Stag's Leap (3 page)

    Not Going to Him

Minute by minute, I do not get up and just

go to him—

by day, twenty blocks away;

by night, due across the city's

woods where night-crowned heron sleep.

It is what I do now: not go, not

see or touch. And after eleven

million six hundred sixty-four thousand

minutes of not, I am a stunned knower

of not. Then I let myself picture him

a moment: the knob that seemed to surface in his

wrist after I had held my father's

hand in coma; then up, over

his arm, with its fold, from which for a friend

he gave his blood. Then a sense of his presence

returns, his flesh which seemed, to me,

made as if before the Christian

God existed, a north-island baby's

body become a man's, with that pent

spirit, its heels dug in, those time-worn

heels, those elegant flat feet;

and then, in a sweep, calf shin knee thigh pelvis

waist, and I run my irises

over his feathered chest, and there,

on his neck, the scar, doll-saucer of tarnish

set in time's throat, and up to the nape and then

dive again, as the swallows fly

at speed—cliff and barn and bank

and tree—at twilight, just over the surface

of a sloping terrain. He is alive, he breathes

and moves! My body may never learn

not to yearn for that one, or this could be

a first farewell to him, a life-do-us-part.

    Pain I Did Not

When my husband left, there was pain I did not

feel, which those who lose the one

who loves them feel. I was not driven

against the grate of a mortal life, but

just the slowly shut gate

of preference. At times I envied them—

what I saw as the honorable suffering

of one who is thrown against that iron

grille. I think he had come, in private, to

feel he was dying, with me, and if

he had what it took to rip his way out, with his

teeth, then he could be born. And so he went

into another world—this

world, where I do not see or hear him—

and my job is to eat the whole car

of my anger, part by part, some parts

ground down to steel-dust. I like best

the cloth seats, blue-grey, first

car we bought together, long since

marked with the scrubbed stains—drool,

tears, ice cream, no wounds, but only

the month's blood of release, and the letting

go when the water broke.

    The Worst Thing

One side of the highway, the waterless hills.

The other, in the distance, the tidal wastes,

estuaries, bay, throat

of the ocean. I had not put it into

words, yet—the worst thing,

but I thought that I could say it, if I said it

word by word. My friend was driving,

sea-level, coastal hills, valley,

foothills, mountains—the slope, for both,

of our earliest years. I had been saying

that it hardly mattered to me now, the pain,

what I minded was—say there was

a god—of love—and I'd given—I had meant

to give—my life—to it—and I

had failed, well I could just suffer for that—

but what, if I,

had harmed, love? I howled this out,

and on my glasses the salt water pooled, almost

sweet to me, then, because it was named,

the worst thing—and once it was named,

I knew there was no god, there were only

people. And my friend reached over,

to where my fists clutched each other,

and the back of his hand rubbed them, a second,

with clumsiness, with the courtesy

of no eros, the homemade kindness.

    
Frontis Nulla Fides

Sometimes, now, I think of the back

of his head as a physiognomy,

blunt, rich as if with facial hair,

the convex stonewall shapes of the skull

like brow nose cheeks, as hard to read

as surfaces of the earth. He was as

mysterious to me as that phrenology—

occiput, lamboid—but known like a home

outcrop of rock, and his quiet had

the truthfulness, for me, of something

older than the human. I knew and did not

know his brain, and its woody mountain

casing, but the sheer familiarness

of his brow was like a kind of knowledge,

I had my favorite pores on its skin,

and the chaos, multiplicity, and

generousness of them was like

the massy stars over the desert.

He hardly ever frowned, he seemed

serene, as if above or alien

to anger. Now, I can see that his eyes

were sometimes bleak or sullen, but I saw them

as lakes—one could sound them, and receive

no sense of their bounds or beds. Something in

the paucity of his cheeks, the sunken

cheekbones, always touched me. Bold

Old English cartilage of the nose, wide

eloquent curve of the archer's bow, its

quiver sometimes empty as if languagelessness

was a step up, in evolution,

from the chatter of consciousness. Now

that I travel the land of his sealed mask

of self in memory, again, touching

his contours, as if I am the singing blind,

I feel that ignorant love gave me

a life. But from within my illusion of him

I could not see him, or know him. I did not

have the art or there's no art

to find the mind's construction in the face:

he was a gentleman on whom I built

an absolute trust.

    On the Hearth of the Broken Home

Slowly fitting my pinkie tip down

into the feral eggshell fallen

from inside the chimney, I lift it up

close to my eye, the coracle dome

hung with ashes, rivered with flicks

of chint, robes of the unknown—only

a sojourner, in our home, where the heart,

after its long, good years,

was sparrow-netted to make its own

cage, jessed with its jesses, limed

with its radiant lime. And above the unclasped

tossed-off cloak of the swift, in the back

reaches of the Puritan oven, on a bed

of sprung traps, the mice in them

long gone to meltdown and to maggotmeal

and to wet dust, and dry dust,

there lies another topped shell—

next to it, its doffed skull,

tressed with spinneret sludge, speckled with

flue-mash flecks, or the morse of a species—

when I lift it up, its yolk drops out, hard

amber, light coming through it, fringed

in a tonsure of mold and soot. If I ever

prayed, as a child, for everlasting

union, these were its shoes: one dew-licked

kicked-off slipper of a being now flying, one

sunrise-milk-green boot of the dead,

which I wore, as I dreamed.

    Love

I had thought it was something we were in. I had thought we were

in it that day, in the capital

of his early province—how could we

have not been in it, in our hotel bed, in the

cries through the green grass-blade. Then, knees

weak, I thought I was in it when I said

would he mind going out into the town on his own.

I knew there was sorrow there, byways, worn

scrimshaw of a child's isolateness.

