I had a friend who found Neruda
in an onion. “Wait,” he said, “I’m
in the third circle, where the knife
sometimes hesitates because
of the ambition of fingers.”
She flew the kitchen into a cloud
of stars on the porch
and jumped aboard a moth
who could not fly straight
(and often flew too near Jupiter)
but swerved from the light
of a star whose needle
light had come to settle
on a gold eye lash.
I had a friend who jumped
onto the hood of a car when
he found (Basoalto) Neruda climbing
out of a crack in the sidewalk.
“You almost stepped on my
face,” he said. My friend leapt
from the car and found
a boat tied at the river bank,
took it down stream,
and fell over the falls
and landed on a rock
on Planet X where raspberry
birds fly with their stomachs
lit by two green moons.
I had a friend who bled
when he found Neruda
in a rose stem trapped
by a field of thorns.
“I’m looking for my watch,”
Neruda said. “And how it grasps
and grasps the simple
symbols of time
under yellowing glass.”
He licked a finger
and wiped at a tiger’s
writing on his wrist,
pausing as a blood
drop hung for just a moment
over a white stone.
I had a friend who found Neruda,
she said. I had a friend who found,
she said. I had a friend who
found a child’s voice under
thunder, she said,
as a raspberry bird drifted
through a forest
of flowers,
as the white and pink fires
drifted through the bird.
