Contour Lines
Notional Sciencing
Across Distances
Davis Fire
Thinking About Thinking Creates a Visual Scene
Giant Impact Hypothesis
Wolf Moon
I Can't Write You Back to Life, But I Can Try
Surface Tension
Have I Told You I Love the Moon?
Glosa
In the Belly
Horses burst from the trees and round a small hill, legs
blurring with speed, tails flying horizontal behind them.
The horses’ toplines stretch long; their riders bend
and unbend with each stride.
In this imagined scene, I observe
obliquely and from above
as from a high-hovering drone.
Is imagination an eye, or the ghost of an eye?
To read a topographical map, you learn to interpret
the map’s flat surface as peaked and curved and ravined.
The closer the lines, the steeper the slope.
On foot, this is where the work is.
The land levels where lines are farther apart.
This too is where the work is.
With practice you learn that not only the terrain,
but also yourself, bends with traveling.
Even if I leave the map behind, I maintain
a relationship to it. This is where
the work is: determining how closely or far apart
the lines are drawn, and therefore how canny
the map’s withholding and revealing. Memory is a guide
and the ghost of a guide. When I’m on foot, terra incognita
morphs into terra cognita, my mind’s topography
bending and unbending with each stride.
Ecclesiastes says “All is vapor,” reality unsolid as breath,
even as hooves gallop over the grass. Is this a poem
or the ghost of a poem? Neurons fire
and the mind invents for itself
extra-visual sensors, para-optic nerves,
complexes of dendrites and axons—
and sets interior images into motion. Lively, rapid,
like horses streaming over a rise.
I pack raingear, sunblock, hand sanitizer.
A knife, apples, earthy farmstand cheese.
In the grand backpack of my cosmology,
God is that small zippered pocket where I keep
my mini flashlight and a tiny chocolate snack.
You know, in case
of epistemic emergency.
Change of socks after passing
through rain-damp pastures.
What I am pacing off
are the soul’s possible geometries—
not only to map
but to gather sensory data.
A foot trip, a mind saunter.
Field research for my ongoing experiment
of thought.
If I multiply the cube of the soul’s radius
by four-thirds of a delicious constant,
just how big is this walkable sphere?
If time equals distance divided by rate,
how soon will a spirit traveling at less
than the speed of light arrive?
Taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument, this video
features an enhanced color-composite image that pans across
Jezero Crater’s delta on Mars.
—NASA JPL
For S.A., L.A., B.B., and D.P.
1.
The video scans the crater’s landscape,
showing mountains, bluffs,
volcanic remnants—and evidence
of water’s long-ago work upon them.
Apparently barren, desiccated,
the expanse reminds me of Nevada:
ancient seafloor accreted,
eroded, exposed, long arid.
2.
Jezero Crater was formed, first, by the Isidis impact,
a hit so massive it altered composition
of the rock it struck. Named for Isis,
Egyptian goddess of fertility and heaven,
this meteorite may have brought to Mars
the elemental ingredients for life. Later,
a smaller strike within the Isidis basin created
Jezero (Slavic for “lake”) Crater. NASA’s
Perseverance rover searches there
for remnants of life.
3.
For over a year, we five poets probe and gather samples,
write our way into various griefs, not knowing how hard
grief is about to blast us back:
its strength primary, elemental.
Our poems ensonify the echo—
linguistic, vestigial. And crafted: a way
to contain the impact within an impact.
4.
Another of the Perseverance rover’s instruments
abrades the delta’s rocks, analyzes the dust,
and finds, yes! organic compounds.
The boulders washed to the delta
from upriver—“a gift,” says the narrator,
“that allows us to learn about what’s far
beyond the crater.”
NASA’s scientists layered video images
to create the enhanced-color composite I watch.
Normally pink, the Martian sky here appears pale blue,
the soil copper, with rich violet shadings.
The camera pans across the crater
with this value-added artistry—like music
made visible in blue and blush, periwinkle
and peach. Burnished and lovely and stark.
5.
