The Lake Too Is Personal

The Lake Too Is Personal

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his Rod?

                             Gerard Manley Hopkins

                                   “God’s Grandeur”

           

—after all the bodies were found

            and taken

            home cold, toe tagged,

            under picnic blankets

the surface of the lake was calm again

            and black as night ice—

            or coal, thick slabs

            still in their seam

It was a surface only black like this

            could pick or resuscitate

            or not even

            but seep deeper

            into,

beyond bottom, as through a small valve-stem

            uncapped,

            pushed in, 

            when air itself is

received, sucked the way the living suck

            after seeing death

            stiffen the lips

            and limbs

they make great gulps of it

            as though they were the ones

            in the water    

            and surfaced

            and found,

            and going home

            to that great brooding

breast bent over a cook stove,

            oven door open

            grates orange as gloaming

            while the lake,

            after that last boy is

surfaced and returned, smoothes its suit

            brushes down the pleats

            until there aren’t any

            until they are gone,

            until they never ever were.

Learning to Swim Again, in Secret

Learning to Swim Again, in Secret

“Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?” 
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Later it will be as she’s some pilgrim and not feel it for anything but high alders,

and a trail all her own to break.  Her lungs and concession at least.

And because what’s there yields now to water, her absolute vault of silence

has flown: into suits into shoes packed into stowed into remains and those names

all their precious names whispered in tissue with the dried lilies and sweet

peas, creased the way she saw  later, much later, an origami crane the one brother may

have brought back from the war because he remembers his brother

liked birds, even that cussed gull, whose tulle smooth face and sometimes,

depending on the light, lavender breast that instigated awe.  Really it’s because she wants  

the buttermilk quench of that astringent lake bottom.  To call up such sting she tips

over her own shadow to pinch it in her diaphragm, float it in her throat, her esophagus.

And because it’s the way of all waves in wind, its impulsive brusque is the cut

of air, a bird at swim in all that blue nauseous blue air.  

Teach me to sink she’d plead, and stay sunk.   Teach me

to be this whistling loon, or that glassy seal slunk under, make me be the shutter 

of their ink pot red or black bottomless gloss eye.

To stay on bottom longer and longer.  It’s ok I’m not a boy please,

you never have to tell Mama—

Because before it was only gulls and seals and boys swimming was let to. 

Only ever modest shore.  And until now ever only a slip cling whip 

of panic beneath it all

when that boat tipped.  Yes a slip through that cling, into all that water.  Look

how quick we all go from calm to confusion,

the way some birds drift and float and from absolutely nowhere fleece

the small songbirds who, seized by a prey’s anxiety, are all instinct, all empty

breast nest blown open by a screech when they fly back and learn the news.

Sister

Sister

It was like touching birds’ eggs, robbing the nest

of the word…as kept and dry and secret

as her name, which they hardly ever spoke

but was a white bird trapped inside me

beating scared wings…

                                                Seamus Heaney

                                                Station Island

No, Rollie, not you too

           

                        You heard Mama

She didn’t mean it

                        Yeah, well, you weren’t there    

Of course I was I’m always

                        I know sorry—but is it nicer where you are?

I’ve been afraid to go anywhere

                        Why?

It’s cold sometimes

                        Not colder than here

A different cold       remember when I died?

                        Sometimes

When sometimes

                        When Mama gets quiet

So not a lot

                        No really more than that

When then

                        On bus rides

When else

                                               

                   When I was fighting Earland last Saturday             I could feel him

Feel him what

                        Go loose       like I am right not           remember going loose?

Yes

                        What was it like?

Quiet   Mama’s shouting got quiet

                                             

                   Not for long I think sometimes you were her only kid

I know what you mean

                        She’s gonna hate what I did

What was it again?

                        She said

Here’s my hand

                        She said  get out of here

She was mad

                        and don’t ever come back

People say things

                        Yeah well

It’s ok                                                            

                   Let’s go       Look   it’s Buddy.    He was told

Told what

                        Not to go in boats           see              he’s under the tarp

Take his hand

                        It’s not as heavy as it was

Hi Buddy

                        My sister

                                                You have a sister?

