the raincoat (II)

the raincoat (II)

unfolding it, well I’ll say this:

unfolding it was the worst.

II.

When Callie got his raincoat back,

buttoned and folded, he thought

but oh this is what splits a heart’s

might.  The flat, pointed collar,

the hood down the back, the neat line

of black buttons, all of them,

and clean, an absolute squeak of clean:

            no mud or blood

                        (the propeller blade

                        they say, one boy beneath it…)

as clean as the first day it kept him

dry, though he can’t remember when,

but he knows before that job

in Rockland when he stepped free

of the staging and fell far enough

to push a femur through a thigh.  If I

were a plow horse he’d said, they’d dig

my grave around me and shoot me

into it, if it happened

where the dirt was soft enough,

if it weren’t winter, or the mud of some

Mays in the county, planting potatoes

in soup…

His Dressing Down

A Dressing

Down

HOW wonderful is Death,

       Death, and his brother Sleep!

     One, pale as yonder waning moon

       With lips of lurid blue;

       The other, rosy as the morn

     When throned on ocean's wave

           It blushes o'er the world;

     Yet both so passing wonderful!

                                             Shelley

                                             “Queen Mab”

even here, stowed,

a light as a moth cough, and his body

exhausted, broke, taut and paused

cautioned by nothing,

nor fists nor birds…

the intimacy of this: plucking

each weed, sewing each mouth’s

sweet upper and lower

lip shut, cuts mothers

never see beneath the hair

where hooks, where men

pulled and the skin just gave

way, like a shirt, unbuttoned

at the end of a long, long

day.  but see this:

a bruise a new bruise

(but not) it’s not the color

of all the todays

it’s the color of yester-

day’s yesterday morning – I remember

seeing him wait for the bus

I remember slowing down

to offer a ride I

remember his fist, his lips,

his spit wiped on his sleeve

when he said no

thanks and turned

away

it’s only new because it’s noticed;

it floats just below the sur-

face of my hovering thumb – cold

cocked, that’s all

I could say putting my needle

back on the tray.  boy’s

not going to have to

defend himself anymore I guess.  No.

he’ll never have to duck

or strut when the swing missed

or didn’t, when his mother yelled

before he left yesterday

morning:

I don’t give two Fucks what you

do.  Go.  And I hope you don’t

come back.  

maybe it’s her

I need to take the needle

and the rouge to.  Maybe this boy’s saved

after all.  

the raincoat (1)

the raincoat

I came as Hansel came on the moonlit stones

Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons…

                                                Seamus Heaney

                                                The Underground

I.

Maybe it’s old, yes, it’s almost certainly old

and a motor oil reek.  But it’s tight to the neck

against all that bow spray, and warm,

it’s quick these arms and fingers of three: a pair

of girls and the boy behind them.  After they’d

put the coat on backward, one arm in the sleeve

one arm around the other’s waist, and those,

those buttons that plunged

down their spine, and the boy well he’d plugged

each one through its mate, and they,

two now one, sat, side/inside, and twirled

each their free hands, (and clasp the other, another button…)

their one one one pirouette, collar flap, hood flap

under their chin, and their grin, Good Lord

their grin in the beginning, two.  And then.

And then frigid thrill of going

under and then, looking when they could

into their own eyes wide against all the murk

and swirl.  And then the warm regret.

And then their shuddering, briefly. 

And then.  Then.  Well,

Ease.

The Paradox: on Aching

The Paradox:  on Aching

Of course it doesn’t start out this way,

pain in salt-stiff-salt-strong knots, in the muscle

then bone of pelvis, the electric search for a spot

it can curl into and lathe a name for itself.

Consider: bark, when stripped, is an idle

dog in the slim shade of a bare oak root at two

in the afternoon.  Her throb is in the meat

of her jowl, her twitch when a hand gets magnet

close, enough to suck it down or shove it completely

away.  Both with a growl.  Both with teeth.

