☀ What Sparks Poetry: Aaron McCollough on "Closed on Three Sides, Open on One"

it holds its floors, it holds its windows

tissues; drapes of tissue, it may hold on its windows;
rugs, and for a time, the dust in rugs on its floors

moss in your terrarium; on the sill of the window
a wilderness in miniature, a floor
humid and primeval

gallons of dried paint and plaster around
its windows but also in cans; wisps on glass
imprecise edges
in floorboard grain
too many desiccated spiders to count are held

accounts it cannot hold; water is more or less
drained through it and away but not without its nourishment;
as with light, which returns as moss
but unaccountably, having come and gone;
coming and going hold themselves;
the ear drum may hold the sound of coming or going
but not at the same time and not for long;
hearing at least feels like holding and where else does it go

if the music is played loudly enough it can be felt
through the floor; the floor can hold the music
as the ear drum with coming or going; or does it greet
what arrives and release what departs; music travels
from the floor to the walls and can be felt there, too;
sometimes, it seems to be cracking the walls some;
by the foot on the floor and the hand on the wall
or the drum in the ear;
held in a larger sense by where it goes, which,
if you hold it, for example,
is held in the mind’s eye or something, becoming
portable; it can only be held as you can
you it cannot hold; it considers,

believes, obliges, as long as you do,
to cover and protect, and sees you on your way

to new houses of the sun, the moon, arrangements
of light in the way across your back, shoulder, chest;

you could be music or even just a sound
it permits, but so could it be, under your permission,
as you step from the floor, through a window,

as it is always there, maybe only a couple notes
in the resonator recalled by small fingers in
another person’s hand and just as soon forgotten

but not lost; it cannot hold you,
and you must hold it
as the guitar that’s a coffin
that holds its floor, that holds its windows
that would tell you about heaven but cannot;

what heaven holds, it cannot hold,
even as the ear drum with coming or going;
or heaven, rising unaccountably within,
a path of notes towards melody
spills away from it just as unaccountably

it can hold acts of love as we clasp
one another in the cup of shelter; as water falling

into a cup from a height, our lovemaking rushes
across one wall, along the floor, up and off the lip;
a kiss is held thus, in place of voices,

by which we know some warmth, breath,
sweat-to-salt, that approach and vanish
suspended in motif, somewhat protected

and also vulnerable like anything in flight;
the snow swiftly recedes from its brow
having only just appeared in the night
because nothing can hold heat very well;
a spirit like yours,

eked out in quick shallow breaths,
is always escaping even its own limbs;
this soft exchange it enables and describes;
how it holds: it houses
what requires clothes as something close and small;

when you are back from an outing,
how it welcomes you and I do, recalling itself
and myself embodied unaccountably;
when you press your skin to its floors, my skin,
they return; you’re holding them true to the world.