After Seeing Matisse: The Vases, The Naked

After Seeing Matisse: The Vases, The Naked

We, don’t we, look into the looking: the vases

the faces the way we see it all staged

and placed in the right shade (it’s at least

as crucial, say, as light) the negative

space Matisse tried to make when painting

when claiming the stage of open places.

Do we, while looking into the looking,

plummet or ricochet? And which takes more

risk, discipline: the going deeper into

ourselves if the ricochet isn’t ricocheted

again or going deeper into them to find what

all it was that made us--God or chemistry

or cosmic star dust colliding and riding

all the way on the astral winds to where

we stand right now, what goes into it all or

what goes on and on and on? There are lovers

in this world who never ever touch, as if

their bodies were a monastery, as if walking

the vow of silence was how they made

love and instead of starting at the heart

or the middle of the brain (thought?) or,

that absurd cliché: crotch, it begins for them

in the jaw and along the line of muscle

that all night tightens unsettled unset, it is

the instrument begging to be tuned by the tips

(tongue, pivot) then fingers, lips, without

shapes taking up the habit of words.  There’s just

sounds, no names, no OH, or AH, or MMM,

only maybe a growl, a rumble under the muscle,

a subtle pulse in that muscle in the monastery

of lovers.  And in this I am one gone into

the fog on the rocks, necks and spines diving

down to low water.  My monastery.  See:

the back of me, not my face, unless you run

ahead of me and look back to wait--look into

the looking.  Hmph.  Let’s turn back

to the vase or the face (I’ll take the face)

Let’s bathe it slow and close so the quiver

of arrows in the jaw will drop like a camisole

to the floor--let’s kiss what’s been made

naked:  the painted.  Because doesn’t she

have to touch what paints her?  fingertips

or lips?  She has to, or what good, tell me,

is the paint?  Or true, the eye?  Are we such

hypocrites as to celebrate with our gawk

and then not call it art?  What, where, why,

or when without touch?  Without divine,

are we?  What, really, are we seeing, looking
at?

Benign Neglect

Benign Neglect

I’ve gone and washed another paper

notebook, look will you, after swearing I’d never

do that again, that I’d check every

pocket, unbutton them if I had to,

or unzip.  But there it was, the small burp

of a sound it made after the drum was

quiet, all spun, and now under my thumb.

Maybe they (you know, the folks

in my notebook) are used

to me by now falling down in this kind

of drunk in a perfectly clean hallway

like I do with nothing much to show for it, a

wrinkle or two and a library card and the pages

mostly silent like thoughts stuck under the shell

and albumen sit blue and abandoned

when their robin mother or swallow

who knows which flies off when the cat

or when the hawk or when the owl...

The last notebook I’d left

to dry stupid me on top of a rolled up print,

a cheap Wyeth rerun of a girl in a bed

a poster I’d bought some fifteen years ago--it’s called Chambered

Nautilus and the girl sits looking out her

bedroom window.  It’s breezy but the window’s

closed so maybe there’s another window, you know,

at the foot of the bed, out of the frame,

and there’s a basket at her elbow and her knee’s

propped, her arms holding it up.  Innocuous,

almost discarded, the nautilus’s as absent as the second

window.  We’re supposed to wonder, maybe,

what the girl’s got on her mind (I’ve since been told

she’s his dying mother-in-law, so I guess we know)

(but imagine not knowing that, imagine how far

you can get not knowing precisely that) or what’s in

the wicker basket, why it’s cool enough for flannel

but too warm for that second blanket hanging

loose at the end of the bed, wool I suppose, or
maybe not, but in old houses it’s worth this, 

this benign intrusion. 

I like thinking for a while my wet notebook dried

quiet as lacquer, wanted for nothing while the pages, bloody

octopus ink blue, surfed their own merit, released now

and seeping, or sleeping, or, like the nautilus shell, quietly

hollowed out, not a prop so much as part

of the entire picture now, it’s meat long gone

and Wyeth too, buried on that point in Cushing,

far away from living

nautiluses.  What’s this got to do with my notebooks,

the first one, dry now and cracked at the jaw a forever grin

or leer (it depends on me I suppose) or the newer one still so

soaked I don’t want to open it, let it come to terms

with being soaked and spun bumping in the drum

with the day’s (yesterday’s) grit and blood?  Nothing

but this, sitting with another poet (her name's Jane) who says in her
flowering vetch:

                Each of the tragedies can be read

                as the tale of a single ripening self...