She’s at the length of the chain, brained

(nearly) for the stain near the door, the late

key, the wait, the wait, hold it hold it but finally,

in the end it spills out pinched and dry, the sulfur

the kilned salt of pain.  Not her fault.  She wasn’t

the one as went away.  So shit on you.  Shit.

On.  You.  If you want to place blame, get the hell out.

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

asleep.  

another turn at the lake

another turn at the lake

It always starts at the peak of the same

cheek bone:

if I were to stroke into

that bone a mountain

path into me, and then slip

with the conspiracy of the available moon, to where above the birches the light continues.

And if your throat

in such a moon were the shadow

of a day before that day, where we hid, remember? And enough of you pooled and cooled there in the basin

of it.  And if I could,

if I were first soft enough and sloe, ignorant enough

strong enough then hard

enough—eyes—yours—and too your electric breath would surge out

of that water.  And girl I’d cup

you and shake you awake and ease and lean into

the moon of you, what there is of you, rising, while the night

crepes itself on the ajar

doors

of stores, factory floors, milking pales, bows

of boats tied to ends of piers,

and then the sterns of them all: chrome bumpers…

bedposts…girl, while such crepe

wafts and drifts, shimmers

and glints…I’ll see into the well

of all things, I’ll be that well

of all things.  And I’ll see you there, breathing,

dry, alive.  And I’ll bring you

up.  I’ll bring you up and breathe

for you for the rest of all of our already exhausted lives.

Open, Later, Though the Edge is Dried and Frayed

Open, Later, Though the Edge is Dried and Frayed

From the lonely cliff-tops, the stag

bells and makes the whole glen shake

and re-echo.  I am ravished.

Unearthly sweetness shakes my breast.

                                                Seamus Heaney

                                                Sweeny in Flight

I want this for you, when you can, in a year

or two, after the buried

dead are finished

rising to stand by your bed, collecting

like ushers near the end of the service

like they did that day

two thousand

stood in pockets and rows

and you, between the two Legionairs, collapse in their arms…

I want another usher, a hand to plunge you into the abandon

                                                                        of her sweet skin

                                                                        her urgent cheek

                                                                        covering your dark conservation

                                                            things people will never know

                                                            or want to guess

                                                            or think you deserve:

                                                           

                                                there is solace in lips

                                                a nose on the bone between the breasts

                                                the shadow on the counterpane

                                                a moan

                                                a moan

                                                a man even after all that!

                                                Abandon.

Lover at the Lake

Lover at the Lake

Woman, if you were to turn your cheek

to me, and the slip of the available moon, where above

the birches, continues.

And if your throat in such a moon were the day’s fragrance

pooled and cooling in the still bowl of it.

And if I were supple enough. 

And if I were hushed enough.

Lips—and your astonished breath—woman—I’d cup

your head and ease you back once more alive

and lean into the moon of you rising and waxing…

but I wait.  While your face shimmers and glints.

On the bottom of all things water

I wait for every ripple to be still so I can lean again into the lake.

when looking is finding is knowing is the end of it all

when looking is finding is knowing

is the end of it all

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 snow

covered bog an infinite stillness is labored then borne.

when it is labored and borne by the first hand

to pull your wet matt of hair from your cheek

when the cheek is mother of pearl …

when the thick belch of the bog…

when the mud and nettles and small stones…

when the red blueberry leaves…

from your throat

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

liberty from winter’s incessant hammer on the anvil of mornings

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

the last shape to take

(and, when finding one is even wanting to)—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

                                    stone

                                    cold.

An Undertaking: Attendant

An Undertaking: Attendant

The world is only air

shining, granular, transparent/

fleeting breath, through which I see

time.

               Jan Polkowski

Putting you right, putting you all

right while eleven more are prone and cold

and under clean white sheets—

the discreet tap on the closed door

a small envelope slipped between

the only crack I’ll allow—and the cool rush

of fresh wind, the urge to throw it

all wide and run right into the tide,

that quiet coming and going of the tide...

and the gull on the pier post,

and the pitch on that pier and in the palm

of the hand of the man:

a face to go by to wake

you with: a bit of a blush, but before that

a suit, or for you, shorts and a starched white

shirt, so heavy on the starch

that for a moment all I smell is stiff

singed sharp of starch—it’s all I want

to smell, not the embalming, not the drain

buckets, not the rouge, not the pomade—just starch. 

