Ribbon

Ribbon

All was taken from you: white dresses,

wings, even existence.

Yet I believe you,

messenger...

                         Czeslaw Milsoz

Unnoticed near his toe on the burden boards

it floats in what water wasn’t bucketed,

out, and plashes near the plugged

bung: a girl’s purple hair-ribbon.  Then it kisses

his heel—and he doesn’t notice.  It kisses

the absence of it when he lifts his foot,

he doesn’t notice.  Rowlock mews at the oar rub.

He stows the anchor.  Rows.  Drops Anchor.  Throws

and stows and rows and in the rhythm of it,

sweeps the water beyond, the huddled mothers

on shore, the incorrigible sorrow.  He stows it

all.

So when the two other men stand to throw

their grappling hooks that pull to snag

at the solid bottom, only when, hung head,

when his fingers scrape his hair, does see the limp

lavender bow.  He picks it up out of the cold

water, and it drips like an aspergil.  Swaying himself

more sober,  he grips his breast, a pocket of reeceipts.  To do

list.  His own little girl was at home.  He knows

she’s in her warm bath. It is

Friday night.  She wore a ribbon

like this to mass: pink… yes, maybe like this

little girl, somewhere below on bottom,

was missing her ribbon, missing, missing...

He coughed and spat. 

                        “I’m settin’ anchor boys—then I’ll row out

a little further.”  And with the wet ribbon he

pinched the gripped-smooth oar of the boat

pulling the hooks…

Winter, Maine: Late

Winter, Maine: Late

1800’s: Getting the Job: Ice Harvesting

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

                                                           

                                                Emily Dickinson

                                                “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –“

It’s only after the first day he’ll dream

of cold peaveys and picks,

the spiky cleated shoes his grandfather screwed

into the hooves of their two draft horses,

the stiff prick in the palm of his hand

when the leg jumped, the oooooo and coooo

while the bruise pooled in his wrist, how

the lung of cold hung above the barn—and all

seemed calm on the pond:  little wind

and the ice near two feet thick.

It’s slippery, his father’d said.  It’s not

my Da’s Irish ooze.  In his head: You’ve come for this:

for knees to freeze and bleed.  Don’t mourn that boy

friend who skated on ponds like these before he

fell through and no one knew until spring

he hadn’t just run off. Boys did that. Run

off.  So

once you pull that saw, once that hundred, sometimes three

hundred pounds float rough and square,

set free from their freak sleep be careful

boyoo.  Only last week behind the shed

a man from down river, feet wet, said just a minute

I’ll be just a minute and turned, went out

back and slipped and quiet as that ice he froze… 

toes, nose… so boyoo

keep free of open water.  And maybe this year

tend Ben and Blu, walk alongside on the solid

ground when they draw the first slice-lines.

birdshot

birdshot

The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible…

                                                Plato

            Is it instinct, tell me, is it? to look up

when a soft body goes solid, when that last

breath’s expelled, goes, and the yo-yo

up and down of the lungs finally- broke- after- the- long- fray

or cut, or the toy’s dull rub or

roll- bounce- roll is in the air, it’s habit, right?

to look up? and guess

who’s chariot crow

swoops in and then, empty, away? her black

demand amended for something like this:

            the eight and the four

under the water after their abrupt float go

down down in their own time to bottom.  Their pockets

thieved by the water, or even just their last

spastic SAVE ME sobs, soon only a sigh,

soon just something children wave their arms in.

But my question.  I have a question.  Because I’ve had to

look up, and only, look, I tell you,

only just now did I wonder: if a body dies

            under the ground, or under water:

can that soul fly out?, or does it have to go

down?,

can it even float?, get to the top?, or does it become something other

than air, something mineral, or a lead sinker,

lead enough for a loon,

breast beneath the wing?

and that make-believe gun the older boys aim?, the one that tips the boat,

when the loon dips and disappears,  

and they are on their way, , ,

to meet her?

Still.