We five return, we seek, we write, reverberate.
How are we speaking? Like this:
sometimes in love’s lexicons,
sometimes in sobs so visceral and percussive
they sound like laughter.
Today, fire lines collide with the first forest I ever
fell in love with. Igniting, flames initially fan outward,
a sea star’s radial reaching of legs, before Sierra winds arise,
focusing the fire’s wild advance—downslope, then up-ravine,
then north across the sagebrush plateau toward Reno.
When I was young, my mother took me to Davis Creek
for picnics, walks among the pines, and lingering splashes
in the shallows. There were minnows, frogs, small pebbles
for looking at. She told me I could choose one pebble
to carry in my pocket, but to put the others back,
their colors vivid submerged beneath the rills.
In matrescence, a mother’s prefrontal cortex
severs segments of its networks and sends out new dendrites.
The brain reorients its neurons around caring for
the newborn, prioritizing protection and nurturance.
As a new mother, I suffered the severity of such pruning:
forgot how to poem, forgot how to believe in God. I became
depressed, did not welcome so much abrupt unlearning.
Yet I gained joy in sensing my synapses alight
again and again in my son’s direction.
Now that I’ve dropped him off to begin college
twelve hundred miles away, how do I de-matresce?
How will my brain grow away from mothering—
and from daughtering, with my mother newly dead?
My synapses fire again and again in their directions.
Empathic connectivity with my son
now a rhyme so oblique, it almost doesn’t chime
in the ear. And nothing will bring back my mother—
not a stone, not the carrying of a stone. But she did appear
once, last week, in a dream. We sat in yellow chairs
at a sunny table. I can’t remember what we said.
All that remains in my pocket is our being together.
In the dream, she hadn’t died, so I didn’t grieve
her being gone till after I awoke. We sat together
in that simple light, unaware of the advancing smoke.
Thinking About Thinking Creates a Visual Scene
My question squeezes under the fence
and enters the field, stealthy.
An Appaloosa turns her gray face
to notice, returns to browsing
on brown grass. Dried stalks
reach up to catch the snow.
Snow introduces the idea
of gravity, and of its disruption.
Wind enters, sliding the scene sideways.
The speckled horse persists, solid.
My question, dispersed briefly,
remembers itself. Crouches
on its haunches, fur
snow-spotted, belly
winter-hollow. Eyes filled
with snowflake-flight.
At dusk I’m walking, masked,
as the moon, waxing and gibbous, rises
into wildfire haze. Makes me wonder
what North America looks like right now
from space. Does the moon see
the smoke more, or the flames?
Graciously, the moon pipes up,
tired of poets third-personing her
like she’s not even in the sky. Look,
do you even know where I came from?
Big Splash. Theia Crash. Collision
with the Mars-sized protoplanet Theia
(named for the Titan who mothered Selene)
liquefied proto-Earth and spat magma-melt
flying into orbit.
Theia: “far-shining,” or “goddess,” or just “divine.”
Earth and moon’s magma cooled
and solidified; still their rocks
share similar isotopes, not to mention a lengthy
and layered history of trauma. Asteroid impacts
shocked the moon’s latent volcanoes
into erupting on the opposite face: her igneous seas
those dark plains we can see from here. The moon
was conceived in fire, was birthed in fire, was first
and long and lately on fire. The moon murmurs Sometimes
new moon, sometimes blue moon, I put the long u
in “longing for you.”
The moon whispers Eye me
through Earth’s wild-fired atmosphere,
and all my questions quiet.
What’s perception? What’s the wobble and bubble
of the cerebral, next to the glow of this celestial
copper coin suspended in smoke? Even when
we can’t see her, she still holds sway. Though dim
through your blackout curtains, you know
I’m out here flinging light.
The calendar says soon we’ll enter
Year of the Snake.
This doesn’t have to mean sinister—
just transformative.
But yes, probably also sinister.
One horoscope says avoid making
any commitments.
Another says my partnerships
will be conflictual.
