peter cooley

Calm that distinguishes the face of Christ
when Rembrandt sets his brush to light that flame—
today I'll try to find you in strangers,
no easy task unless you're in myself.

Calm—I turn the word around in my palm.
I stretch the letters out to reach like sand,
a beach where I will try to tan my body gold.

I see I'm making Peter into light,
the old transfiguration of my life
an alchemy I'm still practicing daily.

I really don't care what you think of Christ,
You who pick up this poem to be amused.
Maybe you think he's Tutankhamen.
You think I've made him the sun god—I can.
but I won't. He's light behind the light.

I've written this poem while I've shaved and showered.
Now I'm dressing myself in Rembrandt's lines,
lies which I couldn't jamb into the frame.

They're ordinary, brown and gray. They'll do—
...

After the Rembrandt light in everything
you come back to the world's simple, plain sense.
Every moment is not epiphany.
For me, it's just the vast minority
making life worth living: illuminations.

I've had to let the Rembrandt light wear off
to 'things as they are,' as Stevens called this—
ironically—the blue guitar man's song.

I'm not sure where the unimagined starts—

It's a dull, cold, gray day in Amsterdam.
The passersby along the street are gold—
stop it! But they are. I see little glints
of gold dust on their sleeves. It's just their souls
come out to remind me the visible—
if we wait—may reveal invisibles.
...

'Salt for the flavor, light to guide the way.'
Christ said it all, but I am sick of Him,
tied of my riffs off His melodies.
I don't dispute His authenticity,
His presence here this morning as I write
but I have to find my own light and salt.
They stare out from Rembrandt's 'Last Self-Portrait.'

His children, wife, both mistresses, have died
by the moment these eyes fix on our own.
And that light will not go away, will it?
I close the book, I turn my head. Light's here.
Could this be Christ? Maybe. Maybe not.

Still, this is the way the dead enter us—
...

And Time, which I had thought to hold within my hand,
this portrait shows, always was holding me.
When did Time start to extend such fierce grip?
Or is it tightening skin around my eyes
I can't see unless I look past this mirror,
a web each side, a web to catch me soon
when I begin to fall... when I lose count,
the pieces of a net washed out to sea,
one with the waves when finally I go down.
I know they follow; I wake to their light.
Rembrandt, I'm aging fast. I am past your age
you live through eternally, sixty-three.

You died. I'll die. I have an immortality
right now through years you're bringing me. And you?
What kind of immortality can I offer?
...

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

I am the one son of the family Rembrandt sees
come to name the light, call it miracle.
All I know is, we rushed out of the house,
Mother and Father pointing to some stars
after the shepherds raced across our farm
shouting savior! All six sisters: savior!
Yes, all the stars were bright. One flares, blinding.
Now it has come to watch above the crèche.

Light shines, brightening, from inside this baby.
Me, I don't like little ones much, myself,
always stinking, wanting feeding, bawling.

We're seven. I'm the youngest; that's the best.
Mother says, 'You're my baby.' I love that.
I push her away, squinch like I hate it.

Look, I've brought my dog. He's called Heinricke
after Rembrandt's wife. Bark, Heinricke, growl,
jump for the crowd, here in the museum.
Bark! don't you know we're with the immortals!
...

A day will come I'll watch you reading this.
I'll look up from these words I'm writing now—
this line I'm standing on, I'll be right here,
alive again. I'll breathe on you this breath.
Touch this word now, that one. Warm, isn't it?

You are the person come to clean my room;
you are whichever of my three children
opens the drawer here where this poem will go
in a few minutes when I've had my say.

These are the words from immortality.
No one stands between us now except Death:
I enter it entirely writing this.
I have to tell you I am not alone.
Watching you read, Eternity's with me.
We like to watch you read. Read us again.
...

It's not that we're not dying.
Everything is dying.
We hear these rumors of the planet's end
none of us will be around to watch.

It's not that we're not ugly.
We're ugly.
Look at your feet, now that your shoes are off.
You could be a duck,

no, duck-billed platypus,
your feet distraction from your ugly nose.
It's not that we're not traveling,
we're traveling.

But it's not the broadback Mediterranean
carrying us against the world's current.
It's the imagined sea, imagined street,
the winged breakers, the waters we confuse with sky

willingly, so someone out there asks
are you flying or swimming?
That someone envies mortal happiness
like everyone on the other side, the dead

who stand in watch, who would give up their bliss,
their low tide eternity rippleless
for one day back here, alive again with us.
They know the sea and sky I'm walking on

or swimming, flying, they know it's none of these,
this dancing-standing-still, this turning, turning,
these constant transformations of the wind
I can bring down by singing to myself,

the newborn mornings, these continuals—
...

I'd like to see the tree as it once stood
before me, childhood, the branch and leaf
a single form of transport, ecstasy
shaking my body I give to the leaves,
the leaves return, my stare all interchange.

But that was when I had a sky to name
since I had a belief in constancy
like everyone. The sky was my background,
the drama of the tree and me, one act,
then three, then five, a Shakespearean play script.
some tragic flaw in hero, heroine,
yet to be discovered.
But now the sky
clouds even dawn with a black mist that falls
from all things and all imaginings.

The tree in my backyard is caught in this.
When I look for the sky it is still there
but now a matter of my memory
or prophecy.
Where is the root, bough, stem
set clearly against a morning, clearing?
...

Everything just in miracle as planned
so long as I keep focused on what's here,
refusing to reach beyond this moment—
oh tell the truth, it's trying to refuse
the tide of the white page, running in, out,
whose whitecaps could be future or the past.

But what I mean by miracle is just
the chance to be—now—for a little time,
to know, unlike the animals, how brief—

when I count, I could multiply the hours
I've spent on earth, how few can still remain.

This pelican lifting above the tides,
perilous beauty of his sun-struck flight
beyond my wings' sudden imaginings-
he's beauty without past or future tense.
I'll never want that. Counting puts me here—
...

Back behind tomorrow, where we will end,
hundreds of pelicans are pulled from oil,
slickered with the black skin they've just put on.
Hosed, preened, they may even survive a time.

Years I have watched the pelicans descend
over the gulf I've come to call my home.
When they're gone, can I name the light alone?

That arc they make when they dive for a fish-
how will I remember their bodies' descent
across the air? The arc of a rainbow,
then the ascent, bill full, then the sunset.

When I imagine, I see them all black.
Then I see black glide though the black water.
...

I won't try here to allegorize
out of the present pool of thick, black oil
which every day now widens in the gulf.

I'm out here at the rims of my edges,
circling around, trying to find my names,
a place to stand, where I can take this in.

Louisiana. The word's beautiful,
the coastline and the marshes you can watch
as you descend or ascend in your plane.
But when I try to understand such loss
as no one yet admits, I'm staggering.
I snap off the TV. on this image:
the first dead pelican slickered with black
sliding into a body bag like those
the US keeps in Washington for this,
for Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq.

The art history professor told our class—
this was during the invasion of Laos—
the pelican is a symbol of Christ.
Remember. I do not allegorize.
My purpose is to note—and then to sing.
...