I am an accomplice in crime.
I never act alone.

Like Alice, I watch helplessly
as my figure expands and recedes:
I spring up like a ball or jack-in-the-box,
then shrink like a violet.

Inconspicuous as a sleeve,
handmaiden, or butler,
at your command,
I genuflect, salute.

Though I leave no trace,
I watch your every move.

I am quiet as death,
yet my telltale presence signals yours.
Your shape is a prism to mine.

Though I am the rainbow’s polar opposite,
like distant cousins, we both
point to the same source.

You draw me out like a Slinky.

Always the bridesmaid,
never the bride,
when I am absent, the world appears flat.

Immaterial and weightless,
I am sidekick and sideshow rolled into one.

Shapeshifter, I billow like a sail
in the slightest breeze.
Then, at noon, when my feet come to a standstill,
I rest until the sun moves me to rise.

Darkness, my getaway car.

In the darkness of night
I felt your absence
in bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh.

Invisible to the eye,
perhaps you hid within me,
experienced my darkness,
my opaque being.

Lunar eclipse balanced
rock of moon and earth;
locked into darkness
cold shadow of night.

Yet the sun’s light is never eclipsed for long:
The moon turns, and rolls,
like a rock from a tomb,

or was it the earth that shook?

Shadow, I have played
the miller’s daughter
to your Rumpelstiltskin.
When offered straw, reams of it,
and challenged to spin it into gold,
I burnt it for warmth.

If only I could name
your dark shadow
that spins overhead:
you project the shadow
of a raven
with a wingspan
vast as an army.

With the spring thaw,
my footprints melted.
There is no retracing my steps.

I move forward,
like a spindle
spinning in space,
seeking a place
to be at rest.

As I write,
I spin straw,
not into gold,
but into words:
tangled locks,
heavy with seed.

Alongside the road
the doe was still
save for the beating of wings,
the clasp of talons,
the grasping of the beak.

So many times
I tried to grasp
at veins
under river’s
liquid skin.
Wading stream crossings,
I saw rocks
through water’s lens—
green as turquoise
and flecked with copper veins.
Yet each time
I reached,
my fishing hand
came up empty.
The shimmering rock
escaped my grasp
like flash of trout
or spadefoot toad.

The dogleg in the road
skirted the high school.
Yesterday’s rain reflected
in the arroyo alongside the road.
The loping gait of coyote
on the periphery caught our eye.
The car at standstill now,
the coyote ambled to the arroyo;
then lowered its head to drink,
the outline of its face and muzzle
perfectly mirrored in still water.
We too wanted to drink in the silence,
but when my passenger side window rattled,
the coyote, already schooled
in the ways of man, startled.
Stepping back, the coyote
angled its head quizzically at us,
then loped along,
disappearing from our view.
Dusk approached now
as silent as coyote’s footfall,
low angled rays of setting sun lending
their glowing many-colored mane
to the arroyo’s still waters.

To act in love requires
absorbing the pain.
Let the lightning strike.
Let the storm rage.
See how the tree stands tall.
The wind, surely, is felt deep
into the roots, yet the roots
withstand the storm.
Let the lightning bolt.
The nest cradles the egg
and outlasts the storm.

Think how each thread—
gold, mint, and turquoise—
slim and impermanent—
contributes to the pageantry.

Think how the sun,
source of all that beauty,
draws all to itself as it rises.

At its greatest height,
the sun’s light becomes transparent:
even shadows disappear.

Then, holding all in suspense,
the sun’s threads
unwind at night,
like a bobbin.

With nightfall,
moon’s piercing light
borrows sun’s radiant splendor,
sun’s myriad colors
transformed to a commanding white.

Each morning
think how the sun also rises,
banishing darkness.

Think:
without those threads of pink
and wisps of violet,
morning would be threadbare.

Published in 1942, Paul Eluard’s poem Liberté is a love poem for all the poet holds dear. During the Nazi occupation of France, the British Royal Air Force distributed Eluard’s poem by parachute across French soil. In response to recent events, here is my translation, written with our present challenge in mind.

Liberty

On my childhood notebooks
On my school desk on the tree
On the sand on the snow
I write your name

On the pages that I read
On the pages left blank
Rock paper ashes blood
I write your name

On gold leaf of icon
On arms of superheroes
On the crown of kings
I write your name

On the jungle and the desert
On the wild nest on the flowering lupine
On childhood memories
I write your name

On nightfall’s mysteries
On warm bread from the oven
On the courting of lovers
I write your name

On each of my rags—robin’s egg blue—
On the pond’s disheveled reflections
On the lake’s still moon
I write your name

On the outfields of the horizon
On the wings of bird
On the shuttered windmill
I write your name

On each streak of dawn
On the sea on boats
On withering mountain
I write your name

On honeycomb of cloud
On heavy sweat of storm
On rain’s dreary downpour
I write your name

On the glittering world
On the prism of sparkling colors
On all natural phenomena
I write your name

On trails traced with deer tracks
On heavy trafficked roads
On the overflowing plazas
I write your name

On the lamp that is lit
On the lamp that goes out
On little houses lined in a row
I write your name

On the fruit cut in two
On mirror reflection
On bedsheets empty as seashell
I write your name

On my endearing dog
On his attentive ears
On his implausible paws
I write your name

On my door’s swinging out
On my mementos
On the crackling of the hearth fire
I write your name

On the breath of flesh
On the foreheads of friends
On the hand outstretched
I write your name

On windows’ reflections
On waiting lips
On the outer reaches of silence
I write your name

On the hallowed ground that is desecrated
On the embers of our dying fire
On the walls of indifference
I write your name

On the absence of will
On my solitude laid bare
On the march towards death
I write your name

On rallying health
On love that takes risks
On hope that outpaces despair
I write your name

And by the power of a single word
My life begins anew
I am born to know you
And to name you

Liberty.

First you haul out the weeds and till the soil.
Then you plant the seed.

When the seedlings break through the soil, you water.
Then one day you see, for the first time, how rocky the soil is.

When you transplant the seedlings to temporary quarters, you see the root hairs
clutch at fine rocks, the tightfisted root forming an intricate web around the rock.

And now you dig through the soil, abandoning gloves
to feel the sharp edges that must go; the dirt on your nails, a labor of love.

When you return the seedlings to the soil, you realize that the garden is improbably large:
the garden is your heart,

which must enlarge itself to accept the seed entrusted to it:
whether windborne or transported by hitchhiker,

that each disheveled root hair that burrows in the recesses of your heart
has the power to transform you,

that your body, like soil, yields to the seed,
to the storm, to the hail, and to drought,
and survives.