Is Any of This Reclaimable?

Is Any of This Reclaimable?

Maybe it’s the rhythm of the sonnet he wants

though sonnet’s not a word he’d know.  Because what’s

a sonnet but a song, a whistled whisper, a fanned

and pleated apron spread wide as a Fundy fog.  And as low.

And as wet.  But here’s what’s different: it’s warm

under skirts, it’s warm as the coax of milk to let it down

in her February four a.m., it’s warm as tea-kettle

water poured over the ice in the trough, it’s warm

as watching the thin hole widen but go straight down

first straight to the solid bottom and either pop

what’s down there back up again, or, knowing it’s not,

pour and pour anyway until the kettle’s nothing

but lime sift, a few flakes shifted on the wet

bottom’s surface. 

In the barn, in the stall, it’s always warm against the broad

hides, flat maps of America he’d stalk with his right

eye when he milked on that side and he’d press

his ear to the thigh where heart and heave are loco-

motives, where tails are shovel swings, where, when the pail

is full and already so fat and ferocious with flavor rising

toward the skim he knows he’d want that to be in him, such easy

separation, such slurp and churn.  Shushing the baby

if there was one.  Coming back to bed after a good wash.

And a wife, tight as that ice before the kettle, tight as the udder

before the touch.  Tight as the hot cloth over the mouth of the pitcher,

the raw pour through it, the swarm of indiscernible

bugs caught, caught easy, scalded out, caught and killed.

Baby, he’d want to say, or maybe because it isn’t something

he’d say, he’d just bring the milk, and lay the mug against

her thigh, the way his cheek lay against the heifer,

and watch the rise and fall of it all, her breathing, her open

and close, her sonnet sonnet lungs spreading wide

and warm and so simply alive.