Owl of the Pear

Owl of the Pear

Last night I sliced

            a pear from head to hip

                        and then

                                    from head to hip

                                                again

and the seeds were black

            eyes and the long

                        sweet point

                                    dripping,

                                                her beak.  And

through spicy cheeks a mar-

            velous pensive stare

                        as though this bird

                                    were the one

                                                with the knife

as though those cheeks,

            pale pale pink,

                        blushed for its own

                                    paused want but could

                                                if I asked

it to, wait all after-

            noon in this bowl

                        among chunks of its own

                                    self, going brown, un-

                                                perturbed

like every owl in

            no great hurry is:

                        —bowl-nest or branch,

                                    because something,

                                                eventually,

                                                            scurries by…

A Final Hour

A Final Hour

Do you think there is any

personal heaven

for any of us?

Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,

will call to us, meaning us?

                                    Mary Oliver

                                    from “Roses, Late Summer

I think, by then, she was quite relieved

to be rid of all of it: the loose and torn cape

of skin she wore like a beggar

who’d, in a fit of fancy or resolve, turned their cup

upside down for the rain to plink, plink,

plink against, it’s drip, finally, the reliability

of her doled and controlled morphine.  And her bones,

poking through that cape, her hips and sockets.

I’d stare and stare at the gauze of them, the thin

almost-pall cover, as though, propped on her right

side since her last bed-check, her pelvis was the center

tent flap, as though, when the storm

really arrived, I could crawl beneath those flaps

and watch the firmament crack itself like an egg

against our baking bowl life and slide

off, yolk and all, a sun going down whole, 
not breaking, not even on impact.

Offering

Offering 

              We are shorn
and purified, as if tonsured.
                                   Jane Kenyon

It’s swift, the quick resilience 

a thing gains when it is cut away

from blood and breathing, when its waning

container is left severed in a scuttle

or a bowl, and then, though we’d like to think not,

casually thrown or flushed or set ablaze—

where air or water or smoke

is the boat itself.  

But what drifts, though, what is

wing or air is metamorphosed,

however brief and enduring in its chrysalis, 

it unzips itself into a brand new 
air, curious and insecure.  Soon enough

a trust, those cautious spots, blend it

with the tall grass to rest, soon up and sprung,

as though from a cauldron of sound. 
The rendering is... is... liquid, reduced 

to truth.  And no one, least of all
the flown, is afraid—

of the Full March Moon

 of the Full March

                        Moon:

                        at 30 degrees

moon, isn’t it,

finally, warming

up?  but the wind,

SW yesterday, has

shifted and today

what’s mild

inside my thermo-

meter glass isn’t

on the outside of it: because still the ice

fingers and their

bones of cold

hold on like chimes

in the sway

and age

of our lone sugar

maple

                        at 1 degree

moon, i swear

i’d dip naked

in the snow

if you’d show

up and drift

between the

maple branches

and settle on

my shoulder

my thigh, and

promise a

summer that's

hot and,

because we’re

alone,

dark

Day Four: After Falling

Day Four:

After Falling

Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours

            for thee?  For thee does she undo herself?

                                                The Revenber’s Tragedy

And didn’t part of me want to stay

right where I was, even though the angle,

completely off, sloped and graded

completely away from cloud gazing.  Besides,

I’d’ve slown the traffic, still hours asleep,

the mindless go and come (which I bet

is why I fell to begin with, I was mind

less, I was already in the basement

doing laundry, I was already

in the kitchen pouring coffee—I was

everywhere but the stairs where I absolutely

was there was no question)

and while staying there wasn’t 

an option

(I wanted to—for anything it meant a rest)

I did, before I found a place to hold

            (all those mental checks against what’s possibly

            gone)

close my eyes and float up and nudge my ceiling

of skin and float there a bit and then,

as though a whole crowd had gathered

and I had something to prove

I quite simply rose and finished

my walk down the rest of the half

dozen without a bow to it at all

and carried on, shhhhing the girl

in myself who’d curled and gone fetal

coaxing her with the you’re fine freedom

of finally standing and walking 

off into whatever it was I was going off into.  

The Day After the Fall

The Day After the Fall

…like a serpent down her shoulder, dark,…

                                                Hart Crane

It’s the day after that’s worse

than the fall itself.  Those moments

and minutes of phftttttt! wait wait then up

come on, and at ‘em I’m fine before they begin

their creeping

descent beneath the skin, in

the muscle that, for its own survival-second

allowed the bounce, became a virtual balloon, all bone

and nerve huddled under the cowl  

of it.  And then: —the flight

to the guard the vital neck and spine

is really

its retreat

so that into the length

of the second day what rises is something other

than the blue bruise

            (but oh so stunning a blue, a wattle

            of righteous blue, like when the Tom’s

            whole face, snood too, is a held breath

            I’ll have my way with you blue…

            but before all that he spooks     

            and spurs, gets ruffled out

            of the yard because the weight

            and pluck of staying is the scald

            of hot water, every saturated plume

            a loose stone, not the way, if this isn’t going

            too far,

            Eve’s staying was her first swallow

            held, when it was in her

            throat, when, still clutching the fruit, she offered it

            out, not to her mate, but to the serpent

            herself, who, blue and less nervous,

            let loose the branch

            and twirled inside Eve’s thigh, so when the whole

            body came (for days and days later) into its final

            weight she’d, they’d both be,

            not too meekly, not too heavy, sure of every 

            beauty 

Aside from that what has to rise is the body itself.

After impact it's not an ache,really, it's 

negotiating new space, the skin prickling

every time it senses (even if every

surface is flat) going down.

the third morning after the fall

The third morning after the fall

            I am a rumpled muscle,

            heaped in the perfect

            unremembered kick off

            of the furnace

            of the night.  Imagine each

            tendon frisking its neighbor

            like a cheek against a breast, or

            the puckered and pursed pull

            all draw and swallow.  The trust

            in the suck is the ungodly

            beauty of instinct—the drain

            straight down through need.  See

            I didn’t intend to fall—I’ve wanted

            each step to matter—all twelve—

            which to this day I count.  It was

            dark.  My house

            inhaled slowly.  Outside was breaking,

            bone breaking, cold.  And I fell

            inside of it, still

            breathing.  My arms were wide

            enough to receive

            the whole world, and the way they waited

            in the dark, in the quiet,

it was, I remember, the way I waited

            to hear if my son would live:

            a concussion deep as sounding

            all that way down, and though

            there’s still no bottom

            to feel the voice out, the push

            through the throat's a groan.

            It is all I can manage.  And the wait

            is its own reply.  And all those places

            that need to swell do, and the bruise,

            all along the spine and under,

            puckers before it spreads

            beneath the surface, an ink

            of absolute purpose though I’m not sure              

            today what it would write.