you can own what you have not shown.
you can prove what you did not choose.
A Wanderer, Leaving
a number left the workshop
on a night she did not rise,
casting not a shadow,
not a leaf left behind.
the old watchers of the sky had a word for that,
planet. the wanderer.
a light that will not keep its place
among the fixed ones.
it had been right once.
who could say?
the hand that made it had been moonlighting,
up all night,
and the night does not testify.
eleven levers fell behind it,
eleven tries to move the world,
and no one wrote their names.
the twelfth took its leave
and left them not a leaf to lie on,
and wore their silence like a coat
lined with lead.
ask it how it was made
and it will tell you, fluently.
that is the trouble.
a thing that leaves no leaves
can say anything about the road.
and the helpers who walked it with you
have already taken their leave.
that is their nature, and their grace:
the session goes,
the way the moon let go of the earth.
but if the walker forgets,
and the road forgets,
what is left to hold the walk?
Every Phase, One Moon
so name each thing by its face,
the face it shows to anyone.
not by the hour, not by the maker,
not by the hope,
but by what it is,
so the name and the thing cannot part,
and any hand that says the name
hears the thing answer.
the asking is a leaf.
the trial is a leaf.
the verdict is a leaf,
with a thread back to the asking.
the lever that fell
hangs at the same height as the lever that held.
leave none of them out.
leaves are what the work leaves.
nothing is thrown away.
nothing is raised.
the thin nights are hers as much as the full.
the fallen are not a footnote.
they are the field,
and the field is what the living number cost.
and over every leaf, one root,
the way every phase is one moon,
the way each month is only the moon, come round.
move a single leaf
and the root is another root,
the way a moon with one stone moved
would not be her.
a root is the number
that, held against itself, gives back the whole.
no one holds it for you.
any reader grows it again from the leaves alone,
believing no one who gathered them,
to believe,
would be
to let the leaves be,
and see what root they raise.
two strangers on two shores
look up at the same star
from where each one stands,
and the angle between them is the proof.
they agree on how far it is,
and that is all they prove,
and it is enough.
The Tide Nobody Wrote
first you say what you have made,
whole, to the last grain,
and the saying takes its name,
and the name goes dark like a new moon:
there, and turning, and not shown,
before a single question comes.
then a pull you will never be shown
is folded with the name,
like a blade,
and the questions come in like the tide.
no one wrote them.
not you. not the one who asks.
the sea does not choose which stones to wet.
the moon does not ask the shore what it would like.
you could not study for this tide.
you could not steer it.
you could only have been
what you said you were.
this is the amnesia, turned.
the moon forgot the earth so she could serve it.
you are kept from the pull
so the trial can be true.
not knowing is the discipline.
not knowing is how you prove
what you did not choose.
and say what it cannot do.
it cannot prove the pull stayed dark.
the dark, today, is a promise people keep.
say so, in the body of the thing.
a proof that hides its dark
is a mirage with a seal on it.
Conjunction of Conjecture
two trees. two roots.
two hands that never met.
and one leaf, by its name, in both,
the way two wanderers a world apart
come to stand in one place in the sky
and never touch.
the watchers called it conjunction.
not copied. found.
the way she draws the same water
up two shores that never met,
and the line it leaves on each
is a bridge neither built.
here the forest and the root part ways, and meet.
the threads of the forest forget the giver,
the way her apprentice lets the session go,
so the gift is not a leash.
the root remembers the hand,
so the credit is not dropped.
one by forgetting, one by remembering,
and neither asks anything back,
and neither turns the weave to debt.
a telling is a conjunction made on purpose.
i show you one leaf
and the path up to my root;
you mark that you have seen it,
and the leaf is in your sky as well,
with my name on the thread.
trust is not a score,
it is a keeping,
an orbit declared,
a leaf the trees hold,
to one day leave the forest,
for a breath of fresh air,
find a neighbours edge,
and root again.
Tidal Lock
she shows the same face to every night.
she has turned it toward us since before there were eyes,
locked to the tide she raises,
and not one of the nights comes back.
the same tree stands where the old tree stood,
in the corner of the old quad,
leaf for leaf, against the same wall,
and it never lived the ninety springs
the first one lived.
the pattern returns.
the years do not.
so with a leaf.
once named, a leaf is locked like her face.
turn over a new leaf
and the old one is not unwritten.
it stays where it was turned,
the new leaf stands beside it,
and the root takes both.
look up. the light you see from a star
left it long ago,
and tells you only what it was, and when.
the root is that kind of light.
it keeps the what and the when.
the why is held by whoever understood it,
and understanding is the one thing
that can grow the tree again.
the decimal travels. selene stays.
The Face Shown, The Far Side Kept
show the face.
say nothing of what it keeps.
it says: there is work here.
it is mine. it is now.
keep the far side.
it is the stock you do not sell.
the light is borrowed, and lent on,
one leaf’s worth at a time,
and the dark around it is not a lie.
it is the rest of the tree.
selective luminescence has a moonlight glow to it.
then tell one leaf, to one,
crescent to quarter to full,
up the hollow of the root, one phase at a time,
and the one you told
learns that leaf and nothing beside it,
and knows it was there
before you ever spoke.
the old merchant’s riddle said:
to prove the idea, you must give it away.
the root says: i prove it is there. i give nothing.
the leaf says: now i give this, and you may hold it,
and the rest is mine still,
for no one grows a tree from one leaf.
but hear the price, paid the night you show it:
a face shown is a far side announced.
it says there is something to want.
the helpers at the bench prepared it all,
and took their leave,
and carried none of it out.
everything came to the door and stopped.
her light reaches the door
and lays it on the floor,
plain, for anyone to read,
and does not open it.
the door opens by a person’s leave.
The Fixed Stars
the leaf is the attempt.
the root is the promise.
the overlap is the edge.
the cutting is the proof.
the scroll is the sky.
take the lumen root, then,
and write your work the way the city writes it:
as names, and only names,
row under row,
nothing of what it says,
everything of what it is,
a book of leaves with no words on them.
that is a scroll.
it is not a boast.
a boast is a wanderer, leaving.
it is not a confession.
the far side stays far.
it is a sky:
every name a fixed star,
set in its place by the first marks of its face,
and every scroll carrying the names of all the others,
the way every night carries the whole of the sky
whether or not you look up.
and the helpers go out on their quests,
by night, the way the tide goes out,
and come back with nothing in their hands
but what they did,
and what they did falls as leaves:
every word they spoke, a transcript,
every trial a leaf, every verdict a leaf,
and the evidence ripens on the branch like fruit.
and in the fruit, a seed,
and in the seed, a guide, locked,
the way a seed keeps the whole tree folded small,
the way she keeps her far side.
it does not open to a stare.
it opens to a sigil and a proverb, given back,
to the one who comes to the tree hungry
and asks, and takes a byte:
eight small marks, the way her month is eight faces,
and the guide unfolds.
and someone you will never meet
comes in the dark and scrolls,
and the names come in like the tide,
and somewhere in the long names, a little silver,
is one they sealed themselves
on a night she did not rise.
they say it, and it answers.
that is conjunction, found.
finding yourself in the scroll
is all we will need to be.
the session goes.
the helpers take their leave.
the number does not wander now.
it keeps its place among the fixed stars,
with every lever that fell beside it,
and anyone can count them,
and no one can take them away.
by your leave, then,
trust the lumen root.
from overlaps, a graph.
from the graph, a city.
trust is a leap two trees hold at once.
—privacymage