It warns that this full moon will fling everyone
deep into their feelings, and those governed
by the moon especially
will be wrecks. Never mind that anxiety
dogs my thoughts already.
Let’s go out and sniff around in the woods.
My inner slither knows the way.
My gold eyes adjust
to see the shadowed. My paws stealth me forward
and also sideways.
We’ll find an open glade and watch
the horizon expectantly. Reptilian wisdom
is all about new beginnings.
While that big glow rises beyond
leaf-bare silhouettes, let’s slip
our pelts and raise our sharp-fanged howl.
I Can't Write You Back to Life, But I Can Try
The month you died, a heat dome baked
California and Nevada. After your memorial,
we escaped Reno, cooked a little cooler
in the Sierras. Each day for a week,
I took solitary walks around Horseshoe,
highest of the Mammoth Lakes.
Each day, one of Horseshoe’s tributary
creeks ran dry, its snowfield source
evaporated. Sweating, weeping, I watched
for wildflowers. Amid wispy grasses
in the pine glades, I saw so many daisies—
your mother’s favorites which, ever since
her death, prompt my thoughts of her,
make her a little bit more present.
Each day, Mom, I wondered, what flower
will be yours? The one that, like Grammy’s
daisies, makes you seem a little bit
less gone? Near the lake I considered scarlet
paintbrush flowers, watercolor memories
of camping trips you took us on
to other mountain places. Up the dry slopes,
pungent sage blossoms; in pine shadows,
pale yellow columbines—all lovely, but
not yours. Our final day in Mammoth,
I strayed from the shoreline path
to follow the last stream still flowing
into the lake. A faint trail, lined
with purple lupines, wound upward
and around a bend. I balanced on a log
across the stream to look closer at a clump
of yellow asters, a flower you’d have loved
had you seen it in the wild. I continued
my slow climb. And then, hopping back
across the creek where its banks nearly met
in a narrow curve, I spotted them in the fir shade:
an expanse of forget-me-nots, the flower
that still reminds me of God, even though
I forgot my faith. (Eventually, I’ve begun
to think maybe it’s God who’s faithful, in spite
of my disbelief.) Each tiny sky-blue blossom
had a tiny black center with miniscule
yellow middle, like the pupil of an eye.
The moment I saw them, Mom, I knew:
this God-flower is my you-flower,
and I still believe in you.
The day of the full moon, two
white-tail bucks browse manzanita
beside the road,
their growing antlers
covered in tan velvet.
How long before
it's time to slough off
against trunk and granite?
How long before anyone’s
ready to flow into
what comes next?
A year later, I’ve returned
to Mammoth Lakes.
No heat dome this time,
just heat. Each day I hike the creek
above Horseshoe looking,
looking. Wildflowers fewer
than last July, late
spring blizzards slowing their bloom,
but aster and lupine buds swell
and proliferate, readying.
Columbine and paintbrush
gradually show their scarlet
through the week.
A few forget-me-nots
already cast their
black-dot gazes
to the sky, their eye-blue
irises luminous
like yours.
The lake level slowly declines,
but seven tributary creeks
still bring melt.
In the depths,
the water glows its usual
sapphire green.
Afternoons, downslope wind
draws its fingers across, shivering
the surface silver-blue.
Later, I watch the moon ascend
from the desert into violet dusk.
Not an answer, not
a promise. Just itself.
But constant, always
borrowing light,
always giving it away.
Have I Told You I Love the Moon?
I love the moon.
I say this wistfully
whenever I spot it.
I love the moon
for its distant serenity,
for my comradery with all
who gaze up in adoration.
I love the moon
not least for the shadows
it casts when full.
Oh, do I love the moon.
Have I told you
that I love the moon?
Most poets do, except
the ones who don’t
because so many like me
go on about it.
I think Mars, too, is cool.
Ice water in her veins,
surface strewn
with remnants
of water’s lively
long-ago rampaging.
I love Earth most of all.
Viewed from space,
the green-blue hazel
eye of her, the cloud
-lace skirts of her.
