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.

Talking to Winslow

Talking to Winslow

after Homer’s Fog Warning

It’s a long way to row alone Winslow

Homer, two halibut in the dory and the ship

a vapor a shift a good way off.  You got your man looking

up into a sky piggybacking fog.  You got him

paused, oars two needles

on the compass rose.  And a couple white- as- his-

wife’s- breasts best catch dead in a stern

they’re too big for.  How long does he pause in the living

fog, that pack of not yet gone wild dogs stretching, turning, the prow

the yard the masts a new snap in the wet

lavender air…how long before he goes

down or aboard?  How long in the coming?  How distant

is his woman’s spine

from his lips that slide up and down

the panted wave of it?  Is that soot bruise below the boat,

and the liquid obsidian surge churning to empty it all,

all into the sea a shade you create or is it an accident

cleaving?   The humidity, the freeze, the dregs

of turpentine? How long do you spend

and spend and spend, blush or blue, on the same

fins and skin, how long are you in the man

in the boat before you never ever leave it, never can,

even if it makes it back, the halibut weighed,

the brandy choked or stowed, everything ducked

and dunked while the trance of a woman in pearls

is an image unaided, a refraction of the water

you could never create for the still of it.

kiss

                                                                     kiss

for years after, for the rest of his life, he’d lay his face on breathing things, any warm

or cold breathing thing, he’d believe: he’d stare and it would rise, and

he’d scour the mouth, the nose, he could see it he’d vow he’d see it: the coil and recoil

of clouds, it was as though the sum total of the cause of the lake that day his brother

went under went into him and he kept biting breath, or swilling it depending, as if it when it was frozen it was coke in a cup, and if he tried to look through it would be

suspended stars suspended in mid-pop

and when the thirst of it was desert razed, and there, mid way, a mirage: a Moses-struck stone where air poured out of instead water, air sweet air, taking and giving air.   

                                                            The summer after he’d put his ear over the mouth of one boy

and two girls as a game, the way he’d seen the minister or the Coast Guardsman put their ear

over the girls and boys all laid out in a line, listening, how the men suspended their ears over little

lips begging….

and one by one they wouldn’t give, no matter how hard they were struck or rubbed.  The pulled blanket or coat or linen scarf over the face still

wouldn’t

rise

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.

Callie, oh

Callie, oh

sweet Jesus, Callie

you      a man a captain a captain a man sank unsealed your body the boat the planks a cage a seeping a sudden arthritic flume you’d drag that leg the way the coast guard dragged for bodies for years those boys those girls and you  never asks how            how                             how     do you  row a boat like that a boat that’s sunk sets and sets of lungs of blown out lungs do you know how if it was you and you were the skipper and the last thing you saw was the bottom of your boat beneath the water and your head struck the gunwales and two or three of the other sixteen were grabbing your crippled leg and screaming on the surface of the water and gulping and thrashing pulling       and then                         letting go

they let you go and you clung to their overalls their hair their belts but it went gray it all went gray if this was you if you were a man           a man in a lake in a bruise blue lake    and the weight of the water was your perpetual yoke fists on your shoulders and they were sealed like clams in your overall pockets and their hair was in your fingernails and they fought and you fought to hold to let go to this day to let go could you walk as a man a captain a man and still let go

Remains

Remains

wait a day don’t go back for a day it’s not the tide as comes in and takes a baby’s shoe mama left there takes it tosses it in and out of the cup of the wave a baby’s shoe babies don’t need shoes anyway and glen went sockless all summer who thought about his feet on and off the clam flats tough as tripe those feet and those end of the year shoes when he wore them I’m just saying we passed on to a boy at church have for years so to see one bare foot him laying on the table like he was playing sleep after the picnic he must’ve gone into the boat with shoes water’s cold I suppose it’s only June and he’s a boy just finished second grade no first grade and he doesn’t think about shoes or buttons or his shirt need sewing or underwear he left on the floor by his bed wet when he knew I’d search for the shoes if I saw his bare feet and here he is and we undress him his shirt and shorts and look here look it’s not even his shoe it’s not we bought this pair together and the knot’s loose dry and loose but a pretty bow limp as it is a girl’s bow or a woman, the teacher maybe Miss What’s-her-face, Burhoe, right maybe she, listen I’m going to see about his shoes, I’m going and I bet the Reynold’s boy is missing one too take it over to him take it and maybe Glen’s are on the bank under a bush I bet they are I’m going up tomorrow I’m going up right now let’s go and look.

