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  • On the Air
  • Christopher Buckley (bio)

"I have nothing at all to sayBut I want to say it anyway…"

—Marcello Mastroianni, 8½,

In my perfect 6-year-old FrenchI'm singing Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques.Dormez-vous? before the white capsand the waves' salt spray—it'sthe only song I know to the end,the only world…

        Sun burningthrough the mist, white as a Eucharist,obscure as everything I hopeto one day understand…I'm digging a hole in the sandthat never fills with the tide—wind stripping down the eucalyptuson the cliffs…

        sixty years ago…

Now, whatever I understand of philosophy,its pages have opened all this timeto dust, to leaves all the way backto a path bright with morning gloriesand nasturtium.

        So this morning,stepping onto the porch, whistlingthat children's song again, I knowlittle beyond this throng of bushtitshappy with their chitter in the olive tree.I still hear fog dripping in the camphor leaves,my parents' station wagon crunchingalong the drive, leaving for work… [End Page 39] I look out above the marine layerjust offshore absorbing every groundlesstheory for our lives…nothing morethan a line of bird song between then and now,a few passing phrases on the air… [End Page 40]

Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley's recent books are Star Journal: Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); Spanish Notebook (Shabda Press, 2017); The Far Republics, winner of the 2017 Vern Rutsala Book Prize (Cloudbank Books); Chaos Theory (Plume Editions, 2018); Cloud Memoir: Selected Longer Poems (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2018); and Agnostic (Lynx House Press, 2019).

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