Speculation

Speculation

Chainsaw three minutes

hours later in rain

smell of resin.

                   W. S. Merwin

                   “In the Red Mountains”

If kelp.  If bait.  If boat.

If fiberglass repair.  If swing-sets.  If hours swinging.

If barefoot if new

shoes if a mother if her

mother.  If Hemmingway

If Harper Lee.  If Robert

Frost’s “Home

Burial.  (If his Elliot)  If fever

cooled if unabandoned.

If Listen-

ing.  If sex

waited for you.  If you

wanted it to.  If roast

beef if Sunday love if Jesus if Muhammad If Moses If Buddha If Krishna

If a woman.  If her two hands

if her mouth her throat if before

you were born if the un

aborted one if brother/sister if

aunt or uncle or.  If father.  If it worked.

If hanging yourself.  If blisters from

the rope if they didn’t heal if they did

if you lived if you died

If it wasn’t her in the road if the snow

if the phone if the way

if work if cigarette if fishing if thick

ice if unbroken plans

if lists.  If it was

It wasn’t. 

Eight Years On

Eight Years On

Shutting your eyes from the spectacle you
Saw not darkness but
Nothing

On which doors were opening

                                        W. S. Merwin
                                        "Pieces For Other Lives"

There’s that gap, a secrecy so vast

it's a breach we stand at the edge of

watching, waiting

while our children and mothers

turn away from us

and into it and the space

where the quiet is roused out of God’s loneliness.

This is the cleaving I still feel

today, the way your hand gripped

my hair, a tallis

of consecrated cloth.  

And when it started to tear

the sound was inaudible as a pall

on your urn that whole night

of sitting.

I'd watched you and watched you

as they wheeled you down

the corridor toward I didn’t know where— 

I didn’t know then

if I’d ever see you again—

And the cloth of us

it was curtain

the holy of holies

rent in two.

And in the space between the two pieces

a scream silent as a tulip bulb

in November

Raking

Raking

who reads into distances reads

beyond us, our sleeping children…

                                    Seamus Heaney

                                    “Travel”

Bent like carpenter’s squares

The whole field was stripped, unzipped

One rake pull at a time: swish/tip

Swish/tip the whole morning swish/

Tip through and through.

He’d owned the field and set me

To work at the string, row on row

Around and over stones.  I’m as

Bog-caught as moss.  So it’s elbow

At the knee and it looks all the same blue

In the pail until my two handed carry straightened

Me.  That five gallon bucket slumbered

Every ten steps or so and the winnowing

Machine so so far away and wouldn’t my toe

Knock against that stone and almost,

Almost tumble into the rug of small

Sticks and leaves.  But listen:

Recovery is sometimes as modest as shifting

The weight of the load from one shoulder

To the other.  And because my reach was

Short

The bucket dragged and scuffed

The August-hot leaves, yellows and faint

Greens.  It was routine: fill it, pick it up

And walk aways and put it down and do it all

Heading toward the rows of stacked

Wooden boxes factory stamped.

I’d be paid three dollars

A box.  It was hot.  It was a course of tugged

Twine, tin pie plates tink- tinking on their staves

To shock the crows away.  It was crushed

Cans and sweat in my eyes and men mostly going

Up their row slick as butter, going and going.  I’d pass

My father and my sisters with this bucket.  And

We’d talk, me and this spilling pail: Let’s rest

You and me.  Let’s take it here to sit, let’s… and we

Did.   Head through knees I’d see the thirty six

Teeth of the rake still filled

With leaves, with little sticks, some long blonde

Grass  scrape at my ankle.  I’d see the whole

Field from up there, almost a bowl

Filled with the day’s haul of the small sweet blue

World.   Rakers, it’s a short season.  The winnowing

Machine is low on gas.  At last I pick it all

Up and walk all the way without stopping

This time, without one more sway, without one more

Glance at the crows up top cawing at the sun

Going down.  And without saying a word but

My own name to the man who tips my bucket

Into the mouth of that machine. I watch it all:

The berries falling down, like sky in a box.  The heat

Of the belts and swelter, the choke of exhaust

Coughing out the reign of the field with her leaves

All spring, through the bloom, through the browse

Of bees early on, through summer to now

When it all comes down to packing it

All away.  All that chaff.  All that not needed green

Beneath, green that tomorrow will be a memory, and still

All that blue, blue, all that blue ready, bulging

With sweet fruit, oh yes, ready.

Visiting Hours

Visiting Hours

Now, high overhead, tiny figures

begin to rappel down the rare

filaments of imagination, along fibers

of the optic nerve and down

into the hippocampus,

into the landscape of days.

