Low Tide

sunrise

mulholland light

Low Tide

On Winslow Homer’s Fisher Girl, 1894

Watching her watching, doesn’t she seem to see more than the sea,

Casting off beneath the fog where all the underwater aliveness goes  

About on it's own living without needing her  –  doesn’t it really seem

Like this?  And too, what mother’s do, who bring in their daughters

And sons back from the rocks before the clouds really settle in

For good, before the rain that’s being forecast in the gray that's

Being leeched from tiny tide pools teeming with new minnows

And some, bless her, blood of the middle daughter’s thumb

Where the crab pinched and drew?  I could look at Winslow Homer’s

Fisher Girl for the rest of my life and want her to be my mother.

Steady nets and shells, a good set of reliable floats.  She’s watching.

She’s letting go, sure, but she’s watching.  And she'll expect me

To come back to shore, she'll want me to.  And with a mother

Like her, I’d want to do just that.  After the storm passes.  After

The kelp beds settle, and the algae, and there’s a momentary calm.

Sorting Shells on Sanibel

leisure:
basking in mist in front of the Trescott smokeshed...

Sorting Shells on Sanibel

for Elizabeth L.

Once, sorting

shells on Sanibel Island, my friend

directed me to what she had kept: bushels and bushels

of lightning

whelks and rooster conchs, all

of what she'd plucked from the warm water

following the hurricanes.  She tasked me:  I was used

to the dried brine by then:

pickled- a poor man’s

escargot

the muscle of  

the salted dead.

And that one day I remember tipping

one basket over and as soon

as they spilled

over the sunhot, frayed blue tarp,

the roaches                 rushed             and rushed                  and rushed

they

rushed

rushed and rushed. 

As quick as that, lizards

flew! (I’m from Maine, and we just don’t see this!)

So! Yes,

And so invisible, watching me, waiting on

me, from the palmetto palms they feasted!

and seemed to swoop,

to swarm, to scoop them up.

And that was that.  My goodness,

all those suddenly gone lozenges,

those "hermit" roaches loosing

their second carapaces.  It was incredible. 

seeing

Seeing

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.

How the sun’s poultice draws on my inflammation.

                                                                Berk-Plage

                                                                Sylvia Plath

Have you ever forgot to blink?

For the stretched extensions

your eyes see out, all the while

drying quietly, while stem-

cell visor/wipers are
narrating lies under the lid,

while they swipe over the ball.

And all is falling

to dust.  The salt and parched

iris are changing to

crust underneath

the almost all-seeing.  So

it’s down to this: the little red

veins have been given

their resurrection: they

alone make the break

and take off across

the scrubbed sclera,

blunted by the iris, shy

of the deep hole

of the pupil, the body’s

first crevasse.  At least

I’ve heard it said that

light comes in and is

sucked down, is gulped,

thirsted for, so the blur

is the straight up choke

of it, the ‘go

slow companion, go

slow’ press of the hand

on the wrist, giving

ease, giving permission 

though for what

varies from eye to eye

throat hole to throat

hole, closing (though

let me tell you

it’s never enough,

the thirst itself is the verge)

and blinking

has become

a step made heavier

and heavier, made

delinquent, a risk, tearing

If the Wolf If the Gunman

If the Wolf  If the Gunman

He lay down.

His machinery adjusted itself

And his blood escaped, without loyalty.

                                                                Orf

                                                                Ted Hughes

Because reasons are sometimes given

first and not last, the judgement

comes when you step in late

when the dressing’s already stuck

to the cut, and the blood’s slowed

in agreement to everything, finally,

given to save this time a limb, or let,

finally, a tired, broken life.  I’ve seen

you go into a blind hysteric, convert

the alchemical calm of the room into

lead, so the sick have to give over

to you.  It needn’t have been blown so.

Like coming up on the remains

of the lamb he had to shoot, it

being too consumed with disease

to save.  It was the peaceful

thing to do.  The right thing to do.

But you, all you see is the downed

and the dead.  Did you come running

after the shot spread out its signature

pop, higher than deeper than

the lamb you were content until then

to snub?  How many months

did the poor thing bleed

while you skipped by, alive?  Never

once did you tend the mouth

or hoof, never once did you

listen to the cough and the closing

throat.  Who are you

I want to know, standing now over

this corpse and going into your own

flesh of milk?  I want to scoop the free

  

creature up and hold it away

from you so that its last dignities

aren’t stolen in your Christless

wailing.  I want it to take to its own

heaven, to carry its own soul

back into the fold and curl

into the hip of the ewe who

delivered it, who knew it before

you came along, before you

stepped into the rain intending

to save you say, save something

of yourself more, never ever

looking, I was there.  I know. 

And the weight of the gun

was like the weight of his gun.

On me.  In me.  Even after

I set it down between you

and me and the creature, bleeding

but free.

'O Taste and See': Toward the End: Easter Octave: Anticipating Day E...

'O Taste and See': Toward the End: Easter Octave: Anticipating Day E...: Sons Toward the End: Easter Octave: Anticipating Day Eight I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stoppe...

Toward the End: Easter Octave: Anticipating Day Eight

Sons

Toward the End: Easter Octave:

Anticipating Day Eight

I have a life that did not become,

that turned aside and stopped

astonished:

I hold it in me like a pregnancy . . .

A.      R. Ammons

I suppose what I have trouble with

is that the whole thing quite excludes

Mary, that she carried

through to the end like he did,

she cleaned and disciplined (wasn’t she

the first? to him?) and in the end

the equation isn’t neat enough

until she’s taken

neatly away and made into

something else entirely, a saint

to women who’s sons    and yes

                daughters

have been slain, taken up by ropes

and stones and dope and nobody

grows out of it, they only hone

their grieving and what better place

than a gibbet than the rock

strewn barren land, where once

an eclipse at noon, a forgiveness,

a sprinkle of blood on dice?  The loss,

for her, was more than life.  See it?

Why can’t you see it?

On Reading Leibovitz in Virginia's Rivers

sunset

On Reading Leibovitz In Virginia’s Rivers

empty, empty, empty; silent

silent, silent.  The room was a shell, singing

of what was before time was; a vase

stood in the heart of the house,

alabaster, smooth, cold, holding

the still, distilled essence of emptiness,

silence.

                                Virginia Woolf

                                Between the Acts

now I know what paperweights are for: holding

flat the page opposite of Annie

Leibovitz’s picture of leaves beneath

and beyond a certain precious

leaded window, and then

description of Monks House, Virginia

Woolf’s last residence—her only place

to recluse – recuse? herself during the Blitz,

where she, finally finished in 1941

February, closed

the pages on Between the Acts

and walked out a month later

into the river

Ouse – and here, the paperweight (I’m forever

after picking up stones too, but only

the worn out ones, those who’ve made it

through, you know the hues) because she

chose each stone carefully I’d imagine –

and even if she didn’t, even if she picked each

at random – I’d make it

that way in my head – favoring

shapes and weight both, building a cairn

in her coat pocket and walking it

like a dog into the water, waiting while the stray

coat ends floated some then soaked and wouldn’t

and no longer able could, with their little resistance,

the lode-

stone they’d become knocking on one another

in the dark, pulled to the only companion

they could:

weight – weight – weight – each heavy

breast or ever else pocket demanding now (after that

practice run) the bottom she couldn’t

struggle up from any longer.