Briefly

There’s no bird in the sky just like
there’s always no star at the start
of the night, until you stare
and there is

What Am I

That’s top-three light:
Low, directional, golden everything
with a dark gray backdrop. TV off
because it’s next to the window and what
could be better than what’s out the window?
This morning it was a cloud lying down at the foot of the mountain
like a dog. Now, it’s that light again. In this house
we adulate the ordinary, celebrate the ubiquity
of certain beautiful things: house finch, jade bush,
each other’s faces. There is no more value in a beautiful rare thing
than in a beautiful common thing. We use our right hands to draw
our left hands, we list all of the uses of the mouth:
talking, chewing, humming, kissing. Oh bored,
we get bored, but every time we do, something changes:
same old Toyon tree beyond the kitchen sink, same old red berries,
until one day the robins attack! Clumsy divers
harrying the leaves, gobbling the fruit until it’s a new tree, all green,
and the birds move on.
Your left hand on the jade! Your mouth
making a cloud! The house finch
with a dark gray backdrop! What are we, alive?

Wick

In the afternoon a candle doesn’t hold
a candle to the rest of the light.
Redundant, puny flame.
You lit it to watch it
dance while you read,
waiting for me to come over.
A candle—answer to the riddle
What shrinks as time passes?

All afternoon it burned, for your pleasure,
and the sun burned
over the belly of the ocean and away.
Now the same flame
which did nothing all day to get a room glowing
reveals a whole yard
when you carry it to the porch in one hand,
my hand in the other.

I saw that coming. I’ve seen enough
to know I’d be able to see:
the grass, your face. What I forgot to expect
was color. Enough light,
yes, from this one wick
to stir the cones—

your eyes, irises bright as sap.

Caroline Kanner is a teacher in California. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Peripheries, NECK, Volume, and the math textbook Fractal Worlds: Grown, Built, and Imagined.