And who had pulled us down on the bed for the

second time that day, who had

given-taken the kiss that would not

stop till the cry—it was I, sir, it was I,

my lady, but I thought that all we did

was done in love's sight. So he went out by himself

into the boyhood place of deaths

and icy waters, and I lay in that bowl-of-

cream bed purring. The room was like the bridge of a

ship, windows angled out over the harbor—

through thick, smooth Greenland glass I

saw the port city, I curled and sinuous'd

and slow-flicked my most happy tail, and

farther into cold fog

I let him go, I lay and stretched on love's

fucking stretcher, and let him wander on his

own the haunt salt mazes. I thought

wherever we were, we were in lasting love—

even in our separateness and

loneliness, in love—even the

iceberg just outside the mouth, its

pallid, tilting, jade-white

was love's, as we were. We had said so. And its inner

cleavings went translucent and opaque,

violet and golden, as the afternoon passed, and there were

feathers of birds inside it preserved, and

nest-down and maybe a bootlace, even

a tern half shell, a baby shoe, love's

tiny dory as if permanent

inside the bright overcast.

    The Healers

When they say,
If there are any doctors aboard,

would they make themselves known,
I remember when my then

husband would rise, and I would get to be

the one he rose from beside. They say now

that it does not work, unless you are equal.

And after those first thirty years,

I was not the one he wanted to rise from

or return to—not I but she who would also

rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,

lifting, side by side, on wide,

medical, wading-bird wings—like storks with the

doctor bags of like-loves-like

dangling from their beaks. Oh well. It was the way

it was, he did not feel happy when words

were called for, and I stood.

    Left-Wife Goose

Hoddley, Poddley, Puddles and Fogs,

Cats are to Marry the Poodle Dogs;

Cats in Blue Jackets and Dogs in Red Hats,

What Will Become of the Mice and Rats?

    Had a trust fund, had a thief in,

    Had a husband, could not keep him.

Fiddle-Dee-Dee, Fiddle-Dee-Dee,

The Fly Has Left the Humble-Bee.

They Went to the Court, and Unmarried Was She:

The Fly Has Left the Humble-Bee.

    Had a sow twin, had a reap twin,

    Had a husband, could not keep him.

In Marble Halls as White as Milk,

Lined with a Skin as Soft as Silk,

Within a Fountain Crystal-Clear,

A Golden Apple Doth Appear.

No Doors There Are to This Stronghold

Yet Robbers Break In and Steal the Gold.

    Had an egg cow, had a cream hen,

    Had a husband, could not keep him.

Formed Long Ago, Yet Made Today,

Employed While Others Sleep;

What Few Would Like to Give Away,

Nor Any Wish to Keep.

    Had a nap man, had a neap man,

    Had a flood man, could not keep him.

Ickle, Ockle, Blue Bockle,

Fishes in the Sea.

If You Want a Left Wife,

Please Choose Me.

    Had a safe of 4X sheepskin,

    Had a brook brother, could not keep him.

Inter, Mitzy, Titzy, Tool,

Ira, Dura, Dominee,

Oker, Poker, Dominocker,

Out Goes Me.

    Had a lamb, slung in keepskin,

    Had some ewe-milk, in it seethed him.

There Was an Old Woman Called Nothing-at-All,

Who Lived in a Dwelling Exceedingly Small;

A Man Stretched His Mouth to the Utmost Extent,

And Down at One Gulp House and Old Woman Went.

    Had a rich pen, had a cheap pen,

    Had a husband, could not keep him.

Put him in this nursery shell,

And here you keep him very well.

    Something That Keeps

Heavy on the cupboard the wreath hangs,

the bulbs pouring up their hull withers.

Borne home, from the garlic farm,

it will last a year, she says, not

like one from Lucky's, which could sprout, or rattle—

they sell the previous season's, she says,

they think of it as something that keeps.

One thing that I did not think

I had to worry about was that

my then husband or I would be willing

that the spirit of the other be taken apart.

Meanwhile, I left minutes of each hour,

hours of each day, days of each week,

untended—to the whim of mildew, stallor,

and the lonesome tooth of the granary scuttler.

Girdle of curdled pubic roots,

lumped breasts, husk-spouted nipples,

eyeballs with iris gone bazook medusa,

I thought that he and I were in

some sacred precinct—which does not exist,

we were in the barn, the store, the bin,

the pan, the bowl, the breath. One two three

four five six seven eight nine ten eleven

thirty-two heads on the succulent throstle.

It is in the past, enough looking back,

it is gone, it is more over with

than the shocks of childhood. Rope of heaven,

ladder of hex, all is in

the tending, and we cannot tend

another's rows. But I did not tend

my knowledge of who he was—nor did he

his of me, nor did he care to.

Braiding of summer, harvest, winter,

moonlight, noon, frost, enough,

lie quiet on the wall that guards the dishes,

honor the clove now gone to ash,

the clove once split at its core by the liquid shoot.

    The Easel

When I build a fire, I feel purposeful—

proud I can unscrew the wing nuts

from off the rusted bolts, dis-

assembling one of the things my ex

left when he left right left. And laying its

narrow, polished, maple angles

across the kindling, providing for updraft—

good. Then by flame-light I see: I am burning

his old easel. How can that be,

after the hours and hours—all told, maybe

weeks, a month of stillness—modeling

for him, our first years together,

odor of acrylic, stretch of treated

canvas. I am burning his left-behind craft,

he who was the first to turn

our family, naked, into art.

What if someone had told me, thirty

years ago: If you give up, now,

wanting to be an artist, he might

love you all your life—what would I

have said? I didn't even have an art,

it would come from out of our family's life—

what could I have said: nothing will stop me.