While Ironing,

 

While Ironing,

 

a line of reckoning.

Her precision in linen

in dishcloth lap napkin

summer cotton

 

shirt cuffs & the yoke

across the shoulder

was a navigator’s

satisfaction, a Jesus-like

 

geometry, grit from licked

thumb, akin to the pinch

of water’s flung

benediction she’d knotted

 

before she was done

bringing it all in almost dry

from the line, making it

yield to her and her hot

 

iron.  It was nearly

a sacrilege to let fly

this napkin white as peace

doves to wipe my vinegar & oil

 

dripping lips, but oh!

to press it there was

a clemency I didn’t know

I needed until right then

 

and my when cut lips felt

her linen balm and they stilled,

then they parted then barely spoke,

and only: oh! oh!    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes, December

 

folded

Notes, December

 

now the shadows are

lengthening over the snow.

November closes.

 

1:

 

clung like rot, a stump

whose roots underground

may yet

 

pulse ~

who would know though

owing to the snow-

 

hold & so early

in the season,

or late, depending on

 

your point

of view.  see, we’ve

three weeks remaining

 

of autumn. there’s 

so much I’d needed

to tend to before it all

 

came to this

slow focused letting go:

the bronzing

 

of ice beneath a night

of light white dust

the sunrise sites

 

while rising behind

the overcast sky,

in the low, no visible

 

wind.  see: the same

curled maple leaf

from a week ago is still

 

by the buddha's toe, its body

caught in the thin scrim,

half above the solid stone

Glow

 

Glow

 

Vestigial

             adj. 

                 forming a very small remnant of something

                that was once much larger or more noticeable

 

Low, only an inch or so

coating, but blown into folds

by the cold wind & froze

 

momentarily, as though a stone

shadow alone through

the storm is at last opened,

 

a hollow notch on the throat

of Clover Adams, her nameless

memorial.  Putting a naked thumb

 

there, numb with lack of sun-

shine & stripped of her

companion ewe coat,

 

sheered & spun & needled

speechless, reach can you not

for that spot & let your fingers

 

follow, below the coat of snow,

the throat begin to vibrate

and to glow.

            

this insisting stare

 this insisting stare--

    how it sifts through

    the air and sits

    simply sits

    on the gunwale

of my lower eye-

    lid in tremble, in,

    (the sun is so

    enormous!)

                    frisson.

Nebula

 

Nebula

 

Someone has stepped on the fallen

wild grape.  There’s something

in the split skin that is

a shucked almost sucked from its shell

a neck and belly of a clam, a

jelly in a quiver

of wind.  While it is simply

a wild grape, riding all these months

on the rising vines of our brief season

I can’t resist making

the resemblance connect.  I’ve seen the wide

exposure of low tide and have

pressed my boot

to the breathing holes in the sand.

It told to me somewhere close and below,

a hinged shell was the twin shield

that held the sea-made

testicle.  It’s amazing that such mirrors

are dug for in the drizzle or fog or

sunburning sun.  That the faces we wait

ages to see & claim & then press

our lips & teeth into

are breathing things really, beneath

a pressure we can only

slice our knives into, divide, weigh

the measure of & split it wide into the sky-provided light.

A bivalve.  A wild

grape.  An eye.  A mouth

that takes each to the tongue

in is raw liquor & tastes

the reckoning

ecstasy of life shaking, shaking.

These Peonies

 

These Peonies

Campobello, New Brunswick June 15, 2024

 

The heads of the peonies are still

and stiff, an intentional fist.  And they drip

 

with what remains of the rain.  If I went out

alone and leaned in seeking to

 

see I’d see what isn’t seeable wouldn’t I. 

Wouldn’t I?  Watch for me because

 

my back is facing the bay: the fog is

lifting and being blown into the distant

 

cove and back out again.  It comes to rest

on the shoulders of the old homes sloping

 

alone in their timber bones with nobody

(though coons count, right? or birds in her

 

rafters, yeah?) proposing ‘hello’. Still, inside

this living house a woman sleeps, at last, and maybe

 

deeply.  Her numerous peonies, yet shut, slow-

sway, and wait on the whim of the wind. 

 

It’s enough for the drop of water to want

its spot & to squat on the furled edge

 

of the petal. I watch it ripple, and twitch, still

balanced on the ball.  I watch it quicken

 

in the rhythm of the pick-up truck rumbling

past.  I am, yearning in a way the patient

 

yearn, not surprised by the thin river

of air that moves up from my chin

 

to my eye in this one drop of water where

I watch my momentarily bloated

 

face.  It is as if this simple drop

is watching me watch it from the surface.

 

Inviolate yet while shaking, this little ripple

on a gripped fist lets me, held breath held,

 

beckon nothing but the broad black ant

called upon, the wives say, by nothing more

 

than the pleasure of the pleasing water dredged

from her stalk to bead sweet on the hem

 

of that yet peeled-back blossom, how it is

nectar and something entirely more than

 

nectar, rising from the dark of a place

we could only ever be if our sole intention

 

were flourishing the flourishing of these

peonies.