                To have stopped by the fig and eaten was not an error, then,

                but the reason for going.*

Jane Hirshfield

Late April Sex and Snow

Late April Snow

wool, even in the mid of April,

is the thrown- over-

the- shoulder- white scarf

Ruth gave to me

one Christmas, what? fifteen?

twenty years ago now?  Because
it's cold here now, the way it was

yesterday when it snowed (so
I'm told) at home--

plowable, shovelable,

school-closing snow, and
some of the whole

town just stood to watch, aloof

(you know how they are)

taking it on the chin, lifting

their faces to the gray pate

of the world as if they know it

and push the snow off

their bow and stern into the water

into the bay, onto the mooring

they’ll untie and go out

anyway they’ll say aint that pretty

or shit’s getting old.  They’d

hoped, maybe, because they'd
waited all winter, for warm line-

dried sheets, they’d hoped

(coaxing, slow) another run

through the wife or girl or boy

but those saying and whose business

is it anyway?  These sheets see

everything and say, at the end

of the day, nothing except pock-

marks lost coals sucked red only

to fall in the bed and shit

be huffed and brushed

and patted out light like the head

of a chained all day ugly dog.

I’m not there, not in bed, not

on a boat though I wouldn’t mind,

though I know guys my age

hang limp between their knees

and each day is a second a minute

or two longer just to get going, and

seeing snow this late? what do

they really say?  Maybe it’s nothing,

maybe what we have in common other

than growing up together is what

we reach for in a morning like this:

wool. 

Despite its itch, despite its winter sweat,

(he’d thought to have her wash it

with those sheets he’d wanted to see

it on that line drying out clean like

an old friend swearing it all off this time

I mean it this time I’m gonna I’m not

gonna touch the stuff ever not never again

this time and mean it each word each syllable

each little ice-cube each little flake

accumulating on the hat

on his head, like my head, though

its words for me, thoughts under

all that wool banking themselves

against the Coleman stove I want

my memories to be, just warm enough,

just polished enough to see

the way ghosts see or are seen,
on the periphery,

or are worn on mornings
like these, hats and scarves on the head,

shoulders huddling like the last two
unused spoons in the kitchen drawer

Golden Retriever

Golden Retriever

I want to feel it again and again

and feel it the way I felt it

when I first felt it.  Or no, not

like that, like this: I want to

want to feel it, like climbing

high that first time with no prize

in mind not even the top I want

to dip into the pages  you’ve been

sent to and spend out a coin

we haven’t imagined yet or if

we have we haven’t minted or if

we have we haven’t spent or if

we have  we haven’t spent much of it...

Look, the view is different every

step up or down to the left

or to the right or even especially if

we let ourselves sitting flat on

our backsides our head between

our knees to keep from hyper-

ventilating

I remember holding my breath

while a girl my own age told me: close

your eyes and she grabbed me Heimlich

style and held on held on held on

until my jaw tingled until I was limp

as dying.  Maybe a sensation

like that is as organic as it gets

without the pain, it’s without

concussion it’s wilted as a dove’s wing

or an empty bait bag done in

by the dog when she got lose, how she

tore through that shed and tipped

barrel, barrel, barrel and for weeks

her fur was salt and oil, even

after a dozen and a half trips

to the beach, liquid soap, towels...

another summer day.  No, no

mountains there, or maybe small

ones but I never knew to climb

them.  All this.  What’s it got to do

with seeing?  I’ll tell you I want the glee

of that dog’s face after she’d made

the bait all Jackson Polluck on the walls

I want to freeze the frenzy then

long enough to get her cleaned

up, to accuse a raccoon, (I remember I do

that, and my dad never paid attention

to the dog other than he would’ve

shot her if he’d known, like he’d shot

the beagle after he killed the chickens...)

