Caitlin Palo

Testament in Harvest Season

   He moved to the accompaniment of dispossessed angels
—- Thomas McGrath, “Blues for Warren”


Now is the time of apples. Sliced pole to pole, a crescent; sliced across the equator, a star.
Desire for equivalence and distinction, the Angel of Language can either speak or understand.

The first candles were torches and oil lamps. The book is a candle. The clock a mark in wax.
Wasp and fly pollinate more than the bee. Each fig a wasp’s grave. The olive tree, self-fruitful.

Instead of warning bells, a chime, a blue light by the bedside and the news infiltrates sleep.
The Angel of War with a face of the deep appears on screen and g-d moves across dreams.

Milk and flour ferment overnight in the warm apartment where radiators clatter and hiss.
Darkness obscures the movements of armed men and only silence issues from the satellites.

The Angel of Sleep wears two faces, one dark and one a pillar of smoke and fire awake to death.
The frost on the field is first and the line of the morning sun descending over the field is second.

Fairuz sings in the morning, Umm Kulthum - star of the east - in the evening. Mark every hour
kneeling. Bury the garlic standing, cloven from the bulb. Tie back and veil the braids of youth.

Play at once two children’s games, hide & go seek and sardines. Start the countdown from any
number the days on your fingers. Write the name of each child across the palm of your hands.

A house cannot be empty when the roof is torn off, a boy cannot become a man if he is dead.
Oranges are ripening on the tree, green and hard, months until their fragrance fills the air.

Caitlin Palo practices poetry, gardening, and martial arts in Seattle, where she earned her PhD in English from the University of Washington. Her day job is supporting crossdisciplinary research in the humanities. She can be found on the web at caitlinpalo.com.