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
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