                                    Brian Turner

                                    “From the West” : MY LIFE

                                    AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Hospital hallways are veins are sharp upper

cuts left right swing shut with the hush that hush

you know that hush that pad against the boot

against the shock on the chin the shock

of the dead nestled finally in their head

in the cavity left behind dry as any aged tree

rot dry as tongues long without water long

without words.  Walking them is really crawling

them even though two feet and not two knees

hit the maintenance police linoleum a wax

mirror a cloud a mirror a cloud those thousands

of feet/knees and its God on call and that shock

on the lip when the first concussion bomb

detonates and look:  who’s lifted with that initial

wave lifted the way water lifts when what’s plunged

into it remembers it has air the whole way down—

and maybe there’s no bottom at all no bottom

but those currents of atmosphere we never can

consider not being from that depth, not at least

until we’re riding them and pushing them and making

love to them after a long time of not making love

after a long time of simple naught, of those nerves

jazzed hall ways and nights and knights with their sponge

swords swabbing the walls that concussion man

I felt it in my feet I felt that mother fucker all the way

and it’s a pretty thing a real pretty thing like scalp

skin on the charcoal mountain meaning snow meaning

the iv drip’s pulled meaning in the days to come

the hospital  (listen, it’s doable) is row on harrowed row

slow and a stone bench and some thrown

water and you can visit any time day or night rain

or shine and nothing I mean nothing will ever crush you

like this bomb this pin-pull again.

Oh If Caution Were Soft. And It's Naught But Whisper,,,,

Oh If Caution Were Soft.  And It's Naught But Whisper,,,,

                          ...the rain
is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
upon the glass and listen for reply 

               "What My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why"
                Edna St. Vincent Millay

Consider the small incen-

diaries laid against the frame

of the heart, along the bone

cage wired with nerve

and muscle and tense

suspension.  Consider

the instinctively mixed

mortar fastening it all

and the precision of

every pause and ever after

detonating.  And those

limbless are carried off.

Those dead are buried.

Those shocked beyond.

Those rocking unnerved…

Don’t you want to touch

the undergrowth where once

she laid her feet so near

the touch-pin the case itself

sweats from the wait?

Don’t you want to diffuse

with the talent of a Casanova

every wire every fiber

and love her back to her-

self?  Don’t you want

to bridge the fissure

with your tongue, rappel

into that fissure-deep

crevasse to a solid fault-

bottom, where great plates

groan and ripple up

their purr?  And the cor-

dite of it, even years later,

on your lips?

full moon in four days

full moon in four days

for Jose

you sent the rain

            into the tide

                        of wind you sent it

                                    into the rake-

                                                furrows pulling

                                                            back the sea.

They were old

            friends

                        the rain

                                    and

                                                the

                                                            sea

Thunder and flash

            are passionate

                        gatherings, a canopy

                                    of cordite and crack

                                                as though who’s going

                                                            to war has returned

to break the host

            of mass

                        in two: you

                                    high in

                                                the sky

                                                            saturated with the

                                                                                    persuasive rain, a train

of cloud rolling

            roiling derailing

                        far enough up

                                    the tracks that

                                                ocean and rain

                                                            salt and plain

                                                                        comingle

until time

            and heat pull

                        them up from

                                    their watery bed

                                                and change them

                                                            completely, the way

                                                                        the war trampled living

who still

            look in the mirror

                        after the battle

                                    knowing it’s not

                                                them returning

                                                            but something

                                                                        else entirely

because of the rain

            and that salt

                        that brine

                                    of road and sky

                                                and foam skeining

                                                                        together

palms wide

            open hello after all

                        this strange time

                                    friends, always now

                                                            friends.

Litter

Litter              

                        Passion is work

            that retrieves us,

lost stitches.  It makes a pattern of us

it fastens us

to sturdier stuff

no doubt.

                        Jorie Grahm

                        “I Watched a Snake”

Litter we let lie litter we tear

and crumble and throw

madly away tight rumple of

a ball or toss nonchalant and all

the care of the mistake is hidden

in one of those folds, it’s spit

without spitting it’s not

the work alone we grind our jaw

on but those hands sweeping

like a broom that buckle us

from behind the ambush we swear

like all the profoundly addicted

we swear we knew we did we knew

shit the disguise was so like

that partridge in the trees we’d walk

right by whistling barrels eye ball-

to-eye ball- shells tight as hibernating

snails breach open safe as sky

and after long after the plastic frown

like that mouth the hull tip stepped on

brass head like any brass

going green already after it’s ejected

before it hits the moss

before even it’s clutter telling the whole

world the trajectory

and not one single flat fuck give a dam

the blood’s already down the left

side of the crag where the bird spooked

and flew shock boom flew

and the trigger is natural after the breach

is slipped to its lip it’s natural

it all fires after that and just as natural

I suppose after what’s hit goes down

and bleeds and sometimes moans

and if the hunter cares he’ll dangle off

that crag and grope a minute and hope

and hope the bird although furiously dying

is waiting and there’s little wind 

mother's day moon

mother’s day May 10

moon:

