Four Poems by Oliver de la Paz

Diaspora Sonnet 50

I take my name and place it on a stone.
I throw the stone into the lake and watch me

widen in circles. Who am I to hold this world
in my fist? I already know the bottom

displaces what’s on the surface. What can’t be
contained edges water out. Years later it will

overrun the roots on the shore. And what is
a shore full of ruins? How the houses lean

on their pilings like a mouth on the edge of
speaking. How the flood waters mark

language by the rind of mold on bare gypsum.
Where do I begin? I have told you everything

is a sound cast aside. The forest roots gnarl
in the dark. The tributaries cough to clear throats. 

Diaspora Sonnet 51

I’m getting cold and the trees have darkened
from their green into a tobacco-colored stained.

The birds cease calling each other—
there are no more ears in the branches.

I haven’t slept for two nights
because the silence skewers everything

with thought that cannot be broken. The depth
of my thinking drags all the drafts away

from my distractedness and from the weather
despite the rain and despite the commiseration of rain.

I’ve nothing here to monitor my selfhood—
Have their flung back heads exalted in the change?

Where have they gone? The birds and the finery
of their throats? Their limitless gratitude for seed and suet?

Diaspora Sonnet 52

From the archipelago a sound rising
with the heat of planes lifting off

the tarmac. Their broad orchestras
stretch their throats and crack the scene

in two. There is only before and after
the plane in the animal minds of birds

hurrying away from what must be
the voice of god. I’m afraid to confess

a nostalgia for the moment of their departure—
the planes and their perforation

into the sound of everything. The machines
that create the world are always for another—

from their wake, only this scar of sound
and a firmament moving on without us.

Diaspora Sonnet 54

Nettles for tea and the sore yesteryear awake
in the old calendar whose months have not turned—

and past the steam, the reflection of the ceiling fan
cuts at the syllables of story, saying then, then, then

each moment of being somewhere and someone
sliced into dimes. A little sugar can make this sweet

yet it’s the pinprick of flavor that’s keeping company.
Old hymns on the radio won’t undo the way the body

is whittled by distance. Slice after slice this tether
severed until there’s nothing but tea and afternoon news

and the lying months in their effacement. Spiral
bound but absent-minded like real memories,

the crossed off days until losing count and interest.
The broth on the lips, numbing till the words don’t come.

Oliver de la Paz is the author of five books of poetry. His latest book, The Boy in the Labyrinth is forthcoming from the University of Akron Press in 2019. A founding member of Kundiman, he chairs the advisory board and teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Res program at PLU.