On Punishment

On Punishment

Sometimes it’s like this:

            punished for a broken thing

            like limits  or rules or not showing up
            or letting someone in

            we are made to sweep and clean

            soap and squeegee

            the high windows of our father’s

            house.  And from pullies

            and ties and the bowed bowl

            of chastity we are in the air

            higher than a playground,

            and the buckles that strap us

            are suddenly invisible, are unhooked,

            and somehow we are both

            things: prisoner and freeman

            and we begin to learn how to

            measure our own weightlessness.

            Pulled up to the top of a window

            we’re meant to clean but cannot see

            into, what’s behind us is suddenly

            in front of us—a mirror of birch

            and beads of windex we’d sprayed

            against the greasy breeze from all

            the days since the last washer

            wiped it all away.  Even though

            at first it’s sheer glass, and even though

            we’re maybe not entirely ready,

            a shift, a stomach lunge of vertigo

            pulls the bung from our lung and dear life

            becomes something like dear life.

            As high up as we are, some trapeze

            only ever half-way met, it’s windows

            and brownstone, it’s all the way down

            if the strap breaks that we don’t want

            to think about that because the glass

            we’re meant to clean blushes

            when the sun starts to let go

            and won’t we feel it now, the seat

            and the half-full bucket and the ground

            far enough beneath us that falling

            will break more than what we broke

            so that father’s can say it’s all meant

            to shape the mistake to make it into a bowl

            you’ll fire with your own self’s

            kiln of fear, water pulled out of the air

            bead by sweat bead, kneaded into

            the mud so that by the time

            all the windows are clean, mirrors

            of ourselves and what’s behind us,

            we’re ready to let go, to get down, 
            to hold out that cup

            to anyone passing by,

            to hear all the liquid minutes being poured

            into it.  And it's then, isn't it, that we're made
            to drink.  We’re ready

            when we’re on the ground again,

            clutching our stunned defiance now our grail

            and can only wonder
            at the way it throbs and heaves