CORNUCOPIA

I have spent enough time at home
to know the airy yellow light that rises
from thickets of uncles, their voices
full of truck tops and luggage.
They will not vanish in the green light
of aunts and grandmothers,
recipes and dew, in-laws. Thanksgiving
sets the house swaying. If this were a train station,
we would all disappear without a trace.
If this were the ash of a campfire,
red morning would fill us with nostalgia.
If this were an oak tree,
we would all blow away. Instead,
we sit in the green and yellow light
of ourselves. We rock with the house
drifting in and out of one another
as we eat and are eaten.

I'm working on a review of Bill Tremblay's Rainstorm Over the Alphabet (Lynx House Press). In 1990, in a Callaloo interview, Yusef Komunyakaa called Tremblay "one of the most underrated poets in America." Unfortunately, it's still true. Tremblay deserves many more readers.