I want her to look into me like she was

the one saving me with all those trips

to the cove to dunk her to pour

a bottle of Dawn dish soap into

her fur and rub her red coat while

she lapped and lapped and then
panted and panted as we walked

the road home like two old friends

content in their secret, content

in their lives.

Last Days: My Two Mothers

Last Days: My Two Mothers

Is the one unpardonable sin

our fear of not being wanted?

For this, will mother go on cleaning house

for eternity, and making it unlivable?

Is getting well ever an art,

or art a way to get well?

                                                Robert Lowell

                                                Unwanted

On the last day do you suppose we couldn’t hurry

that we could take it like it were our first day

our time our steps our breath let our eye

slide like light up and up then when noon

down and down as nonchalant as always?

I want to remember you that way as a place

sustaining a monument undeterred by hurricane

or typhoon of the soul a great stone chapel in the middle

of the road to nowhere but a somewhere some-

one could come to love.  But honestly I don’t know

if this is possible anymore.  It’ll all come back

to me like a wind up from the outhouse you never

dug sufficiently deep but would stuff every gift

I ever brought into the hole and then let loose

your bowels.  I am a long time learning you foul

everything and what’s more you want to what’s

more than that if you could you’d gut me with

a vengeance and glee.  Even these what I’d meant

to lay down under a stone on your grave and walk

away forever with distance my amputation

my anesthesia...even this has been taken from

me.  I’d thought I’d wanted some compromise

but really what I want is peace to walk away

without the teeth of filial responsibility stuck

in my calf making me limp unable to shake

the small dog growling pissing growling pissing.

I want not to be sad about you or responsible

for you.  Not owe you.  Be controlled and sunk

under stone and drowned by you.  No.  I could tell 

you if it mattered to you that the saddest thing 

I've seen recently was in a cemetar called Stark.

It's in Dunbarton and it's where Robert Lowell's

flat out cold next to his mother.  Who could’ve

should’ve ground up his bones and thrown him

over the stone shoulders of his gods all

over the world.  Make a trek of it, a pilgrimage.

I’m beginning to relate to the man whose

mother didn’t want him from the start who turned

devil to the world to let loose the noose who never

really could not ever not be hanged by it.  Last day.

Right.  That last day you and your daughter

the one who usurped you from the rest of us

sat close to where you lay bored out of her skull

while you died.  I think you’re both cut

from the same skein.  I think when I get furious

its at both of you.  I think it’s because the people

who would love you you shove down that shit

hole.  So listen, forget the whole thing.  Let me

in my free time take my rock to Robert instead. 

He’s been dead since the year I turned seven. 

That was the year I ate God for the first time.  The year

you tried under the covers to smother me.  It’s

best if we let’s just forget the whole thing.  Forget it.

Let me, it’s a painful amputation yes, limp off

and not look back. Let me forgive you this and wish

you health but never have to mourn you again.

Tremolo

Tremolo

I’d like to say
when it’s over it’s over, a clap of the hands

palm on palm and a brush off

like a drake’s legs under wading

water, the bottom (though whose water

and who’s to know how far down

for the silt still drifting up and left or right

in the swishing the web feet swishing

the tail swishing (if it’s a loon, still

dripping) but, and isn’t there always

a but it’s like any gestation I suppose

and though most fourth graders know

the length of time between mice babies

and elephant babies it’s sometimes

a long time from start to absolutely over. 

I’d laid next to my first husband for almost

ten years and the last half of it was over

it was but for one small technical split:

the baby was breach, and even so was

sometimes content (to make the contest

authentic) feet first and  threatening

the I’ve had enough fuck this walk out

birth.  It would be the only baby I carried

for him and that’s I suppose the most

defusing thing of all.  How is it we can call

our mouths our eyes our hands and ears

something else after they’ve been pawed

and window dressed, after they’ve been

disabused for long enough to become

nameless, birthed feet first, the head

the last of it all to breathe?  It’s silt

in the undertow when the surface is calm

as a cup of coffee.   When nothing is

added but the waiting, when nothing has

to settle to the bottom but our own

commitment to drink it and wait some

more.  Even empty, it’s not over, don’t you

see?  Even now my first cup of coffee

is moving through me, even now I’m barely

holding on while I flex my resolve.  It’s not

over, it’s just a different pond on a different body

of interlocking waters.  Even rising up out of it all

even what all drips away, some stays in

and settles with our next listless aimless

exhausted rest.  After the migration, what

we bring, if it’s the one or two times we let

ourselves be lost in one another, if it's

a flight or two back home, if it’s all that

time birthing a divorce, preening years

later brings the silt turned solid out

lays it dull and uncultured on the soft, just

above the water, nest, the spotted darling

evolving under the shell, under scrutiny,

always between the legs of our mercy, our

open mouth sometimes a hiss, sometimes

a song.

