Calder at the Top of the Stairs by John Timpane

calder at the top of the stairs

Calder at the Top of the Stairs

If this is modernism

Why are you smiling?

Is it the light hanging

In nothing, ruby

Triangle turning, leaf

Or teardrop train or

Dreamshape you

Have never seen

Before turning

Answerably round the

Ruby triangle? Is

It the invisible

Unavoidable, as in they

Will turn, at a speed

Consulting nothing but the

Declarations of independence

Of air and gravity? Is

It their delicate

Armatures, wires of

Relation, family

Of place and force,

Cantilevers hiding

Tensions, weights,

Poise and counterpoise,

Sleights

And designs

Inviting the sacrilege

Of touch to test how

What hangs is hanging,

Feel, as Eden’s

Finger felt for

Heaven’s, patterns-made-solid

Hauling against and with

(Which gets you kicked

Out of the museum)?

Still smiling. Do you

Remember that

You, too, hang

Athwart and among

Circlers, wanderers, brilliants,

All the ellipses and rings –

Planets, blood

Cells jostling down

Vascular sluiceways, wacky-

Eyed fish, sycamore

Rookbursts, shockwaves

Flowering, comic

Domino of cause into

Effect, conga

Lines, timeframes,

Interorbits of planned

And unplanned – and

You, too, are

At play? Do

You smile because

A man started this but

His art lay in

Turning it loose, letting

Go self into everything,

A universe of sightless

Angels of influence at

Work, bulky, spinning

Pear of a planet, cross-

Pulling vector

Fields, writhing

Magma, currents that

Never stop, never? As if

Watch what happens now

Were his only theme? Turn:

This blue orb gestures to

That black rhomboid. Turn

Again: brand-new

Fingerposts in all

Dimensions? Do you

Smile to recognize

The marvel in this

Nameless moving? Isn’t

That predicament

Great? To live where

Known and

Unknowable, these

Shrapnels of

Joy, reshape the shape

We’re In? Drive

To the child at the

Center? You’re still

Smiling. Do you assent? Did

You ever think you would?

John Timpane is former Commentary Page Editor (1997-2008) and Books Editor (2014-2020) for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philly.com. His work has appeared in Sequoia, The Fox Chase Review, Apiary, Cleaver, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Rathalla Review, Per Contra, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Vocabula Review, Wild River Review, and elsewhere. Among his books is a chapbook, Burning Bush (Judith Fitzgerald/Cranberry Tree, 2010). He is the spouse of Maria-Christina Keller. They live in New Jersey.

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Calder at the Top of the Stairs by John Timpane

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Calder at the Top of the Stairs by John Timpane