Dark Drive Home

Dark Drive Home                  

                        …he became heavier suddenly

in his bones

the way fledglings do just before they fly,

and the soft pine cracked.

                                    Galway Kinnell

                                    “Fergus Falling”

It’s only mid-September but I glided

on the ice of our road home last night,

banking right, the kids asleep in the back

seat, the curve floating closer

to the pines the cedar the river in the black

dark, I drifted and felt

a deep freeze February when the road’s

clear and there’s no traffic and I’m a virgin

on skates and my toes don’t know

where to go or what to do other than pitch

me on my ass and isn’t that the only time

we feel attached

to our spine

when we land square and the shock speeds

up to the head and the stunning bumper’s

our only true empathy to a skunk or a coon

or a moose in this late drive home when

they’re out naturally but I’m not, dark is only some-

thing I’ve ever really slept in and not that

well or much (hardly ever past two

two-thirty)and coons especially they’ll stand

briefly human and seem like a small employee

of some day-hired road crew, hard-hat, Slow/Stop

sign at their boot, waving like a tired

Pentecostal, swaying and keening never

letting go of the fire even though

they’re the ones with the stop sign.  Traffic’s

never a problem here.  Only crows.  And we’ll meet

like old friends who’ve almost forgotten

one another, who nod at the post office

or the bank, or the grocery store, mail or bills

or beans our stop and slow.  A nod.  Maybe two.

When I drive by that coon who stood

up and gave me the

ghost, waving goodbye to me like my blind mother

often did after swallowing her dole

of morphine I'll think Goodbye, Goodbye as they sway down,

a tuft of them staying behind for some other work,

taking the ill wind up river, when the bend

turns straight, a quiver of water spilling from its back pocket,

banking on a great spring thaw

still seven months (depending on

optimism) up the road.

when the confessing one isn't the only one dying

When the Confessing One Isn't 
the Only One Dying

Looking at your face

now you have become ready to die

is like kneeling at an old gravestone

on an afternoon without the sun, trying to read

the white chiseling of the poem

in the white stone.

                                    Galway Kinnell

That last day in the woods you said I didn’t know it 
when it was useful

when it was more and all that you said

it was, purpose and urge or the other

way around.  It.  Now a limp lip, no more

dangerous than the birth of a worm, the birth

of mud in the bowl of earth you’d dug

beside the river you never drowned in but wanted

to and said you should've.  But by the time

we met you’d taken to dry banks

so far from water you could only imagine

it move.  You were tidal, which was better,

because taking and giving had a reason.  And while

I admire the candor age seems to slip

into our pocket seasons before we discover

the clean tissue of it, I think I would have wanted

to know you when sex meant something

more than smashed glass and abandoned factories.

When it meant you were there and I was there

or he or she was there, and what you discovered

was cleaner than a first needle, cleaner than

the priest who caught you who whipped you

for the other boy and the stolen dope and went

inside you and then drew water for a bath after-

wards.  I would have wanted to know you before

that but by the time we met it was lips,

it was all either of us could afford.  But Jesus

the years had plowed you under, and our last breath

together was a confession

of speed and a 357 Magnum and a buddy

and an abduction and you remember taking her

over and over again and the pcp and the blood

of  the shredded girl are a fragrance now, a flavor

on the back of your tongue.  You couldn’t remember

her name that day although she used to be a friend

in high school thinking you just wanted

to take her for a ride.  You said you’d like to know

if she was ok after those two days and now every time

I read about Serbia or Rwanda or the Vagina

Monologues I think about her.  
At some point you said her name

was Sharon.  Then it was Father.  You said you

were eight and nine and ten you said 
you were 17, you said no

you said no as you bent me

over  that first time and pushed every no you ever knew

into me with everything but you.  A cleaver.

A wanna-be surgeon’s touch. A Lazarus step

at the end of the second road, already dead once

but called forth.  Called forth.

“a memory of an apartment in the city”

      

“a memory of an apartment in the city”                                          

                                                …and even the brook,

                                               …

Can never run clear of certain stones…

                                    …it’s murmuring

Half-ruined in the white noise of its splashing water.        