                        She died

                                                When?

           

                        A while ago

                                                How

                        Car hit her when she was getting off the bus

                                                Oh   You never said

                        No     We don’t say                   Mama doesn’t

                                                Where are we

                        This?           This place?

Come on          We can go now

                        Yeah

                                                Where

We’ll follow the others

                                                There are more

Yes

                        How many?

           

Twelve           

                        Twelve

                                    Twelve?

Almost more                some learned how to breathe again

                                    Twelve    But Junior    I have to go He said

                        It’s too late He’s not here

                                    Where is HERE?

              

Here

                       

Take my hand

boston newspaper man

boston newspaper man

but who’s midway?  you?  no.  your sister.

but who stood to give up

the seat?  and who got in and whose feet

and knees scraped?

and whose birthday?  yours?  no.  your sister

Norma?  but it’s Dorris in the boat? your

birthday?  ok when’s hers.  just

the other day?  two years nearly to the day

younger?  and you’re fifteen today?  you’re

the one who got out of the boat

to give her a turn?  forgive me, this

is hard.  all these details.  ma’am?  a few

questions if i may?

The Affair

The Affair

Before the kite plunges down into the wood

and this line goes useless

take in your two hands, boys, and feel

the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.

You were born fit for it.

Stand in here in front of me

and take the strain.

                        Seamus Heaney

            “A Kite for Michael and Christopher”

What if?  what if the one grieving shouldn’t

or can’t?  What, when the news comes and the wife

scrubbing supper pots has her back to you

and there’s a shade pulled half-way

down the kitchen window so anyone walking

by this time of night will only see a flash

of apron white – torso – and then the frying pan,

a disc of something rising.

When news like that arrives nobody knows it’s you

nobody knows it’s really true but you, nobody

heard you screw the bolt back into the cold

cellar door, where you took her, the eyes

of the potatoes sprouting white, and there in the low

bin, broking, soon oozing, time after time

oozing, until the threads are stripped, until

you need a new lag entirely and take one

from the attic closet door, or not take, but replace,

exchange – So when you hear your wife say (and her

posture is every thread your heart’s pulled

by now) that Clara’s girl went and killed

herself, now imagine that, all that family’s

been through, poor Clara, and yes Callie too

although remember it’s been almost ten years,

remember that last day of school, she helped

all those kids in the boat…

and nodding to the pan you see her turn and as though

she’s cocked a hammer back, raise it up

just enough – poor girl – poor girl – guess

Clara will take the daughter in.  All that family’s been

through.  It’s a damn shame, a damn shame would

you say, and pregnant too, did you hear that,

and not her husbands, did you hear that,

but isn’t that the way of it all don’t you think?

You nod.  You watch the pot.  You nod and offer

to hang it above the stove.  And you take it.

Take it all.  Suspend it.  Handle and bottom

above the fire and decide: tomorrow, tomorrow

you’ll clean out all that seed potato.  Rub the roots

off each and every one by one by one.

Her Icarus

Her Icarus

As though he’d jumped too far from the swing

high as he could ride

and then

let

go

and it was all a blue blur

it was momentary

it was

fli-

ght

and then

a

tight

jerk

you know

how those certain songbirds

push

and

pause,

push

and pause

so sudden they’re just knives covered in sky

it’s just roof to birch

in one dip

of the tail

and two quick puffs –

                        or like the older boy

behind the shed

smoking

and his fanned

recoil

when he hear’s

his name

but this boy, the red gravel-rash apron his bare chest is, now it’s worse than that swing he fell from last year, that coming down flat or nearly and how some force kept pushing him until his cheeks, his neck and elbows, the obligatory knees—he looked like a bowl of cranberries whose white bottoms haven’t seen enough

                                                sun –

and she’s tweezed each piece of lake stone, bone over bone, out of his cheek and teeth, his groin and backside and she’s – well she’s not going to ask – she wants to see an almost awake boy, face and neck, almost the boy dragged across the bottom in the dark

the way he may have been pulled

across the sky

Icarus

sweet Icarus

just before the world started to melt

at this feet.

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…