& what if you love the fire arrived and the fire escaped
& the fire that failed to take the glass attitude and language
& failed to consume the sanctuary you store behind cylinder tumbler and pin
& what if you think firefighter defines a war we cannot win
& one we started feed and fund
& what if the plants shrivel wither & grow brittle
& you spread your feet you measure the distance
& dozukuri which is setting the body
& what if the lettuce bitters in the ground comes bitter to the mouth
& still tenderly you plant under an auspicious moon
& water with the small waters saved
& the target recedes the muscles falter the steady mind wavers
& the sea flees before the tide then rises salting the land
& the rice fails the beets come to the table already seasoned
& what if a bomb goes so slowly off
& is so vast you cannot escape the ambit
& the living lights flicker fade
& go out the species blink red then dark
& like a game of Operation made real made vast
& excisions extinctions extrications
& your arms stretch like welcome like benediction
& what if you set your own fire and lie down inside it
& try to escape the larger burning
& what if the shed skin of the snake speaks in the garden
& says take eat for this is the fruit of the future
& apple pomegranate fig pear quince citron
& all bitter with the body’s salt the thinning waters
& the breath settles into fire into the thinning bones
& the thinned years rising ahead
& the sun paints the shadow of the gunships circling above
& you find the still point between now and to come
& open your own empty hand
& the arrow flies
The title is a quotation from Kanjuro Shibata XX, master bow maker and kyūdō teacher of the Heki Ryū Bishū Chikurin-ha tradition.
Leslie Harrison is the author of Reck (Akron); The Book of Endings (Akron), a National Book Award finalist; and Displacement (Mariner). She divides her time between Baltimore and the Berkshires.
Photo by Nadiia Ploshchenko 🇺🇦 on Unsplash