After Recovery, Dressing:

After Recovery, Dressing:

            Undertaker’s Assistant

i.  

The lake grass and his wool scapula are stiff

in a dish along with the throbless moss I’ve been

            lifting off—it’s all, this whole room,

            about lifting:  arms and legs

            and head to slip off his talisman

           

offer to his mother before we give

his body.  Too full of the lake,

            his skin is a new cartography of

            dull mustard yellow

            and near to blue hue

            as close to Mary’s Mantle

stiff in the picture in the little dish.  I know I said it, but

she’s so serine, must've been the perfect presence

            under water, and not

            a mark on him not one

            puncture or scuff from today,

just the puff of his lungs—stuffed, plugged

            sponge…and the bruising.

ii.

And soon, through the reeds, the pine trees

the birch trees a mad choir of cricket,

            their furious friction now and through

            to later, laid out straight

            on his bed while

twenty miles away, God, they’ll say later, who’d ever seen

such bats.  I imagine swarms, by twos and threes, screech

            and stream above the buggy

            water as humble a mirror

            as ever now,

imagine how their leathery babies wait in a cave,

imagine the squeeze of a mother’s tiny nipple.   

            It is a pin right into

            the middle and straight through

            to go out and away

and maybe maybe never get back after all

like this moss this shrinking wool

            devotion gone stiff,

            stiff and green, and limp

            the way the baked apple

berry in the bog withdraws its face,

pinches in its little cheeks, as if

            they were holding

            their breath against air

            or water or waiting,

like those pup bats, for milk their mothers

flapped off with in their little purse

            of a breast.  Warm

            as longing. Warm

            as waiting.  Holding it

all in.  As good a distraction as any, bats seem

to be here in this upstairs room, folded

            and pensive,  

            girls on one side

            boys on the other and now

while I wash you I wonder: in that whole

colony, how does she know who you are

            which clung-to-mossy

            stone brown baby

            is her own?

How she must grope and strain on her return—

how she must lay her ear down

            on each little chest,

            stop her own

            breath and then slice the night

           

with her relief or grief, the way the baby

calls back or doesn’t, like now, in the street,

            through the crowd and despite it

            all I hear the discreet

            knock, and your mother

brings your small bundle of clothes:—

starched white short sleeve shirt, and straight peaked

            pleated shorts, so straight

            I know the line

            will meet the middle

            of the knee, and not be

long enough to cover last week’s fall,  

scab dry again now, and flaking even

            as I’d dabbed at

            the pebbles, the silt

            tapped at the bruises

with my own powder puff of rouge, (your arms

especially now that you have short sleeves) tap

            and cover the length of time

            you must’ve been rolled and bumped

            and pushed

against the rocks, the wake of the lake,

how you drifted and waited,  like that

            pup bat:

            little

            and adrift

on the top of his world, waiting for her

to arrive, for the scrape of a claw

            of sound

            of ache

            of hollow

response an awl through the skin, into the bone

the bat, the scapula, like breath—or like water—

            or milk…

iii.

                        it’s milk I’m thinking,

            made and made and made

           

until you’re scraped off the bottom

then everything’s let down, the ache

            that awl right into

            and through  

            your bone-bat-scapula,

the grass and moss and wailing still

stiffening, but going soft, relaxing, like

            someone caught off guard

            in a clasp: the flinch, the start,

            the pause, the balm.