Still.

still it is that even

the liquid wing of ink spilled

this winter across his desk, takes the face

and folded wing of a crow, even when it’s dried

and sanded, and wiped away.  still, it’s the dim shadow soak she dabs at—

                        his desk—the first boy—then carries to the front of the room and covers it

with her mother’s first place beige lace doily

and a scented geranium still in red, rescued after a long dark

summer in weed and shade.  would you look at it, see!

see it bloom now boys and girls, come take a whiff

of it.

Air

Air

“and by twos and threes

the children sank”

                         

                        adult eye-

                        witness

All those rescue boats, and men panting above the drowned.

Their breaths are flung nets:

cast, drawn, cast, drawn.  Hooks and weights, buoys and floats… 

Such a breath is a man all drift in the still

waters—it is flight and thermal still, it is purposed

calm, like the crows above the sunken dead, even those sloe moments

of prophesy have flown to nearby trees to see

the first boy heaved in by his sister,

a boy who right there on the shore needed no 

gaff or net at all, just maybe a quick smack

of breath, just a slap, to shock him back, like a blow

into the face of a screaming mother.  Because if it's only puff-purse-puff

their hot air out, cool air in, in deep, if it's deep

enough to reach the least peninsula of the lung, to get it to the cove…

cast it in toward shore – to float it to sink it to make it take hold,

maybe, maybe, maybe it will stick.

..................................

When

the boat

is over

my head

and

bottom

becomes

top.

When

water is my last

breath.

When

the boogy-dark

is

boogier

under the

done for

boat.

When

no one will swim.  They could

but they

couldn’t.

When it’s

fists and limbs.

When I do.

Swim I mean.

When it’s a

sudden end always.

When eight boys.

When four girls.

Don’t. Don't Swim.

When we the other 

four

make it.

To shore.

When at first:

buoys

and then drug from bottom.

When never

such soft sand in my hair.

When a hundred feet out is the softest sand there is.

to know the man

to know the man

                        …I did not dare to remember

Until one day

I met a memory

It was a  friend

He took me along under his umbrella…

                                                “Walker in Prague”

                                                Vitezslav Nezval

to know the man who had a small boat.

who loved children.  whom children

loved.  who had a limp but never broke

under it. 

until

his pretty wax-blonde boat,

sealed every season, stripped and sealed,

each petite seam squeezed so devotedly

even the sea’s obeisance

insists.

to kiss

such a man’s dowsing hands

that lift children into that boat,

turning

to gift a rain

coat to two shivering

girls . . .

and a boy sneaks

past so when the man is done

and pulling the chord and looks

up at

the too many, well,

they’ve settled down.  mild man,

they like him

but they… he’s not firm enough

and not enough

will get out. 

small boat. 

a hundred

yards out.  sixteen

children.  when the water’s up

to the gunwale he sees the last boy

he lifted

go stiff, a cold shift

wicks

up his leg toward his throat.

he looks up after

he sees the bow how only

bow dip in.  but

the man can’t

panic.  even as it all sinks, nose

like a submarine.  all those battle

ready.

                        to know

this man.  before all this.  before,

when the boat was solace

blonde.

and then.  only then, after.

Which Berth?

Which Berth?

Line of smoke

writes on

sunlight

            W.S. Merwin

what sort of captain do you want:

                                                the hawker

                                                or the haunted? 

                                                the rescuer or

                                                the mutineer?  stern-tag bold

                                                black or center thwart cracked?

                                                captain in to the last man

                                                or out on the first rescue?

and then, getting in, how do you

know?