And beneath it, the line-dried warmth of sea-

wind, and clean sheets.

Reading

Reading

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell

fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, coziest

sleep that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt

about green meadows by which he had walked

that morning, and the tall elm-trees,

and the sleeping cows; and after that he dreamt

of nothing at all.

                                    The Water Babies

                                    Charles Kingsley

This is the part, though it comes early

in the book, that she’ll always have to sit

down for, that a chair’s solid moored

unmoving bottom buoys for her.  Even after

all these years she can feel her hair

pulled back and her scalp burn and this is

the part, read aloud, that she sunk

her teeth into and wanted, and locked

her arms and elbows around, and fought

to keep beneath the surface with her—

hers alone, the hush under the water so far away

from the crazed rush and fizz and screech

soon so soon who’d know but the drowning

how soon this sleep…

                                    and nothing on earth is like it:

the velvet dark, the weightless ease dark the leaving

off of skin dark, the left behind shirt

of a boy she knew dark, one who slept too,

and the two girls floating away, wrapped

in a rain jacket zipped up in the back....

but that great rip, like hooking the line

beneath the buoy and the heave

out of the flat as glass water, her huff and heave

of
                                             leave me alone I just want to read my book

                                    and then sleep just please, look,

                        everyone else already is.

Bringing the News

Bringing the News—

when the word is a scythe

cutting below the knee so the time

it takes to get to the ground is quicker

than cut wheat—

when solace that leaks out

of the flower has severed

every quiet day ahead and the breath is out

of the hollow—

a last a last but no one knows—

when the blade is put away

after it is stroked with a stone

spit and stone,

to mow, OH! and arc over

like a great iron rainbow,

not the dead, not the dead

but the head

of the brother of the dead who carries

a bundle of clothes, who all the way

home watches them

breathe

in his lap, folded in the quiet.

It’s frenzy and nothing absolutely

nothing is clear, except the pants

and a trinket,

a shell or a sharp stone

Frank’d found and it pokes his thigh

the harder he                                                               O                     H               !

leans into it.

Doing Laundry While You're at the Lake

Doing Laundry 

While You're at the Lake

You were always distracted

by cold feet

as though your only real work

was keeping warm.

It was socks

even through summer, heavy

wool—and whenever

they brought you

back barefoot

I took my own almost dry

pair of socks off

the line

the pair you’d worn yesterday

to sister’s graduation.

Almost dry. Sun-warm

against your bone cold toes.

Closure

Closure

What is my apology for poetry?

The empty briar is swishing

When I come down, and beyond, inside, your face

Haunts like a new moon glimpsed through the tangled glass.

                                                            Seamus Heaney

                                                            Glanmore Sonnets IX

Unmoored, the lack of you had undone me.

If my purpose was you

and now you are not

doesn’t it go without

saying I am not?

Withered and without?

            Your breath an hour after milk

            warm and sweet and almost sour

            Your clipped toe-nails scattered

            across the living room floor

            your hair still in the brush

            still on my dresser…

                        I haven’t combed

                        my own

                        since.

My mouth tastes like the bitter soap

my of mother.

But I haven’t said a thing.  The day before

you left you came to me

with a button to sew on your coat.

It’s the start of summer.  Who needs

a coat?

                        I haven’t

                        sewn it

                        and I won’t.

Buried without a button but who will know?

Not one soul came to me

and said it was missing.  Missing.  It’s not. 

You are, but not that button.  Not your hair.

Not anything you left when you left, though like milk-

breath when it’s still warm

            like the inside my of courage.

            Where I keep a button.

            Your little button.  It

            makes small little dots,

            threadless and slight.

            And a slim round circle

            I feel with my tongue

            against my jowls

            when I suck in my cheeks.