What Came Before Exile?
        with a nod to Dante

What came before this?
The last right thing as I walked
between the swing of my city hands,
ignorant and without anger?

Far back it is—a moon, say,
or a stone or soap or bowl.
Some small, white weight repeating,
used like light but not quite seen.

I live now in the hills, with the dark bees
in the dreadful parable of the village,
the flying mouths and eyes that gather all
and use it to seal little rooms with quiet.

My lost city, you winnow the years,
speak like fire or jasmine to the memory.
The talk, the striving hot with consequences
like the sky's recurring, burning stone.

I hear your stone and racket,
the salt, the yellow slant of light.
The hill where the pale winds protected me,
where those who loved me mattered.

How many turns until I am reconciled,
until I know home by its heat and distance,
as the blind do?

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Copyright © 2019 Patricia Nelson All rights reserved
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission