What Makes It What Doesn’t Make It

two
s. lee photo

What Makes It What Doesn’t Make It

and the resourceful creatures see clearly

that we are not really at home

in the interpreted world.  Perhaps there remains

some tree on a slope, that we can see

again each day: there remains to us yesterday's street,

and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit

that liked us, an so stayed, and never departed.

                                             Rainer Maria Rilke 

                                             The First Elegy

Q: What’s your definition of bravery?  Or maybe not definition, but how do you arrive at it?

A:

What makes it maybe is the length

of time its looked at and then seen

seen to bring it meaning to make it more

than mean to tip it off or be

tipped off the                 (remember the first time you learned

                                       what a fulcrum was and was it

                                       a crowbar for you and an arrow or was it

                                       a stick for you and an arrow or was it

                                       a wheelbarrow for you and didn’t you look

                                       a long long time too long wasn’t it

                                       a shard of  your life you were looking

                                       how can I get a wheel-

                                       barrow (and be honest, up until then

                                                       you were spelling barrel) how

                                       how can I get a stick how

                                       how a crow

                                            bar iron enough to lift

                                            jack cool enough to (in summer)

                                            lay down the tip then the middle

                                            of your tongue to tingle it entirely through to the root

                                            before rust comes up like blood before it all                                                                                              comes up like blood look look it square

                                                       (and why square why not round why not                                                                              rhombus or tri-

                                                                                               angle)?

in the face maybe take it into your eye that has a tongue

all its own and it’s got the potential

to be a drinking man

bold at the bar a  man’s man a fire

fighter whose last tail

of smoke is still

living in the crimp

of his kangaroo and kevlar glove what one

he pulled off with his teeth

after he lifted the three

children come together as one

under the bed one soft almost gelled

body Jesus this trinity and now his bare hands

on the what was but is now now tell me

that isn’t a fulcrum designed at lifting bravery

face it face it face it gravely before you let it shudder

because by god who’s going

to believe eyes that see seas that see Sistines that see

runts of the litter come back screaming in a fire I’m telling you

he looked she looked : they faced and saved each other,

                                                they angled the fulcrum

                                                of light and quietly when no none was

                                                watching

                                                lifted it lifted it enough to take it

                                                and ran ran ran for their very lives.

                                                It is the prize of all prizes