I have lost all luscious dreams
beyond all kingdoms of thought.
But then I feel a little happy thinking of you
the way we invite our love to the table
to eat what’s left; I make a stream
connecting the baseball card in my wallet
with the you in my mind.
Later the Ambassador
to the Interior wants to negotiate
without radiance
on her unimagined furniture.
She is a photographer standing at the tiny gate
beside Niagara’s escarpment.
My religion appears ruptured with a honey-smelling tree,
something with one millionth of an inch
from rapture,
indulging in meaning and quiet panic.
See how the sun carries certain weight.
It looks like a wild egg
from a prehistoric bird broken open
on a baffled hill. I want to go out
and ride the back of a parable
or walk up and down the city looking
for something that thrilled me back in the day.
Back in the day I tore
jubilant Edwardian script
across a savannah.
I wrote that there was no
stopping a forest
from taking what it wanted.

###

Bianca Stone is a poet and visual artist. She’s the author of the poetry collection Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, and contributing artist/collaborator on a special illustrated edition of Anne Carson’s Antigonick from New Directions. She co-founded and edits Monk Books, and chairs The Ruth Stone Foundation, an organization based in Vermont and Brooklyn, NY. Her newest book, Poetry Comics From the Book of Hours is out now from Pleiades press.

“A Bewilderment” originally appeared in BOMB on March 1, 2013.