Catch and Release

Catch and Release

you know that moment, setting off

                from shore, when your foot’s suspended

                and wet but the drop's not fallen

                yet.

or the way the water opens and no

                doubt for the bow of your old

                boat and closes again behind you

                like going through

                never was.

or gear and floats stowed, there’s only

                this: the drift and the ducks

                and: the gulls and the water lilies

                and: the old out-groaned toad showing

                only his golden  eyes.

or some place beneath the boat

                a shoal the trout, as though boas,

                grope open-mouthed, no stone

                as still as they or as you

                pass through.

or thin paddle dip, slip like a fist under

                the hen on her hay, sweet

                dry egg, she blinks and lets you

                pull and stop, the wait always

                sky, always

or this: flight, a quiet, please, suspend me,

                lift me here, life.

getting on

getting on

the mirror is gone, although you can

clearly see where it once hung…

                                    S. 

                                    Slavenka Drakulic

it’s the women who get back to getting back:

to the first order of living work to rubbing

the wash up and down up and down

on the scrub board of their lungs

(not the heart no it can’t ever be the heart)

it’s most certainly the lung because

they don’t stop they don’t feel they don’t

listen they breathe the way trees breathe

in the low tide granite cove when after

the nor’easter pulls out

after it’s rammed and rammed into her

basin and punctured every mem

brane every cell not crouched behind

the old broken tooth of a once upon a time

pier where when, once, there was real

work when the shit of fish

floated to the top of the water it was

their scum that rubbed the palm of his empty purse

yes after all this                          linens still

needed bleach and wind and sun

and after all it’s what’s not said about what’s been

done after the bloody bum is rubbed

and salve covered and it tells no one not even

a flinch! when he walks by

and pats her under the clothes

line she gets on she scrubs

and wrings and pins she gets on

and on she gets the fuck on.

Rising

Rising

Early I learned to

hunch myself

close by the door:

I’d wipe my

mouth and wend

unnoticed back to the barn

to be with the warm beasts,

dumb among body sounds

of the simple ones.

                        “Caedmon”

                        Denise Levertov

raw rock hot caustic dust:

if there were never ever light

anymore brought to this tomb

room it would never need it

the rough undone rags and a ways

away:

                        my face

                        cloth coiled flat.

                        she’d say later

                        that it looked

                        like a left behind

                        as if skin, peeled

                        backwards.  she knew

                        my new vein of living

                        blue must include

going into and through

a desert through

an old grove through

my old blood on stones through

all the way through

sewers where Judas threw

himself at me and until

he was empty he grabbed me

and wrapped the air

of me and wound me

bound me babbling

his undoable charm

                        and went off almost

                        alone

                        with his new rope

through this though J-

rewsalem God stowing

my old carapace

until with a new sun

rising, rising,

rising alongside

the barren fig tree

the bulging wine tree

the bereft crucifix tree

until, high on a hill

                        still in

                        the dark

                        I took

                        what blood

                        what hair

                        what bone

                        what flax

                        I could and

                        thread by thread

became again

a

man

            

Worry Stone

Worry Stone

You must seek

the ashy nest itself

if you hope to find

charred feathers, smouldering flightbones,

and a twist of singing flame

rekindling.

                        Denise Levertov

                        “Hunting the Phoenix”

And then, when everyone else had said

their awkward required goodbyes,

when the curtain was still and we were

alone, your bony cold hand, a curled bird’s

wing, seemed the heaviest thing

in your tomb.  Washed and released

before the sheet was drawn over the rock

your face had set itself into, I kissed

the mouth that spoke that drank

that ate.  I kissed the mouth that drew

and blew breath.  I kissed and kissed

I could not not.  I could not turn

the faucet off.  I washed you over so

thoroughly your skin was a mirage of life.

Prepared then they set the stone

in front of you.  Between you and me, it’s no

heavier than the stones you took

from the palms of the crowd who then

turned their back on you.  I’d put one,

did you see me? like a bird, in my mouth.

I knock it now against my clenched cheek.

Like it’s a fist at a door.  Like it is small

enough to swallow.  Like in years to come

it will be, bits and bits smooth as a sea

made worry stone, perfect, soft as your eye-

lid, the sheet wrapping you, the dust

covering you through to Sunday.

Good Friday

Good Friday

Later, long beyond those old stones rolling,

            she’ll rub the thumb where the blister

            has become a kiss, or lips

            that kiss her estranged face

            her frenzied then shuddering

            then empty gaze.

This splinter sunk in after she’d scrubbed

            the cross, after she raised her hands

            beneath the sky of his clavicle

            touched his bloody gums and beard,

            it buried itself like his first word, immah,

            the twin bladed sword Simeon said

would pierce her heart.  Any other smothered

            piece of wood she’d bite out

            and bind before she scooped the goats,

            their milk curds for her day’s cheese.  Not this.

            This thin sliver in her sealed

            over skin weeps clean

every day.  Every day it is salt and honey

            if she is lucky.  Every day by sun-

            set it is empty as a Maccabee urn

            that by some trickery or need

            swells again in the night and almost

            becomes, but not quite, light.

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

‘Beautiful are the feet of the swallow

folded unseen past the mountain’—

or Blessed are the feet

of him who brings good tidings—                           

                                                                Denise Levertov

                                                                “Feet”

Or:

Bless the hands that tuck

the blade

over and under the toe-

nail, whose age and hunkered weight

are huddled in the nailbed 

erupting up, when the scissor

comes through, sweet sour nausea

but moving on moving on. 

This is :

medical care for men on the solitary

block,

submitting

their feet so close to the cheek

so close indeed

they see the freshly dug

ear canal, the laid down hairs

rising—

This is: a nurse

practitioner, a slight

man and quick with a reputation

for liking Bruce

Lee movies and as much as they may

want to they don’t won’t Fuck

with him.  Not because of the closed

circuit tv.  Not because it would add

to their already lifetime

sentence but: he’s so

feathergentle, the way he holds each

toe, the way, barehanded,

his palms and thumbs rub

the sole

rub between each, peeling

skin away.

It’s a whole new revival.

It’s the one time they sit still

in a room without shitting

razorblades.  It’s breath and lavender

soap and water and, when the trim’s

finished, a soft vein-blue towel—not prison

issue, towels this priest brings in

                lays out in front of the guard

                flat as uncut,

                unleavened

                communion

                dough,

                a towel for each

                inmate, 

                                and three pedicure tools:

                                two hands

                                and tiny, really- for- an- infant

                                clippers he by some miracle and skill

                                uses to slice through

                                their fist hard calluses 

                                and knuckled horns.