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.

 

 

the truth of the matter

the truth of the matter

i had dogs my father shot

them all over and over a span

of years one by one from when

i was four until i was eight

teen.  they're being

was offensive to him they ate

his chickens his rabbits his dig

nity he didn't ask them ever

to stop and they probably would

have with a little pat

on the brow a little beef

bone held in his open oh

what they both could have 

learned from one    another

today, this is forgiveness

 

today, this 

is forgiveness:

the running tap

urging into warm the face

cloth and all along

the edges of the jar

of honey all along the ridges

the sticky drip of the last

time it's waiting to be

lifted to be warmed without

need to be scrubbed

kindly rubbed

of the slightest of any

thing but redeemed 

and still just

as sweet

From Sleep

 

From Sleep

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded.

                                                            Walt Whitman

I imagine you

are sleeping I imagine you are

waking I imagine

you are muscled as muscled as any

    cephalopod urgently called

    forward along the bottoms of small

    foreign spots: now glassless (I 

    imagine the pressure, don't you?) port

    -holes key discretely re

    -maining and all the sea

    easing in and out as freely

    as sleep.  Tucked each and all

        in our own houses of skin

        our leg muscle seizes

        we reach to relieve

        to press and knead

        (see: beneath the femur

        a liberated fibula)

        above our feet that in

        our sleep as in our day

        lays straight and stays

        our standing straight

I imagine you

waking and taking 

the heal of your hand

to your stiff calf (mass

                            age) (mass

                                     age)

squeezing sleep

easing, after being beneath...or please

let me.

key/door

key/door

Facts are only 

as interesting 

as the possibilities 

they open up to 

the imagination.

Rebecca Elson

the key is in the lock

the knob appears

octagonal.  and it is

glass.  and i wonder

do you

know which one

will you grasp? 

and i wonder

do you know

if you will turn it

and I wonder 

in which way?