                                                John Hollander

                                                “One of Our Walks”

or

He knew I wouldn’t be sleeping

with him when he heard me cutting

my fingernails…

                        “a memory of an apartment in the city”

Consider:

            we're all breathing and blood we're vegetable

            and meat chewed into pulp

            and somehow

            and somehow

                                    we become a finger

                                    a sheath of skin

                                    a rib and a femur

            aside from the woman and the man on top

            of her, his furrowed bloody back,

            or the quick

            chemistry the cauldron of womb’s placental breath

            once let go

            the thriving is outside

                        hand to mouth

                        right down to the smallest moan

                        the smallest word on the smallest tongue:

                                    shaped and then severed-

                                    snipped 
                                    too soon maybe too soon

                                    out of spite or pain

                        but even as the quarter moon’s still there red as lips

                        it’s as far as any man will be

                        from the tiny pile

           

of fingernails cut under the brightest light inside

a dark operatic glass

            a cricket unrubbed at each clip clip clip

            until all ten

are the remarkable cleave all the more

remarkable at the stark pause

when it was once when it was

and now it is not.          

Acts of Charity

Acts of Charity

        For E. H.

Still, caritas, like agape, is better

translated as love, but a whole-

hearted, impartial, and self-

less variety that in its human

incarnation is said to hint at the nature

of God’s love.  Caritas isn’t

something only the poor, the sick,

or prisoners need, and neither is it

necessarily what the rich and healthy

are exclusively able to provide.

                                    Kate Braestrup

                                    Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

i. First night in the orphanage

I wonder if this particular heart-

beat is an act of charity:

clocks and boogeymen in the black

room ticking against every

board and corner, orphan hearts

falling up to the ceiling

like a fountain, only to cas-

cade down into a split 

wide pine floor held

by nails that work

their way through the stocking

or chin (when they fall

completely, or are pushed)

by every close call, boys

all staunched by their first night

in this dark.

For kids in this kind of night,

sound and shadow

should be friends,

their metronome of squeak and creak

dipped into like the cold bowl

of holy water in the vestibule,

brass bowl, corroded bowl,

old bowl measure of charity.  

That sound should delight,

like a gosling splashing down

on the abandoned mill

pond on any given early August

morning.

It shouldn’t be the catch

in his breath when the lock’s twisted,

when the only opening  and closing

is the thick curtain crossing his esophagus

in a smother.  It should be a sigh

of relief, rather like the opening

of an old book: the dry spine crackle

the moth falling to the floor,

or the daisies, because his mother loved

daisies. 

But there’s a spook
in syrup-thick dark.  And he has a thin

companion.

Who protects us from all this?

 ii. or, more intimate:

I’ve come to wonder if it was an act

of charity that made the handy-

man drill four rows of holes

three in each row, two where a head

might be, two where feet might be

in the closet door near the attic

of this orphanage for special boys,

so in the 2x6 space they wouldn’t

suffocate they wouldn’t panic they

wouldn’t smell the last boy who

was in there too long…there’s twelve

holes to see and hear, the door’s

strong enough to lean against, it’s

locked,

but it’s a small closet, just enough

to be shoved, bum the head

of a drawn match sparking.  The boys,

the dark the twelve charitable

holes—I imagine

the handyman taking the door

off its hinges, laying it

flat on two saw horses and,

selecting a big enough bit, precise

as compass and drill, puts the point

in one pencil mark after another.

(I want to know who measured

up for this?  Was a boy closed in

just for this?  The way the tailor came

and mark their inseam and even so

the pants come back too short every time)

So let’s say his name was James

and he holds the amputated door

and watches each blond curl

of wood fall until there’s light

and confetti, so many of them

that they are on their own charity

thrown up like dander, like feathers,

like those birds falling on the face 
of the the pond

when he used to go goose or duck hunting

with his father,  who was last spring

a bare chest like this door, not a mallard
at all, but his worn favorite tartan: Scottish black
watch

and James gets sick but nobody

knows why because he hasn’t said

one word since he was dropped off

in front in July…but the handyman

knows, so he sweeps and sweeps

and leans into James just enough

and hands him a bit of sandpaper

because he knows boys and holes

and fingers that are toy guns

even in a closet in the dark.  They’ll aim

through each hole at each lead thin

shadow and rub their finger

on something made soft as mother-of-pearl

though they don’t know what that is.

lather

lather

The shooting stars in your black hair

in bright formation

are flocking where,

so straight, so soon?

                                    from “The Shampoo”

                                    Elizabeth Bishop

I’ve forgotten the name of your lover—

for nearly twenty years it was same

soap same tea same face cream—

Who forgets a name that needs a name

forgotten?

