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.