The Pace of Gratitude

The Pace of Gratitude

  

Have you seen an inchworm crawl on a leaf,

cling to the very end, revolve in air,

feeling for something to reach to something?

                                                               

                                                                Robert Lowell

                                                                “For Elizabeth Bishop”

We’d walked all morning, in the woods sometimes

and sometimes across a farmer’s fallow pasture.

They’d said before we set out we’d be arriving

just past noon.  Oh there’d be breaks, ways

to bend into the unfurling morning to count the ribs

of Maidenhair ferns on the side of the lane, say : oh!

how they grow, how they grow while we pass

by and how they touch up into their small sky to find

a slant of light!  And one among us, maybe two,

stay longer than the rest of the few who kick up

rocks that fall down the wash-out (there’d been

heavy rain the day before) and if not rocks

clumps of mud.  But the some, eyes still on the fern,

or beside the vernal pool those others walk through

without a clue of its value, bend their open

hand to catch the reflection: a fork of white birches,

three it seems up from one stump; or a hollowed

out sugar maple some ground squirrel may have found

nosing out from a nest yesterday’s storm-push,

wind bully that it was, twitching on the ground, and this

hollow mouth is still dry and still invites, warm

and, when needed, a cry of delight away from

the predator sky.  While the others climb, some

of us sit a while, and reach back a hand, a half 

a handful of cashews, and the arc of gratitude

catches somehow: the coat, dew flecked,

becomes a thousand liquid prisms--it’s just

the right moment for such a wonder on the soft

moss, a marvel all the ones hell-bent ahead

will miss.  The sequin eyes shine and shine,

can you believe it? in the dark of this arduous

walk, beside the ferns and the vernal springs

and all because we stopped, lent back a hand,

to say thank you, thank you for making me see.  

Easter Monday Moon

Easter Monday Moon

The curve of you fills my left eye
when I cover my right

if I wanted to

touch you it would have to be

(if I didn’t want to reach

across my face

with my right hand
uncovering my eye)

a left palm, fingers

raised up but curved, you know?

as though I’d just thrown

a ball and all the bones

sigh, high and prized, alive

in their arc and accuracy.

Your face points east and me

I reach up from the east.

Each morning you are yellow
as spring

butter when the grass is new,

when a few globes of fat pause, aloft

and soft, and I watch the tree

in her Easter Monday breeze, her

fingers still bare from her long winter--taller

it seems for this sight

in this dark, taller

for you, for the curve of you,

through my naked eye

in the curve of you

just now on the rise,

yes, what quiet half of you

it fills my left eye.

the watch from saturday

the watch from saturday

holy Rabboni when the stone rolled over your face the oldest stone there is in the world it just kept going it was oily and alone it had drove to a sweat while it rolled and I know when I reached over the cold it was the cold you had become and so so very old would grow a mouth and blow a wind the only wind it owns and it would moan in my hair and expose my tone deaf ear it would go down the throat of it to the cochlea it would foam in the gloam it would be me and my groan it would take over it would hold it would croak oh oh when the stone rolled over your face and I was alone

Good Friday

Good Friday        

With the mud’s drying in the basement now,

the flooded floor is thick as sand.  Remember how

I dropped a bottle in the water (and there wasn’t enough

                                                                                                                water)

and all of what was

                                the bottle

                                the beer

                                                foamed at the throat and

                                                the laid bare

                                                neck split if not

                                                down the middle

                                                at least broke free

                                                from the body?

