Joel Long grew up in Montana but moved to Utah in 1990. Joel Long’s book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sports Literate, Prairie Schooner, Bellingham Review, Rhino, Bitter Oleander, Massachusetts Review, Terrain, and Water-Stone Review, among others. He lives in Salt Lake City.
Works
On Visiting Timpanogos Cave
On Visiting Timpanogos Cave
Water comes down from the fracture
bearing a calcite lash. It is not coming
down for you, not to be read like certain
flowers are read, though flowers will
claim indifference too, Forget-me-not,
penstemon, scarlet gilia, goat’s head.
But here, rangers call it the heart,
stalactite, shear enough to let light through,
drapery fold, gown of the misplaced
goddess—they call it heart—it looks
like a heart, hidden the way the heart is
in darkness a million years, and dread
makes us think the little time to form
this fin, size of the body, backlit, pulse
in geologic time and water dripping.
The guide turns out the light. We know
that beauty not meant for us, not this,
not just this, none of it meant for us.
Time is filled with darkness, this cave,
the pressure of the mountain above.
Our little minds drift inside the mountain
their visions of bridges, peacocks, and clouds.
In darkness the tour guide insists upon, we are
dust motes in the morning of my childhood,
small hands of an infant lost 1810, purple aster
on the cliff side no one dares to climb,
cave with no entrance, temple of white crystal.
The nonchalant gods care nothing
for worship. They do not wish to be known
but become the beauty with no one looking.
The Miracle of Pain
The Miracle of Pain
It was the desert, of course, where such need multiplies,
They warn us of thirst, tell us, protect yourself,
keep yourself safe. There were five loaves
and two fish, and Jesus wanted to feed them all.
So when the boy came to him, Jesus blessed the food,
and the disciples went among the thousands.
They kept giving it away. They gave bread and fish away,
and the hungry ate and ate, and they were fed.
And they kept giving it away, and they were hungry,
and they were fed. And when they were done,
disciples filled twelve baskets with food. It had to be the desert.
The desert is an expert in hunger and cruelty.
When I find out from an old friend that her baby has died,
I take on her grief, but her grief does not diminish.
I feel that great weight, but hers grows heavier.
And she has told many, and she has told hundreds.
Each one feels that dark sting in every cell of their body,
and their bodies are stone hammers, weighted to the ground,
but her own weight increases. She only sees the dark
spreading out among those she loves, those who listen.
And this small comfort—she sees them become
just a little like herself, bearing this great grief
like one of her kind, this breed of sufferers,
and she is fed by this miracle, that this lament
can be carried by one alone but can feed us all.
Given Time
Given Time
I have never written about my father without
saying my father is dead. My daughter
will reach the last age he reached this fall.
I have doubled his time—tell me, what
does that mean? There is an old joke:
what do you get when you divide
crumbs?—more crumbs. What is time
but time, evanescent, air, frail hummingbird
disappearing green, its whirring wings,
blurred chirp? I have walked with my daughter
across the Pont Neuf, the Left Bank of the Seine,
heat that made us both sweat. We did not mind;
we were father and daughter in Paris, going to lunch,
ordering wine on the patio while other diners smoked,
and the butter on the bread was luminous, salty.
At the lake here in Utah, a dead pelican rose from salt
near the Spiral Jetty. I had seen four white pelicans
fly into dusk-colored clouds above Antelope Island
before, and now I see one sprawled against the salt-frost,
its still body. Its wings bend into a chevron,
ajar, one hundred feathers each wing fanned
toward each direction the sun ran. The bird’s eyes
collapsed into mute black seeds, its beak
wandering from its body, drab yellow, arrow
with no hunger left. Being has its detail, every tuft
shadowed blue, rimmed gold, even the dirt catching
light, rose breath, lilac, lemon, blue. I give the coin to the vendor.
I take, but I cannot keep. My daughter orders espresso
after lunch, the water glass sweating and luminous
in the shade of the awning. My double life fills
with birds and daughters growing into the world, growing
into their lives. These crumbs given, I take onto my tongue
taste, and the brain takes the momentary flavor.
The heart takes nourishment, one thing lit by circuit,
a brief flicker some minor god may witness and say Look,
it is happening again, that shimmer, so close, so small.
Black Rock Vespers
Black Rock Vespers
They will never find us though the highway
Is near. They might see us amidst a thousand
Gulls blending the glare of light on lake,
This late image we might think we see first
Through a pinhole in a shoe box so we won’t
Go blind. And there we’d be scattered in spray
Against the back of the box, a particle
Amidst the image projected, not so different
From particles gulls make or the range
Of mountains, Stansburys, and the island,
All turned blue now, shaped like water, built
By water that leaves ghosts in steps
That quiver late, the old shores fossils
Remember in gleam, but now, it is ours.
We are lost to everyone who wants to find us.
We come here to be lost and shaken by light
The color of tiger lilies next to the blue iris,
Waves on waves, sheen that opens the door.
We practice for departure, perfecting our part.
Bibliography
Winged Insects, White Pine Press, 1999
Lessons in Disappearance, Blaine Creek Press, 2012
Knowing Time by Light, Blaine Creek Press, 2010
