After, the Beginning Was When the Word Became Void

Before: Creation:         

One:    And light for day against night

Two:    And a firmament against the waters

            And the waters in a ball against a spin to make land dry land

Three:  And grass and seed and trees fruit trees against themselves but within themselves

Four:    And lights against the sky a wide eye sky never closing only turning

            And a quiet eye always sometimes open sometimes not

            And stars         those too                     on the hem of heaven

Five:    And birds  And fish  And whales  Against the wind and water they multiply

Six:      And the cattle creep in the dust         

            And all the beasts creep against the trees

            And the seeds inside the seeds inside the seeds inside the mystery within a firmament

            And least of these                                me                               between beasts and trees

                                                            on my knees bending knees

                                                            sweeping clean the earth

                                                            for my Sweet Pea

            And we creep  we eat weeds   we sweep the sky with our baleen mane, our fractured jaw

After:   New Creation:                                    

Six:      And we creep in the dust and screech like bats against bricks and moonlight

Five:    tight light under the roof of night against all day gone day

Four:    gone out day forever out like the stars too and no way to know our way

Three:  to the gate, after all the grass is pulled away, after all the mud and clay are laid square

            after he’s laid prostrate and I fling my fist-ball of earth in

            reverse reverse to the earth

Two:    to rub my face raw with His curse of it that firmament against the water

One:    that night against light

November 19 and 20

the wind is a mouth a biting mouth a glacial tongue

at the end of your tundra lung.  it is the last cling of the maple

stragglers, flint thin, don’t float, don’t drift, don’t know

where they’ll rot come one spring or another.  though not

declared for another month, it’s winter.  it’s grieving season. 

and grieving you is not wind but glass, armonium or harp, with its

reliable cat-sized paten of water besides.  and each glass

(wine maybe, and brandy) is a different kind of full.  it’s tips

of fingers, it’s lips.  and each are mesmerizing to stand

beside, to wait beside, like the posture and the gait

and the stride of a mother bird feigning

not the noted broken wing but life entirely.  the float

the groan the still vibrating tone of the inside of your throat,

intubation raw, must have been some come-true prophecy

in tissue instead of lace, you know, how the women

from the Old Country could tell your life in the pattern

they tacked to the pillow, each going in and over and under:

a road a boy a forest…I bet you knew your own future

by heart, and like a touched glass, once the vibration is

lit with the tips of wet fingers there’s no stopping.  it’s

a black ice ride.  it’s amitriptyline and morphine.  it’s a bed of stars. 

it’s the way you tip your head back into the dark.  how

it’s all glass.  how it’s flaking lips.  how the chap and chafe

of yours, the raw meat at the side of your mouth,

and your tongue is your only hand left in the world.  and that one

left-alone-leaf after the wind is through.  After the mouth

closes and it’s still there, and will be all winter long.

Icarus

Icarus

As though he’d jumped too far from the swing

high as he could ride

and then

let

go

and it was all a blue blur

it was momentary

it was

fli-

ght

and then

a

tight

jerk

you know

how those certain songbirds

push

and

pause,

push

and pause

so sudden they’re just knives covered in sky

it’s just roof to birch

in one dip

of the tail

and two quick puffs –

                        or like the older boy

behind the shed

smoking

and his fanned

recoil

when he hear’s

his name

but this boy, the red gravel-rash apron his bare chest is, now it’s worse than that swing he fell from last year, that coming down flat or nearly and how some force kept pushing him until his cheeks, his neck and elbows, the obligatory knees—he looked like a bowl of cranberries whose white bottoms haven’t seen enough

                                                sun –

and she’s tweezed each piece of lake stone, bone over bone, out of his cheek and teeth, his groin and backside and she’s – well she’s not going to ask – she wants to see an almost awake boy, face and neck, almost the boy dragged across the bottom in the dark

the way he may have been pulled

across the sky

Icarus

sweet Icarus

just before the world started to melt

at this feet.

Paradox of Aching

Maybe it doesn’t start out that way,

pain with salt, stiff knots in the muscle

of hips, an electric inspection for a berth

it can loiter in to burn a name for itself.

Consider: bark, when stripped, is an idle

dog in the slim shade of a roof at one in the afternoon.

The throb is in the meat, the twitch

when the hand gets magnet close, enough

to suck it down or push it completely

away.  Both with a growl.  Both with teeth.

Shit if you want the pain, get the hell out.

If you don’t, touch the dog.  She’s not

asleep. 

when looking is finding is knowing the end of it all

On Hearing of the Death
of a Girl from Home;  On Hearing
Her Father Was at the Scene

I lick my thumb

and dip it in mould,

I anoint the anointed

leaf-shape.  Mould

blooms and pigments

the back of your hand

like a birthmark—

my umber one

you are stained, stained

to perfection.

                        Seamus Heaney

                        Field Work

when below the cold surface of the early November

bog an infinite stillness is labored and born.

when it is labored and borne by the first hand

to pull your thick matt of hair off your cheek

when that cheek is mother of pearl …

when that burped perfume of the bog…

when the red blueberry leaves…
when mud, nettles and runty stones…

when it’s the first early snow—who’ll know any

liberty from this division's incessant hammer  

when maybe, instead, all of your last breath was looking

for a shape to take

when finding one is your father finding you--a shape only

the dead can take

when your father.

when your father:                                                                     :holds your hand.

           

                                    when that hush-hush surge.

                                    when it slips away.

                                    when everything everything goes and goes, it goes

                                    .