January 6th: Soothing an Old Wound

January 6th: Soothing an Old Wound

But snow…

has no melody or form, it

is as though all the tears of all

the lost souls rose to heaven

and were finally heard and blessed…

and given their choice chose then

to return to earth, to lay their

great pale cheek against the burning

cheek of earth and say, There, there, child.

                                                                                Philip Levine

                                                                                Snow

frankly, curtains keep

out the cold, at least enough

that the weight of still dark

morning, when the wind’s finally died

doesn’t press against

the glass with its wavy face

and say Please?  I’ll make it

as much like May as I can.

I’ve had lovers like this.  One

in particular who’d coax

and cajole.  Who’d grope

the hem of my skirt.  Creep

up, distract.  It’s remarkable

how much then I couldn’t feel,

from my neck to my knee,

I mean it’s not all that far,

and the difference between

his breath and his hand.  I was

too ugly I suppose.  Too

young.  It’s surprising how I saw it

all coming and I did nothing

to stop it--not even asking

to get off.  The resolve to stay

the course and take the wind

the way a defeated, even before he

enters the ring, boxer does,

round after round, going down

bloody.  The concussion’s enough

even the word fuck

sounds like love.  Especially

fuck.  And for years

that’s enough.  Years.  Even

when the building starts

to crumple under the weight

of my own offspring, those mouths

and bones no one would recognize

from the road, birds who never flew

the coop.  The roof, look,

it sags with them.  How it lasted

that long is your guess.  A colony

of mutes on their bum.  Leprosy
of the tongue.

It would be too sentimental, too

predictable to say the laying of hands

happened at just the right time.

It wasn’t like that.   Instead

it was just not showing up.  I don’t

even remember why.  And by the time

I left I was like any other bag

of maintenance rags.  A closet of mop

heads. 

All that careful planning.  Listen,

before I felt that breath on my neck

I was a going to mass and catechism

kinda baby.  I thought it was amour

enough.  But listen--theology like that

is the head of a newborn, how her

cranium is a tiny tectonic plate--

how its spongy self compresses

to push enough though an opening

so tight pure bone would be broke by
it.

And listen: she comes with blood

and screaming.  She comes unprepared.

She comes into any hands that can

catch her.  It is like this.  It is exactly

like this.  And the wind.  Listen still:

the wind is pressing its cheek

against the pain now.  Feel it?  Early

January.  You’ve opened the window. 

So have I.  I can’t complain--I’ve already

been born.  What’s left, I mean really,

tell me, what is there left to lose?