Visionary

          The American Museum of Visionary Art

On the side of Key Highway
a tree is hung with broken
light: diamonds, circles, squares
of glass on wire that glitter
in the January wind.
We stand before it.

Who would want to see a hundred
of ourselves refracted.

the elusive, touching,
the elusive, bitter light

what is elusive

The Elusive

will you elude me

Once, years before all this, I asked him for
his five favorite words.

This was the old language
that did not include

our child’s breathing,
or the warm weight of our

daughters in our arms
that did not include

this tree, all broken
light.

What compelled us

(to elude each other)

the first year of our marriage
when you were gone

when you lived across that ocean

What compels us

when we drive each other’s
voices from the room.

An argument: our selves refracted.

Who would know how
to navigate that past

how to envision this
present moment.

Twelve years together.

The tree’s glass edges shake in the wind.

Blue, yellow, purple glittering.
An always tree.

What compels us, now,
once I asked him,
he whose memory includes no
thing unspoken.

The glass tree so steady.

How to envision.

Memory a fugitive
Memory that glittering, transparent, broken tree—
its own language.

Now we turn to each other.
Will you–