for Diane...

for Diane…

They look out sideways from under their brows which are

their only shelter.

                                                Rain

                                                Ted Hughes

You’d come back for two months

though at the time it was just a day

or two to get on your feet, try

on the clothes of sobriety, the loose

or too tight coat depending

on the weather.  You’d spent

your whole life out

into it, clouds making every day

shapes for you, every day a something
to live

in.  And like every farmer

or vet or straight up savior, you did

well enough in the sun and mud

and drove the fence posts

of your boundary lines in regardless

of the sky water or sky dry

or whatever kind of sky fall-

out.  Best maybe I’d say

and the others would too, you were

at your best at rescue, the long

haul across the water to some pitched

belly-keel.  They’d fallen under, fallen

through, poor bastards, and wasn’t

your boat and crew really meant for God-

given wings at every single

success?  Why is it, tell me (though

you can’t now can you) because you know

better now seeing

you loosed of your own flesh and self

when you are the one under

the roll-over, the squall, and ever

trawling wind beating you down

to the deck and the boom let go, why,

when that wind is lost of all her traces snaking

above your skull, why is it the radio’s

out and the men

are on break or more likely to true, you

glued your mouth top to bottom

mum and slipped and stood and took it

man to man with yourself

and your shadows?  Those lovers

and sons, that mother, who would

find you flattened on your rock

bottom and empty

on the aft deck and not a breath

of wind left

in you but the vessel, still

sound?  Typical of you, right?  You brought it

at last to shore, not taking on

a drop of water, almost as new

as when it was lifted by the first tide

except, and no one could see this but

from below, the one

unrepairable hurt, struck

years ago by the looks, and stuffed

(how was it you kept

                afloat?) with all the cast-offs

of your living:  baby’s first

tooth, a gnawed dog

bone, a diploma, a wedding

ring, a commendation, your father's death
certificate, a photo or two.  And mostly, though gone

to ground glass and powder, so I’ll only say

on hearsay: fifth after fifth, your mortar,

ground down till it’s finally fine

and dry, and when the bung’s

pulled, light as pixie, it makes

everyone standing beneath it

sneeze, squeeze their eyes

tight against the glitter

and gleam, inevitably blinking in

some that will never now be shut out,

the eye a shape-made and cultivated oyster now

and the lid it, the shell and the grit,
the grit, just this instant settling in
with the salt, the mucous, finding harbour
under the tongue.