I’d intended to see you through

through the blue bottle I’d intended

but see the tree has turned out

its leaves see in the last few days

those abundant fists like fists of

infants have been coaxed open

and from here from this window

the wide open hands have become

your succor your care-

giver caresser and if the distance

could be bridged if (because listen

the neck's most vulnerable to get to 
the wine

we must 
pull 
the cork)

that’s even sensual,that turning

turning

turning

of the screw until it’s all

pulled roots like ooze’s

perfume ok  maybe not ooze but I’d come

all this way to see you through

and it was too late  you had

your drape you had this

maple this abundant canopy and even

moving below it half of you

is gone and the other half is gone

to haze and the blur

is this blue bottle when the lens

sees only green and delight

its sites 
and only through

coaxing only through focusing

on the neck and waist and hip

alone the whole tree out

of the picture is it pure enough

and only I and now you

of course
know

know 
what’s behind it all

New England Dervish

New England Dervish

            Oh

let it touch you…

Nothing will let you go.

We call it blossoming—

the spirit breaks from you and you remain.

                                    “Tennessee June”

                                    Jorie Grahm

It’s only to be imagined now in the museum

of dust and rows and rows of chairs men on

one side women on the other and how their quiet settled

like a nursing baby latched on for the very first time

becomes the sweet surprise and the stream (if it had been anything

else would have furrowed their cheeks) down the neck

to those still waxy wrinkles oh it was like that and how

it was all so quiet and after all that labor and new air lets out

the first real howl (that one after the slap was protest) but now

this this it’s a seizure a spasm all electrode joy jolt

and if she could she would rip out

of all that suddenly confining grasp and take to the center

and open every drawer in the highboy of her heart.

The room positively glowed with her up on that hill—see:

at the bottom of it all local boys would gather and slap

and shove and want a little but they know they know its not Dawn

Summers combing her hair in the winter window they sometimes

glimpse when they’re finished bedding down

the livestock and she’s all hair and nipple no its not her it’s pure

joy its pure possession and they shake after their long while silent they erupt

maybe first their toes maybe then it wicks up their calves and they can’t

do anything but cut that rug in the middle of the whole congregation

between all their celibate brothers and celibate sisters and take their chances

and whirl and whirl and whirl the dervishes of New England

Cleaning Up: Bedroom

Cleaning Up: Bedroom

            I, who used to be inconsolable (and the world

wild around me)

            can stand here now.

                                                “History”

                                                Jorie Grahm

(you are the brass bobeche at rest

before everything above you is lit

and then when you descend, you let it all

go like any well balanced

candle, without a fuss or a mess)

It’s been twelve years.  No, thirty.  No forty five or six.

It started here.  No, it just ended here.  It began

            before she arrived but she brought some

            of it with her and she became we at one point.  Was it when:

there was no working phone in this place?

the baby was bit in the face

            by the dog and oh…my soul...

my soul was it when my brothers, one who:

lives a year through 

the war only to be killed

                        three weeks on leave at home.  And my other,

                                    brother too, three months after him.  It’s this, those two

car wrecks in the bloody sheets there’s a pack

of smokes under her pillow there’s that drone

of the oxygen machine there’s three pictures of three daughters

            and their arch-bishop oh this is hard this is the hardest

of all: the intimacy of a bedroom is what crushes the shy

yet at some point it all has to

arrive here and has to be swept up or washed

or scrubbed and dumped and what all can’t be managed

beneath these things will either lie down

in the grass like that new fawn or it will

be sliced clean through  with the clam hoe

or be shot straight up shot in the head

or

and this steals her when she swishes the hot water

in the bucket:

ü  someone’s coming

            home

ü  someone’s asking questions

            tomorrow

ü  someone’s sleeping off this poor woman’s dope

and sold the rest

She says:           I’m done here.  I’m done.

She says:           I’ll take these old quilts and housedresses and smokes home.

She says:           I’ll burn what I can’t cut.

She says:           It’s all in her chart, the ER checklist:

                                    overdose

                                    assault

                                    seizure

                                    suicide attempt

Brother, she says, you died first.  It was yesterday.  It was thirty years ago.  It was, second brother, this whole house under the roof of that prom car and you and two other kids died.  It was the first draft of anything—and standing back to see it all gleam see it brand new see it all and then toss the lit match over your shoulder as you turn to walk off when it’s all cleaned away or if there’s that other sort of bravery or resolve or just bone weariness after a night like tonight there’s no turning at all, it’s just a toss, just a watchful eye as the first thing the match lands on decides to lean in to the small flame and catch and pass it on.  The luck of it.  Pass it on and let 'er go.