. Or cup, perhaps—lifted over the horizon
in the trees’ palms pierced, sore of sunlight—lifted
and poured out (a bright balm will obscure the stars).
IV.
(Beneath the waters, her heart nameless
and bare against the mud. Love, he will name
the wind. Death, she will name the mouth of the wind.)
II.
I name the ring. He moves within—name him
knife through a circle of tongues,
throats, lungs—pushing ferociously against him.
I name the trees children—I set him to each gently, as fire sets
upon itself in the flesh of wood— set him upon her, as sunlight
defeated, drowned in the sea of her chest. (Kiss, his naming will
pass over her, and touch, a small wind over a great ocean.)
Wild Pear
I.
What the tree makes of its hope.
II.
Small, unripe, green and wild.
I have nothing to give you.
Some daemon sits, her eyes closed,
and all things come of their own accord,
lay themselves at her feet like offerings.
What does she do, then, but hold them
in the palm of her hand for a while,
learn the ins and outs—
the curve of the neck, the brown stubble,
the uneven bruise underneath—
kiss them and give them back again.
What I have to give you
is nothing. Keep it.
III.
The woods has given me a pear
and the afternoon, instead of your body.
I should have held it longer.
I should have remembered its scent,
its curling stem, its weight and sound.
I should have set it on the pillow
by my ear and slept inside its singing.
I should have kissed it in the morning
to remind me where I was waking.
Small, unripe, green and wild,
ignore my speculation—I gave it
back to the clover. What could I do
with the wild body of a pear?
I would not know what to do with yours.
IV.
I have nothing to offer you.
I close my eyes. The tree hopes.
Some of its hope falls to the ground.
Hope that is not sweet or filling.
V.
Thank you.