After Brother Drowns

After Brother Drowns

Sleep.  Please, just an hour more.  Half

hour more.  Ten.  Give me ten more

minutes of this leaving it all behind, this ease

where I don’t have to watch for the boom

or the sails.  Or choke on fumes.

 

Give me that day I watched my father’s

cow pull at the May green pasture with her

huff, pull, huff, pull, chew

until her mouth’s green suds swallowed

and brought back.  Until it sits.

Becomes blood.  Becomes milk

for her bawling born late calf

but Daddy was happy to see her surge

out of the black grotto of her mother

and drop with a clotted splash

into the soft sawdust and hay, and the way

her Mama pulled away the caul

and opened her girl’s mouth and nose

and she was breathing, she was finally

breathing our air and I was too

because I hadn’t known what I’d held

I hadn’t known what I was seeing

or supposed to be seeing         (I wasn’t supposed

to see anything but dirty biscuit pans

and the burnt bottom of a bean crock

soaked in soap and scalding water, the scraped

flakes under my fingernails) as I leaned on

the far stall wall and Daddy’d coaxed

and coached the heave of laboring cow

until finally a hoof, a head, a whole half

a body hanging, pinched, gaul and snot

veined and gorged udder—something was

going on inside that sack, like the way a wave

of air will still a cat, until she lies back and is kneaded.

Something stilled in me, when the born

was finally born.  How it all came

in a flash, after waiting so long, how if she hadn’t

turned so quick into the next wet heat

to eat at her baby’s teeth and tongue

there’d be no breath at all, she’d drown,

Daddy’d said later, right there on the floor,

stuck inside some of the very things that made

and made

and made

and made her. 

But I don’t go into the barn anymore.  I don’t.

Brother loved that calf.  Shaped and shined

her the way uncle shapes and shines boats.  His signature

curve near the stern, the way I’d see,

when I was waking up

years later, a painter’s name near

                                                the edge

of the frame.  Brother’s signature was a fluff

of white braid, like mine used to be, tiny

across her forehead, and a little sprig of dandi-

lions because he liked yellow

against black, he liked the great small splay,

a fourth of July sky swishing again and again

through the flies. 

And so before I wanted

sleep, before I dreamed of nothing

but boats, those punts and dinghies and seiners,

and later, a lot later, something that could go

under and come back up alive, alive after all that

being under, boats that were rode in because they were

work, not but this is my big day! we’ll get back

soon just one ride he’d pleaded, but Mama said

no boats, just one ride and we rode and tipped

and gushed and his hand precious hand slipped

from mine the same way that calf slid

to the floor, stunned, wet, waiting for the great

heaving steaming bulk to turn and push

and tongue and chew and turn and lick blood awake

into the spine, into the legs into the head

lifting toward that purging udder.   Jesus

I’d heard Mr. London pray, just let us

all stay above water.  Or sleep.  Let us, mercy,

let us all sleep.