Her tree-clad land,
ice- and rock-ridged peaks,
fin-filled seas
and teeming dirt.
Lovingly
I amble across it,
sit and look and
wonder at it.
Love to think how
I’m made of Earth,
how she’s our source,
our most best-known.
How I’ll always return
to Earth, our true
and rightful home.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
—Czeslaw Milosz, “Ars Poetica?”
On any night when clouds part and I can see the moon,
the pleasure of connection clasps me like a quick hug,
like recognizing an old friend, our happy greeting.
“Hello, Moon,” I say, then, as if it could hail me back,
and for that moment all my fragments coalesce, held together
as though by affectionate arms of the crescent’s cusps.
When the moon is full, my own sense of wholeness
presses firmer, as from arms encircling entirely. I see, now,
I’m penning yet another poem about the heavens. But if
the purpose of poetry is to remind us
about unity and partition, about largeness—
each book, each self, a frigate replete with multitudes—
then allow me this divination, this division.
My mind, full professor of a dour philosophy.
My inner child a delighted, Dickinsonian recluse.
My feet, the hooves of a sleek, single-toed ungulate
best suited to grazing in the poet’s herbarium
between bouts of buck and gallop and trot. My heart,
an unshod ascetic clinging to a frayed hope of a good Truth.
How difficult it is to remain just one person,
even, apparently, for a god. Father, Son, Spirit—each sacred
Self ghosting into another. Triple and unit, trying the limit
of my understanding. Persephone, Selene, Hecate:
triadic lunar goddesses of underworld, celestial,
and earthly realms. Or Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite.
Asherah, Ishtar, Isis, Innana,—each “I” a glistening singularity
and leg of the throne of deity. Each persona a fractal
of the vast divine. Each ever-moving, numinous,
among the dead, among the living, amid the heavens,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and if all this seems a little nebulous, a bit unfixed—
well, I try to think of poetry itself as a sort of waystation,
a spirit-hostel or lodging-house for the holy,
a moonlit hotel for the liminal. Perhaps in poems
words converge, temporarily, with their true meanings,
mingle with their ideal Platonic forms or essential selves.
But they don’t stay, not necessarily. Maybe poems,
like our mortal personae, serve as perches, stopovers,
b&b’s for something akin to eternal souls,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
Mother, I yearn to summon you,
dead these two hundred seventeen days.
Around my neck I fasten the necklace I gifted you
eight years back, short brown thread with turquoise pendant.
I’m not certain what I hope will happen. Your absence,
now permanent, an echo of our three decades’
living in distant states, two full days’ drive apart.
Most days, all I’ve had of you are traces.
Your magenta rain jacket on its hanger in my closet,
still awaiting your next stay. The kitchen cloths
you bought when you were here two weeks—our longest,
most cherished stretch together—to help me
with my newborn. Now he’s nineteen. Mother,
may your care never fade from his memory, or mine.
Every day these kitchen cloths remind me of your
final visit, just two weeks before you died,
for his high-school graduation. I suppose in us
you’re still, in some way, alive: the cell from which he grew
was formed in me while I was formed in you.
This birth month of yours begins with Imbolc,
winter's mathematical middle,
lambs growing large in the wombs of ewes.
Also Brigid’s sacred day, when Celts
made beds of reeds to invite the goddess in
to rest after joining their feasts.
Mother, come again and stay with me.
Come eat and bathe and sleep.
Speak at length with me of lengthy things:
of lunar great cycles lasting nineteen years.
How I bleat for you across the distance.
How a home holds so many doors,
all opening inward.
Jennifer Bullis is author of Impossible Lessons (MoonPath Press) and of work appearing in Cherry Tree, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Lake Effect, Terrain.org, and Water~Stone Review. She is recipient of an Artsmith Residency Fellowship and Honorable Mention in the Gulf Coast Prize. Her manuscripts have been finalists for the Brittingham & Pollak, Wheelbarrow Books, and Moon City Prizes for Poetry. Originally from Reno, she holds a Ph.D. from University of California-Davis and writes from Bellingham, Washington.