                                For weeks we smelled

                                a brewery

                                (I’d swept it all                 

                                aside and beneath, to pick up

                                later, maybe tomorrow

                                for our first spring dump

                                run)

                                At first it was amusing, tip-

                                toeing in my shoes

                                as though I were crossing

                                rock rock rock

                                from west to east

                                on a river thick

                                with sludge.  But when I dropped

                                the small white hand-

                                                                                kerchief,

                                when it drifted

                                off the top of

                                my folded load of laundry

                                and landed

                                monogram down

                                in the unfinished mud

                                I wanted right there and then

                                to throw the whole basket

                                                bras and panties

                                                boxers and oxfords

                                over the whole cob-

                                                             web infested

                                                                                low ceilinged flood zone.

                                                I saw the copper pipes

                                                                and their grey solder

                                                I saw aged and rusted hangers

                                                                (maybe the owners

                                                                before us dried their clothes

                                                                down here this way)

                                                I saw open and waiting baited

                                                                mouse traps

                                                                                (yesterday one was tipped

                                                                                free of the ledge, had snapped

                                                                                across her little back, and she’d gone

                                                                                stiff without my seeing, lips

                                                                                a smear of peanut butter, I saw this,

                                                                                picking her up to toss)

                                                And I saw (I see it often, but today I saw)

                                                                                the tarnished brass

                                                                                crucifix I’d rescued from my friend

                                                                                Ruth’s house after she died---I saw

                                                                                the who of it, the verdigris

                                                                                                that listed, alopecian green

                                                                                                like, across God’s face

                                                                                                and was struck

                                                                                                by my blasphemous  neglectful act:

                                                                                                                consigned here on the rock

                                                                                                basement wall, this small

                                                                                                                                (wasn’t it once high polish on an altar

                                                                                                                                and isn’t that church gone

                                                                                                                                now?)

                                                                                                This rescued bauble caught

                                                                                                at no time of day I’m ever there

                                                                                                in the quickening

                                                                                                light sliding down the lathe-

                                                                                                framed window, the one

                                                                                                that in winter is always blocked

                                                                                                with snow.

                                                Maybe I should make it

                                                like new again--the crucifix I mean.  Maybe I’ll put off

                                                                sweeping up that broken bottle

                                                                under the rotting coffee table (those legs

                                                                                                                                you know are the first

                                                                                                                                to break the flood)

                                                                and take it up to the kitchen

                                                                tug the cobwebs off, rub the polish across this

                                                                God’s face and make him dry

                                                                and shiny like he used

                                                                to be make him like new, like...

                                                                

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

I take you late or maybe you take me

taking you into me the way generosity,

that old wolverine sometimes or elder

elephant sometimes takes things to their oil-

well eye and pull it up over over over and over  

in their vicious liquid reminiscence.

I take you in, hand and linen, to the basin

I’ve kept for you and when the room is dim

when the candles hum the soft thrum on

their wick, I sit you down and begin

with the back of your heel, the calloused

cracked- all- winter- long white and dry heel.  I

take you in, thumb over my thumb and rub

and run under the gibbous moon of your ankle

bone--I say: I’ve held you this way before,

remember? or are we both too old now

to know whose foot is whose--whose

palms whose fingers whose soles?  Still

I go slow to the not yet cold water, the green

olive oil I’d warmed before you arrived

and poured easy into the cruet, and whose

appended bubbles are like ones I’d seen

 once above your face in the pond you wanted

to kiss me in--I refused then--and you bent

deep and deeper until the water was glass over you

until the water made me afraid for you and I waded

in and yes it was then, manipulated, I kissed

you, lifted you into me and never once looked

back, until now.  Now the frail tendons are like

aging elastic bands left in the utility

drawer in the kitchen.  They wait, unstretched,

unneeded, drying maybe for years, until a kid

rolls a poster for school...Look: I want my hair

to fall on you again, don’t you?  this moving

with you, oil and water, a white towel,

 this is all we have left.  This washing up after

is all done, after caustic claws and tongues and

trunks, after teeth after arms and legs after

your confession and after mine.  This submits us

both---doesn’t it?  your foot is in my palm now.

It’s frail and trusting as my new blind kitten

dipping its head into the belly of its mother.