The paper

The paper

will say something different

it will accuse, say something like

there were too many

in the boat

and not enough would get out

and stay out when he asked

it will soften it all saying

he was a cripple and what

a shame what a shame

he turned too quick

in the out-of-know-where wind

and all the kids spilled out

or there was a rogue wave

it will say and seventeen panicked

it will say they couldn’t

swim

it will say he too nearly

drowned and probably wanted to

it will say he collapsed back into the shallow

that his daughter pulled him

and his soaked coat

with its torn pockets and bits

of fishing gear

it will say bubbles hung

at his mouth and nose

and he dozed in the shallow

shallow shadows that lit on him

like cinders from a gone too long

house fire and singed his sallow skin

and really they were leaches

it insinuates he should’ve

drowned himself

he should’ve stayed sunk 

under the kids he'd later say

clung to him 

it won’t say he tried to get them

to shore

it won’t say

they gouged and ripped and pulled handfuls of hair of pocket hugged that bum

leg or any floating thing any sweet clinging thing it won’t say 

he was bruise blue

under the willow and still

half in the water

it won’t say

his lips fluttered

and blubbered

the way a sogged  new

kitten must in the dark

burlap bag it can’t

say there’s air he gasps for

there’s solid ground he can’t stand

on he can’t

do anything but burp

and belch lake and sit in suffocating

lung snuffing cold

in the air he tries

to snatch at the root of the trunk at his hip

he digs and digs

so that at home (and no one says,

no one knows) his wife

pulls out each splinter

each quill and soaks his hands

to draw the deep

ones out of the nails, and the sand

it won’t say that the bottom

of the lake was in his hair

his mouthnosethroat 

or that he’d cough it for the next

30+ years

it won’t say it.  Newspaper

stories are like that.

They move on.  Tomorrow there’ll be

another mishap.

August Sunday Comics

August Sunday Comics

so many left

unread and yet still

to read, I’ve stacked

them by the cold

stove.

I’m following

in his favorite

comic, keeping up

with the gag

stuffed mouth

eyes wide as half

dollars

the steam rising like flies

into the bubble

of her mud and jumble

thoughts

because her hero

(I read ahead

but don’t tell him.

I’m saving it

for our talk

on Sunday)

is still

six issues

away

Looking Back: I’m In the Kitchen When I Hear the News

Looking Back: I’m In the Kitchen When I Hear the News

And a shock so primitive even my tongue condenses

into phlegm.  There’s no swallowing it.   I forget how

words form, how they gather like penitents to be

spoken through liquid teeth, lips.  Both are burning posts in fog,

or this thin hall that leads out and off the roof  

of my mouth, down the gutter of my throat that’s only known

all swallowing as easy.  I’ve never once seen anyone

who has choked to death.  Or dropped dead, exhausted.  Or

drowned.  Now, because this is new, it’s something

else: the thick pads of my feet hum and the tips

of my toes!   Oh, they begin to go

numb, a summer (how’s that possible?) frostbite.

And in a space I’ve known better

than the cat I start to fold; in a place where for years

I never stubbed a thing suddenly every table leg, every

door jamb’s my boy’s bat hitting every toe at every pitch.  Dead

drunk on the news of the lake I can’t make it

to the end without falling

into the kitchen sink, and that clay knick-knack

he loved and was playing with this morning tips

over the way I see him now spill out of the boat. Horse

and rider collide with the floor the way he collided with water,

and me too: skirts wide as a mouth yet pleated, slick as factory fish

so that it’s only by some wonder his clay

Remington Bronco doesn’t bust, doesn’t concuss

enough to rupture.  Instead it skuds beneath a highboy we’d meant.

to move to his bedroom.  And it sits there, lost.  It will be flat

on its flank and cheek until next spring when I can finally move

the cabinet when the dust drifts in the cloth-clotted wind,

in the open-behind-me-window wind that lifts winter off

his favorite thing.  And like all of them that went under, I stare

the way the ones on shore could only stare and gape, can’t believe what

they’re seeing will never resurface

rearing, neighing, rider’s arm up, chaps straight out

at the boot never falling off, never falling in

to anything but neck and mane and sky.  Never

water.  Not ever.  Or if water, oh Jesus, because it’s only yards

from shore and all those mothers clutching time

to go home sweaters to their throats aren’t speechless

or dumb.  They’re getting ready to pack the picnic, to get

supper.  Do that load of wash they’d put off.  Uncover

the dough they’d left in the icebox.  Pound it down

to let it rise one more time.