Becoming Light Read Free

will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eyes level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain .
    —Thoreau
    The raspberries
    in my driveway
    have always
    been here
    (for the whole eleven years
    I have owned
    but have not owned
    this house),
    yet
    I have never
    tasted them
    before.
    Always on a plane.
    Always in the arms
    of man, not God,
    always too busy,
    too fretful,
    too worried
    to see
    that all along
    my driveway
    are red, red raspberries
    for me to taste.
    Shiny and red,
    without hairs—
    unlike the berries
    from the market.
    Little jewels—
    I share them
    with the birds!
    On one perches
    a tiny green insect.
    I blow her off.
    She flies!
    I burst the raspberry
    upon my tongue.
    In my solitude
    I commune
    with raspberries,
    with grasses,
    with the world.
    The world was always
    there before,
    but where
    was I?
    Ah raspberry—
    if you are so beautiful
    upon my ready tongue,
    imagine
    what wonders
    lie in store
    for me!

In the Glass-Bottomed Boat
    In the glass-bottomed boat
    of our lives, we putter along
    gazing at that other world
    under the sea—
    that world of flickering
    yellow-tailed fish,
    of deadly moray eels, of sea urchins
    like black stars
    that devastate great brains
    of coral,
    of fish the color
    of blue neon,
    & fish the color
    of liquid silver
    made by Indians
    exterminated
    centuries ago.
    We pass, we pass,
    always looking down.
    The fish do not
    look up at us,
    as if they knew
    somehow
    their world
    for the eternal one,
    ours for
    the merely time-bound.
    The engine sputters.
    Our guide—a sweet
    black boy with skin
    the color of molten chocolate—
    asks us of the price of jeans
    & karate classes
    in the States.
    Surfboards too
    delight him—
    & skateboards.
    He wants to sail, sail, sail,
    not putter
    through the world.
    & so do we,
    so do we,
    wishing for the freedom
    of the fish
    beneath the reef,
    wishing for the crevices
    of sunken ship
    with its rusted eyeholes,
    its great ribbed hull,
    its rotted rudder,
    its bright propeller
    tarnishing beneath the sea.
    “They sunk this ship
    on purpose,”
    says our guide—
    which does not surprise
    us,
    knowing how life
    always imitates
    even the shabbiest
    art.
    Our brains forged
    in shark & seawreck epics,
    we fully expect to see
    a wreck like this one,
    made on purpose
    for our eyes.
    But the fish swim on,
    intimating death,
    intimating outer space,
    & even the oceans
    within the body
    from which we come.
    The fish are uninterested
    in us.
    What hubris to think
    a shark concentrates
    as much on us
    as we on him!
    The creatures of the reef
    spell death, spell life,
    spell eternity,
    & still we putter on
    in our leaky little boat,
    halfway there,
    halfway there.

Pane Caldo
    Rising in the morning
    like warm bread,
    from a bed
    in America,
    the aroma
    of my baking
    reaches you
    in Italy,
    rocking in your boat
    near the Ponte Longo,
    cutting through the glitter
    of yesterday’s moonlight
    on your sunstruck
    canal.
    My delicious baker—
    it is you
    who have made
    this hot bread
    rise.
    It is you
    who have split the loaf
    and covered it with the butter.
    I prayed to the moon
    streaking the still lagoon
    with her skyblue manna;
    I prayed for you
    to sail into my life,
    parting the waters,
    making them whole.
    And here you come,
    half captain, half baker—
    & the warm aroma of bread
    crosses
    the ocean
    we share.

Nota in una Bottiglia
    Mandando una lettera
    da New York a Venezia
    da amante ad amante,
    da Inglese Americano
    ad Italiano Veneziano,
    e come mandare
    una nota in una bottiglia
    da un mare
    ad un altro,
    da una galassia
    ad un altra,
    da un epoca
    ad un altra,
    scirolando per creppacci
    nello spazio.
    Mio amante
    così lontano
    eppure. Qui
    dentro alia mia anima,
    quando respire
    al telefono,
    un canale
    si apre
    nel mio cuore,
    un canale chiaro
    in quell mondo scintillante,
    dove ci cullavamo
    in una barca
    amandoci,
    sapendoci parte
    della danza
    del mare.
    E tutt’ uno.
    La barca
    abbracciata dall’