January

by Shannon Rae Daniels

 

after Robert Hayden‘s “October”

Even weighed down
by ice the dogs ran in
as my mom shut
the steel door behind them,
and covered them in towels.
She dried them
paw by paw.

I liked to linger in
the half awake morning,
cocooned, turning away
from the fluorescent kitchen.
Gong gong was talking
to me, then, during
those night visions.
Po po giu lei teng yat
mo sai tau faat, he said.

Bacon and chan bao
and the smell of wet fur,
streets below full of goodbyes
and promises, every mistake so
certain and distant.

–

Autumn’s
brilliant glow,
diluted into
colorless river,

as of feeling
into time,

as of lyrics in
a grandfather’s
mind,

as of sunlight
through the moon’s lakes.

–

Days which unfold
like an asterism,
sapphire filed down to reveal
the star within, the slice
of constellation.

Bottling light in cyanotypes
like a graduate student
hoards library books.

The sky now a solid
metal door, now inscrutable
like a song in an almost
forgotten language.

Overhearing it
at the supermarket here
knowing that back home
my mom is walking toward
Union Square alone
listening to that ballad again about how
the moon represents her heart.

eggshell      silver-brushed        slate

–

Agitating the deep blue
out of the paper,
like a photograph.

Light that is
no longer, light
that is transformed.
Steel light
no one else
may ever see,
light still.
Coins and leaves
and laces of it.
January
years ago —
opening my eyes
on the couch
to TV light,
still in my coat
when my mom had
carried me in.

–

Dreaming of
summer
and the oranges
I used to hide
in Gong Gong’s
vest, a word
I have since forgotten.
The tree’s
branches broke from
the weight of the snow.
The children
are making
angels in it now.

We are in the middle
of something that
must end.

How did
the trees
learn to die
deathlessly?
Drone of crunching,
winter’s needles
in my shoes,
hands, nostrils.
Out here
you can hear
everything.

 

***

Shannon Rae Daniels is a Cantonese American visual artist and writer. She was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Ann Arbor. “January” is part of Daniels’ ekphrastic project, a series of poems and cyanotypes inspired by and honoring the poems by Robert Hayden, the celebrated poet who spent much of his life in Ann Arbor, first as a student at the University of Michigan, and then later as the English Department’s first Black faculty member, before serving as the country’s first Black Poet Laureate in 1976. You can read more about Shannon’s tribute to Robert Hayden here: https://aadl.org/haydenpoems. 

***

This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, a Washtenaw-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local Washtenaw poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at [email protected].