Weary one in the crowd, when the lights

dim and the podium glows and coats

your stone sober glass a dusked gray

they don’t know it’s you I've waited

for.

It’s you who works the pressure valves, ex-

pert anesthesiologist—the glove comes

over the mouth and knows all of us

and  you open your book, look out into

the hush

and begin in the sweaty bed of Her,

no not there, no, not there, but shampoo—

the drizzle then the foam, the swan neck

rinse so far back the bobbing esophagus is a fish

nipping

nipping then altogether gone.  Like a bubble

or a fist of suds.  Or a dark

room and a hand on a hand and on and on

the pause of the water, the first bird-word its grass

basket

of sorts before they all, (but one first, there’s

always a first one) flush up and then fury

and blur.  They are ducks or they are grouse

or they are hands, first against the rigid edge

and then

later, report report my near deaf ear hearing

something fall, something far far away fall

fast as impracticable wings after the shock of small

stones, the way a breast opens for them, opens
like I did, lover.  

one more last

                                  

           When the bear dies, bees construct

honey from nectar of cinquefoil growing through rib bones.

                    Donald Hall                                                              “Granite and Grass”

The falling down right there where it happened, the sudden

seizure of the vein or spasm in the calf, or half-

way to the bathroom to take more than what’s prescribed—

so much more it’s litter, it’s blots of paper-towel

on the carpet soaking through, a nasal landmine. 

I can’t ask but I want to know who found her that one last

time and if they called an ambulance right away

or let her stay this one more last time in the house, this one more

last time with a cat, this one more last early November morning—

were there a pile of turnips now on the weekend

news, was the garden, all of it, finally put up, was bread

in the oven?  Because the last time, and the time before

that last time it was June, it was December, and the wood

stove was going and the flue was open too much

and the cherry glow of the stove pipe crept up to the to the tin

ceiling, a blush like it’s wanted, a hand beneath the blouse,

before, days or weeks, no years before me before, the glance

at it all, the corked effervescent stored in a green bottle, ribboned

at the neck, presented…

I’ve lived my life wondering not who uncorked it for her, or

who poured it, or who seduced her throat, not that.  There’s five

fingers on every hand.  Who can blame just one?  No, I’ve

wanted to know who found her after it was all swallowed, after

her sweet sashay back into the room for more.  Who waited

this one last time, and if she saw them and turned toward them
or away.

the art of the...

the art of the...

Take a long look at the strangers

you’re going to bed with…

You’ve heard it said but, children, it’s truer than love—

you marry them all.

                                    Cora Fry’s Pillow Book

there’s time maybe for a quick

rain…

and after, because it was so furious,

a pinch for what’s been

left out uncovered, what’s been

waiting to be

put away.  It’s not lazy.

It is

a walk beside it for a while

and then leave it alone

complete-

-ly

and when the ashes are bagged

in black plastic, tomorrow,

there’s time for a quick

rain—

don’t even get undressed.

Just wait for it.

Wait

for the blue break.  Stand

beside everything that’s coming

undone and wait

to get wet.

stone

stone

I'd been carrying something, 
clean towels?
when I picked up a little stone

with the front pad of my right

bare foot on the cold cement 
basement floor: step one shake stay

step three shake stay

until it still

                  stays and my full weight's

a bruise there, like the tip

of a pen held too long

on the paper so that the blot

spreads itself into the white

clear nothing. 

                        The wet I want,

the dark heart, I admit, is

the not fading, and then the out

against that white, that no-

thing until it’s lifted…

                        maybe, before I stepped,

I didn’t know I wanted

the stone, though it’s safe

to say I don’t unwant it now.

Even hundreds of millions of steps after

it’s gone into powder 

from other feet

it’s not really gone.

Because it weighed

something and I weigh something

and there’s a prick of heat

that’s always a hawk, the burr

in gravity that makes one head

look up from their plate at a family

friendly dinner: the rapid bare

foot in the flaring glance, when 

shoes began to matter (or the lack

of them) the quick prick into

                                    limp limp limp grip

the wall

and lift the foot.  There it is,

some preciously obscure

assault thrust between the bones

as by a thumb

as by an eye, as, 

because I won’t know

until I pull it out, I decide

I need  the skin’s pink puncture,

wet for the guest, the guest

seeing it all with a pause

a start
and 
a pause,

and a napkin to their lips.