This Floor, This House, These Hands

This Floor, This House, These Hands

Floor-boards—bedroom floor-boards, I don’t know

            what do you think?  Tight pine and gold glue

and groove and that tongue that precise fit?  And hands

            that lay them bone to bone across the square

and the occasional odd (where the chimney is) cut

            and the grain, puzzled like scenes on the wall

paper, the boy and his bucket and pole and a duck

            stuck in the sky always in the sky—silent as they both

come or go—they are always and forever in a state

            of arriving or departing—but the floor—here—

decide: maybe the thick winter wool of Persia

            her swirls and abras, her fringes like fingers like prayer

shawls, she and my knees oh don’t they know

            an intimacy more pensive than pillows, more rigid

than the man who showed me my first cat-o-nine and laid me

            over the footboard and in a full moon’s light that once,

bright as God’s eye, was my first communion, cupped

            me and followed one rib and made it

sizzle with welts that later, what I could see,

            reminded me of pond grass, or a great

blue heron’s stalky legs stark still, one curled

            maybe, up under the belly, you know how he does,

to get warm, we all do—we go absolutely

            fetal on the floor, and this one, far from

whips and fists and broken dishes, this one I know.  I know

            every crack and rib, every tongue-

I laid it so quietly, I’d know a mile off if he—well, listen.

            It’s just a floor.  And sometimes—

in dreams—I lay down on it.  And it opens

            its mouth to speak.  And I put my finger to its lips

and say wait, wait.  Not yet.  Just wait.