The Neighbors
At least in this trackless, perfect sunlight,
let’s not ridicule her obscenities, the cold chapel of his disgust,
nor her feet clattering down the wooden steps, scaring up the jays,
his boots hammering after.
And let’s not mock the multiple times they start their cars,
then stop, slam the doors, begin again.
No, let’s remember the holy was once everywhere
before it withdrew to make room for us.
And not just for seabirds flying out among the glimmer,
or elk bowed down to earth. No,
I’m talking about a divinity packing up for streetlights
and inflatable rafts, and alcoholics anonymous
and two babies I saw once at the beach
throwing handfuls of sand into the other’s face.
I mean the way we were given everything to be lost.
And that’s not even counting loneliness.
Or how, on a good day, my neighbors can glimpse Tomales bay
from their porch, that conflagration of light camped in water.
Though who looks straight at the kind of shining
without looking away?
If I ever learn to love my neighbors
it will be on a morning like this, one of them screaming, You’ve stolen it all,
the other sobbing, You’ve made a mockery of me,
lest I forget this world is burning.
Lest I forget affliction is an approximation
of the spirit opening, and like every idea we hold about humanity
on its way back to sanctity,
imperfectly seen through.
At least in this trackless, perfect sunlight,
let’s not ridicule her obscenities, the cold chapel of his disgust,
nor her feet clattering down the wooden steps, scaring up the jays,
his boots hammering after.
And let’s not mock the multiple times they start their cars,
then stop, slam the doors, begin again.
No, let’s remember the holy was once everywhere
before it withdrew to make room for us.
And not just for seabirds flying out among the glimmer,
or elk bowed down to earth. No,
I’m talking about a divinity packing up for streetlights
and inflatable rafts, and alcoholics anonymous
and two babies I saw once at the beach
throwing handfuls of sand into the other’s face.
I mean the way we were given everything to be lost.
And that’s not even counting loneliness.
Or how, on a good day, my neighbors can glimpse Tomales bay
from their porch, that conflagration of light camped in water.
Though who looks straight at the kind of shining
without looking away?
If I ever learn to love my neighbors
it will be on a morning like this, one of them screaming, You’ve stolen it all,
the other sobbing, You’ve made a mockery of me,
lest I forget this world is burning.
Lest I forget affliction is an approximation
of the spirit opening, and like every idea we hold about humanity
on its way back to sanctity,
imperfectly seen through.
Julia B. Levine has won numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Northern California Poetry Award for her latest collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU press 2014) as well as the 2003 Tampa Review Prize for her collection, Ask; the 1998 Anhinga Poetry Prize and bronze medal from Foreword magazine for her first collection, Practicing for Heaven, as well as a Discovery/The Nation award. Widley published, her work has been anthologized in The Places That Inhabit Us, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She received a PhD in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley, and lives and works in Davis, California.