Forest of Signs

Transom is one word, truss another, span a third. As if building a bridge across an abyss that has one side only, the shivery bank I start from. The bridge is on gaseous Jupiter, consecrated by a poet: Dead men naked they shall be one, he wrote. With the man in the wind and the west moon. The other side is an unknown, it is not yet within reach, I cannot even imagine what is there, nor how to construct a foundation that will support the throws I dream towards it. I saw my dead father last night, my younger son sickening in his arms: I wanted to reach out and take one from the other, the other from the one. And yet both perhaps are one. Or other. I am the same age now that my father was when his third daughter died. The great red spot is a swirl in the heart, it revolves on an eight hour period, it bleeds constantly, it has been going on since the seventeenth century; the small red spot is hope, it appeared late in the last millennium, it is quick and vicious, it may be salvation. From what? From having to choose between the love that kills and killing yourself. Not as hard as it sounds. I am lost in a forest of signs and I wander. The forest is made of names, I survive there by telling. The first tell: When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone / They shall have stars at elbow and foot. Afterwards, I see the path their dying light made, I breath in the air of their longing, and I sing.