Pain-Gleaned

 Pain-gleaned

 

Pain-gleaned but there’s always a nerve

hiding behind the silence where quiet is

 

a hunted laboring mother giving in at last

then slipping to the same world her still-

 

born baby has slipt to.  Moving forward

she sleeps & the piece

 

                                    of her who made

the baby & brought it to term only

 

to have to paw through the gaul of the after

birth searching for the stone

 

that was thrown at her glass castle

finds nothing but immensity nothing

 

but layers & layers of drapes of immensity

which being the seamstress she now is

 

she stitches together to hang

pleated & neat in the house she lives in

 

now at glow in the dark but a glow nobody

being outside that dark could ever imagine being

 

illuminated 

Imagine: In the Yellow House, Arles

 

Imagine: In the Yellow House, Arles

 

Yesterday’s replica was of Van Gogh’s

Arles bedroom.  The cups.  The rumpled

red bed-

            covering the almost

                        floating above angle the viewer

                        needs to appreciate

                        standing to see

                                    it all falling some-

                                    how down

            hill.  (it seems the bedroom

                        wasn’t plumb, he’d said

                        in a letter to Theo)

 

                                    but to see it

                                    the way Vincent saw

 

to paint it perspectively

            waiting for people

            to sit to sleep against the edge

            of the wall, the straw sun

            hat hung behind the head

            board next to the frumpy paint clustered

            frocks but oh the room is so…

 

                                    See?!

                        RED! & BLUE & LIVINGLY

                                    neat!

 

unrumpled cover.  In the painting

there’s room for two:

 

            two chairs

            two pillows

            two then two paintings & one

                        where two might

                                    walk, grasping each other, through to the trees.

 

 

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.