COLIN DEKEERSGIETER

Magnificat


The rain the house lets in is birth. 
In the dry season
the rainless wood is death.

But the people think us poor. 

If they bring it up again
tell them we’re physisaphiles.
Where’s your brother? That wild––

He’s in the flowerbed with a magnifying glass 
learning of the aphid and the cabbage maggot 
trying not to burn the calyx, stalk, and bine 
with his exacting science
of distance and still hands.
He’s the garden and the tremulous map.
There’s an X marked with treasure 
and he’s trailing a blaze,
burning out from a shot in the arm and frenzy feeding.
It’s Magnificat!
His soul magnifies, Mom.
He will be metempsychosised firefly, 
imagine, contrapassoed glorious!

Because that is the way he lived and sinned:
with the soft light of his green eyes 
going bright and black
bright and black
at the sea with the earth at his back.
But he thinks that in this other state
I can house him here,
I can make our house a home 
on account of all the holes.
He believes he can live off rationed rain, 
eat our bound papers, and suck the pulp
out of the wood
as if Adam hadn’t swerved,
as if there wouldn’t be a shadow at the door.


183  The Paris-American

Colin Dekeersgieter holds degrees from The University of Vermont and The City University of New York, Graduate Center. He is a Pushcart nominee with work featured in The Worcester Review, Out of Our, The Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere. He lives and writes in New York City.

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  Next week's poet:

 Andrew GraceJJCCCACc