We’ve come back to something like that now, old
lovers nosing each other out, blind and only
just breathing.  I’ll bend to you.  No one’s looking.
I’ll bring you up from the bubbles under then rising over
your face, I’ll kiss each of your suspended breaths
one by one, I'll tuck them under my tongue and wash you.

I’ll wash and wash.  God, I’ll wash I’ll wash

I will wash and wash with my teeth, my cheek,

your feet, your cunning, dusty, now in

the palm of my hand come back to me feet.

Somewhere inside the tide is a boy in the dark. He has a bucket.

Somewhere inside the tide is a boy in the dark.  He has a bucket. 

He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.

                                       "The Fish"  Elizabeth Bishop                  

She’d said endings but meant

                (because she backed up, you know the way you do when you have to

                parallel park, cut sharp corners you know)

beginnings.  Beginnings, she started

                again, are the mouths of endings I mean, just

look at them or better, think

                the one you most admire the one

                lubricated pair of lips, isn’t your instinct to touch them, with yours, I mean, yes admit it

                to come as close as a moth would

against the porch lamp in the stark cooling of the

                dark.  Maybe it’s an October, middle

                of the month and you’ve come a long way

                in your story and your throat’s cold below the voice box is coal’s ash

and breathing out just lifts it to stick

                like that wet showering snow against the wind-

                shield when you were driving home once  (you know storms like this how at first

the road’s clean clear and ideal and the last of autumn’s wrapping

up carving and laying her one left shoulder down first to the fallow (or

                it will be next spring and summer) alfalfa and that’s an ending

                but it’s beginning

to snow and it’s not even cold and maybe that’s

                why (even though I’m on my way home before dark) I pull over and get out

even though I’m alone I want to taste this:

the first snow, the end of the season’s first beginnings

if that makes any sense at all--

and alone me and my lips we hold close to the right elbow

of the road and we tip back hatless (it’s early for snow

                                                                                I bet it will be seventy tomorrow)

and I love my lips how willing they are

how brave right there on my face they are how

day after day they take it all on:

                the hot coffee (and then the cold)

                the thin line sometimes

                the kinship they have with my jaw

                                almost a conspiracy

                the scouting they do on their own

                                all day and when the time comes they part

                                after leaning, after, listen, this:

                                                                a tip of my tongue

                                                                a tip of your tongue

                                                                                top teeth lip pulled in

                                                                a bit just a drip

                                                                                when we forget we’re human

                                                                                of blood it’s never quite enough, is it?

I have it in my mind to walk out

                when I get home

                at low tide (and it has to be the lowest low tide)

                to touch the lighthouse plunked down

                in the middle of the channel.  This has nothing

                at all to do with my mouth except I’ll take it with me, to draw the salt

                                to lick the gritty mud kicked up by the toe of my boot

                                                except wanting it to suck at my boots

                                to pull them off

                                entirely.  All the brine all the rocks all the soft

                                clam flats and the want to lay it all down

                                under some August or today October morning while this

                                tide goes out goes out goes out

Because mornings are beginnings

and I if can see my feet... if it’s not for the fog... if I can see each pucker in the mud like quicksand

ambushing me to sink in up to the knee--

                the way a boy Kenny did and then couldn’t pull out or through but it was dark it was the end

                of the ebb it was turned back it was his beginning

                                that water at the calf, at the hip, and up and up he’s stuck his like a miner’s headlamp getting dim

                                and furious this cruel fade in the fog...

I want to walk out past all that where he put himself down i want to 

look back at the beach they recovered him on

days and days later.  I want to kiss the spot it hurts--

                but that spot has no start

                                                                or

                                                                stop

it may enter the mouth on stray feathers and then vanish

after that

like bodies buried at sea

how they float, take on water maybe toe first

and go below the undertow as though never
being there at all,

as though all the mouths mumbling murmuring their own shanty prayer

were those loose feathers, as though burying him or anyone wasn’t

                                an ending wasn’t a word on the cliff of my lip

                                I don’t (I can’t you see) let go of but lick with my tongue-tip instead,

                                a kiss

                                a long as long as long   huuuuuuuhhh

                                kiss beginning

right?   she’d said endings but meant something else

entirely

different.