Bloom
*
The landscape. A child’s face traveling between trees. He says the body recedes. Cracking branches underfoot. I shut my eyes. Leaves float the air, ripple the world between us. Step through, time opens new. He turns the way of wind. Slow moving, thin, I follow him. Sunbeams blind the frame. Infinite grains, arcs of light, break & gather in me.
*
His shadow leads. The shred of an arm vanishes from a distant corner. I am caught in the echo of footsteps.
Leave time along. There he stands, brightly beyond my reach.
Searching, I fall open. Poorly visible, he passes through me, into the presence ahead. Torn features of a place. The child’s eyes. Receding space.
*
Wide is my clearing. The crossing of the field. A ray offers a way. Sand speckled underbrush.
Constellations of all that I am. Blue dust on the knees.
What is yet to be seen past the farthest things we see. Steep slopes, the heart he holds in hand, suddenly
slip
into
sky
*
Sight falls to skin. His wavering limbs. The valley branches ahead. He hurls forth a hand.
Sore healed traveler, come to morning. In the finger furrows I root myself anew forever.
Where rest seizes breath. No one is missing.
Do you see. Through coils he takes me. Swirls of leaves. Two rocks
drifting
past the
trees
*
Flits the motes of light.
What we were rubs away. Yet warm is my body without end; his claimed by continual unraveling. Albeit, familiar the voice, his entrance from the exit, darkness behind the dark cloth of oncoming night. Becomes again a flood of stars. Bone splinters in the air.
High up there. The beat of feet keep me falling. Soles striking sparks
as
we
go
*
Ever the echoes I follow. Faint steps, dirt circles kicked up, earth’s insistence on running, ascending figure, frame, wound.
Braided wind we’ll be. The taste of copper on my tongue.
Death remembers everyone. His hand full of hair, head bent,
here. I go to gather each thread. The fingers closing. Sight blurs. I glimpse him going
this
way
*
The path takes him taller. Audible growth I wake to recover. The farther he is, the deeper I hear. His restless voice skirts the meadow, strides a cut through the brush. Uncertain, I strike the brain candle. Seam rubs till lungs sprig out. Spiral slit in the side.
Flesh’s unremitting ravel. He worms,
pushing
back
into
bramble
*
The candle flame goes. Dust from the face I brush, endlessly into the air, earth torn. World born words drop his mouth. Raw retracting jaw. Everything left to say, blood spoken. No more fray. Unconstricted ventricle archways, lined with leaves, lilies. His hair & floating hands. There we gather,
stand
*
Edgeless trek, bound by stones, flowers on our bones. Lengthening limbs beneath moon’s encirclement. Traveling home. His voice unknots the door, detaches the forest floor. Shaking ground of light. Wake to it, explore. The after orbit a pulse
nothing
more—
*
Seeing increases, being ceaseless. Without world I yield to remembrance. Visitations at the snow trellised gate. Our arms through the latticework, linking silhouettes. Sheer breath. How return follows absence as essence, collarbone, cloud. What the hand cannot hold
goes—
*
Immanent exit no more than we’re after. Wind through the net we let row. Standing there, the world boughs back. Alive again ushers us in, uttering in us. Looking down at the feet, nearing new, gathering & again giving way. From song to stone, together, past blood flow. The mirrors that are
left
to
know
*
Stuttering to speak, he waves me across a door clothed in frost. Bandages from the throat peel off.
What opens us in remains in the wind. Steps onto a hillside. Path rotted & watering down. Becomes a self again. Flesh I can touch. Urn in hand, he scatters a way with sand. Moonlit limbs, grain clotted, lead our feet.
The
dead we’ve
yet to
meet
*
I touch his hand. His finger shoots the air. A figure waits beyond my fixed stare. It’s there. The slow boating out of me. Lidless flight through ash lands. Steps reverberate. Rest. The gating of another. Blood leaks.
My
chest
*
The child falls. His legs etched in ice. Limping, I lift him. His limbs dead weight in the limitless expanse. Down the hill, the figure defined. Long hair strings the floor. My body shakes. We’ve been here before. A distant stone, marked by names, ladders large. Falling fruit we are. Seconds collapse. Earth opening door. We collect ourselves.
Evermore
*
Each step hammers the light home.
Footprints in snow. Breath on the fallow. Beclouds his face. Buries a cheek in my breast.
Looking no longer. The figure coats closer, losing gravity, lifting the child from me.
He’s gone to—
Turns without word.
Refusing world.
Restless we
*
Wavering gaze, free from stay. The after alternating life. My torn toes numb from running. Child in another’s arms, tucked & taken aside. Sailing surface.
They ride
Iridescent we
Under duress
Without wait
It takes
Breaks
*
Further forth, a tomb.
My site wound. Every tree, snow covered.
It happens here. The continual waking glance following the stone they fall into.
The last
Moment
Still
Blue
A
Tear
Two
Lives
Lived
Straight
Through
*
We walk together, birds & an urn full of teeth, where the stones meet. Eye opens.
The
Smell
Of
Sea
Here
So
Continuously—
*
It’s the ever of sounds, streaming unbound
Led By
Lead
Look
Me
A
Sliver
Slow
Silver
Brightening
The
Reeds
*
Near
The
Mend
Eternity
Bends
Every
Light
Reels
In
*
Through
The
Brainstem
We
Swim
Begin
“Bloom” is the opening poem in a larger, recently completed book titled Rose. “Bloom” journey’s through an internal landscape in an attempt to amend vital facets of personal experience, such as grief, death and memory. Coming to terms with these experiences through language has been the path of this poem and the book as a whole.
Justin Robinson lives and works as a bookseller in San Francisco. He holds an MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University. His recent work can be found in
New American Writing and
comma, poetry.