Haar

 


This poem began after I came across the word haar in a Tomas Tranströmer poem (I think). When I looked up this word I'd never seen, I found that it's a cold sea fog and also an object-detection algorithm relating to pixel intensities in adjacent rectangular regions. The poem brings together images that surfaced as I thought about these two different haars in connection with the rowanberries growing on the mountain ash in our back yard.

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Haar


Now is the time of rowanberries.
What a cascade of recog--
when I eat rowanberries raw
my lips pucker warm
and crabs ignite my dreams

after a long steep in a fogged ship.
Break the surface--big sea exhales 
the cold beginning of time.

A single berry
pixelates in the dark sky.

The constellations of every civilization
surge at once--turn together
a singular ceiling, an infinity of skulls.

Crabs have ten legs and all these nights
haunt the sky over my bed.

Myth overlaps myth
in a cross-stitch depicting
why we are here
and not there
before the time of rowanberries.






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