Abruption

Abruption

I.

We need to believe it’s swift, a quick stiff give,

and deliverance.  When the us, what’s been cut

from blood and bone, is

breath finally and at last gone.  And the severed?

In a blanket or on a lake bottom, all
the while, (though  

who thinks of this

during the search)

casually, someone across town’s

throwing out or pouring out

or skinning out, fish or chicken

or the last of last fall’s last turnip.

II.

So it's here where air or water is
inhaled, where the boat it- 

self is.   All that drifts

in it is. : feather or shit, or breast-

tipped shimmer.

And however long

or brief he/she/we, in this virgin urge 

this impromptu chrysalis, when it unzips, when

itself's without to go into an air so genuinely

domestic, the curious

first lick their quivering lip. 

III. 

They're newborn, they're wind and tongue 
dry, a fawn in the alders

and the swamp's a scopic jaw.  Even the rigid

are soon enough to trust, all their

caution spots fading in the windy trees.

Up and sprung now,

they're free.  In the crucible of rendered echos
their dying has reduced them,

reduced them to here and now and not one

of the dead.  The spectators are the fractured ones.

And soon the twelve will be prayer.

And soon their hidden heads 

are the cusp of night, thin pins

of light only their abruption

could have nicked.  

IV.

And then, because here they are

dead and will remain dead, their mothers knit:

            while uncle’s fingers and toes go black,

            too long in the Fundy gusts.

            while spring pigs are lowered 
            to become the boiling oil…

            while their father's thumbs,

            hooked through

            the overalls straps and hang

            like the trapped rabbits in winter,

            tacked to the back shed. 

            They are supple until they’re skun, 
            until the pink beneath bleaches bare and hoary  

            pimpled after the two three four minute float

            and head or feet, it doesn’t matter which,

            first go under, then go all the way

            under until finally their silk life is dry and wide, too wide

           and they try the wet sky and fly.