Rock Harbor (4 page)

one familiarity, by another,

getting canceled; or,

inside one, getting

lost, which is

worse still, oblivion,

less to escape from than to

lie not-touching-not-touched-by

beside an agony that

is, to love, as

shadow is to light—as,

to the body, is penetration.

I had forgotten: almost

all of it, the time of year, of

light making of—for hours—the field

a flatness, even

song itself,
I

shall not want, I cannot

miss,
the notes not

notes any longer but

something ravenous and—in their

flight, as from

parts of sky more

turbulent

toward others, clearer—marking

without marking the crossed, crossed

again field

beneath them, less their shadows,

more what shadow gave, more

everything it darkened.

VIA SACRA

The horse rides easy.

Intermittently,

that I can ride at all, still, can

seem the miracle that everyone

here calls it; that I ride

well—

what words?

Roadside,

the marigolds look for

all the world that

yet is knowable as

if they knew, impossibly, that

in a country not far, not

this one, their

petals are considered worth

gathering first in

shallow bowls, then

whispering a prayer over and just

past.

That I might never be estranged (from

what, though?), might be

instead what is meant, precisely, when

some sing

                
Spotless;

                
Immaculate

                                     —others, singing.

The candles they carry

are of beeswax,

from a believing, once, that bees

were virgin-born. They aren't, but

by that logic, unbleached

let be the linen the veil is made of, whether

purple, violet,

blue—draped across, of every house,

its eastern wall, to show divinity

has hid itself, has

left. It is as if the world were

boat, and God its keel; or the world

is bird—God its breastbone, ourselves

the left-to-our-own-devices

acolytes defining with rods

of willow a boundary we cross

and cross,

a story, a blind man in the crowd and

stepping free. He takes to his eyes

the longing with which our course,

behind, lies strewn, he

is unblinded. First thing he sees: a boy

who stammers; who's

let his candle fall.

THE USE OF FORCE

Framed by window, the branches

swim in place, they

seem to. No

wonder struggling gets

so often, at first, mistaken

for wild abandon: a very

likeness.

Difference matters,

as in: in you, a permanence

you have known, that

I shall never. As in:

the two of us regarding

equally but differently

the sea,

the sea, in

equal but different parts.

Distinction matters. Distraction

loves us. Attention

must be paid, else we are

happier, yes, but what we were

lies ended— Did I really

think that, ever?

Do I?

A history of forgetting

is not the same as

a habit of it, though

history is not

unconcerned with pattern,

and pattern is to habit

as a kind of twin whose hair,

parted leftside instead of right,

prevents an otherwise

confusion. As between, say,

the man who in crime finds

a taste he gradually, slow, more

and more comes

into; and the man who, like

any criminal

worth admiring, admires

precision, the angle beyond which

the victim's neck, bent

back, perforce

must break.
Hold still,
you said. I

did.

The proof is vision.

FIVE

RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN APPLES

Blue wash. The winged horses look

like horses—artless, free

of connotation. They hide

just now their wings,

or they forget, or do not

think to make

much more of a gift

for flight than

of the water viewable

behind them—a sea,

a lake—

which they ignore, pulling

at the record-of-where-a-wind-was,

the now-resist-now-don't,

and other flowers

whose growth has even

outstripped the grass, the colors

wind as far as the ruined tower, up

even to the room that

crowns it, over the half moss, half

ledge of window, glassless,

into the room, which is small,

not empty: the body,

and a mirror. Inside

the mirror, the body

turning, stopping,

—sometimes the way, in

sudden shadow, will any

animal; sometimes,

as the hero stops

in the gathering light of reputation

he soon must recognize

is his own. The body

inside the mirror, turning,

singing
I am the one who forces,

I am the one who stays

to watch,

I am the grit gone somehow

shine, the blow,

the forced thing, opening

—Singing inside the mirror,

to no one, to

itself, the body folding, and

unfolding—as if

map, then shroud—its song.

FLIGHT

If blackness

were every blankness, and not

all colors, if

wings were parts to be lifted

easily from the body, then brought

back home, and the wings

tipped first in yellow,

in red, after,

would any of these make the bird

more yours?

If the bird is native here,

and you are native,

so that seeing it now is not

a first time, seeing,

what happened then, that since

has acted upon memory

as on photographs

will a creek they've fallen into,

the water bleeding, making

ghost of now the tree somebody

climbs halfway,

the parked car others take

forever boarding, and the field raveling,

prairie, then sea …

What would be different, wouldn't

each change equal ruin the way

it does, and the hands that clap

still be your own,

clapping? To watch the bird

undone, undoing—isn't
that
it?

FRETWORK

             Reports are various—

conflicting also:

many fell,

                  a few;

like taken cities …

      •

Whether or not

to any loss there is weight

assignable,

                   or a music given

—some play of notes,

slow-trumpeted,

for which to listen

is already to be

too late;

                whether forgetting is

or is not proof of

mercy, henceforth let

others say.

      •

                    Is not victory itself

the proof of victory?

      •

Little hammer, chasing—onto

unmarked metal—pattern,

decoration,

a name,

a scar upon the face

of history, what

has no face

      •

                      Of briar

and thorn, my bed.

      •

—I stand in clover.

RAVAGE

He has made me to know,

in myself, a compassion I have

no use for.

He fairly breaks—as they say—my heart.

He passes into and free of the light,

the light itself

trophaic in its semblance

of taking leave.

Clouds;

late fog:

he has caused me to understand

and record

the difference,

as between the sea when

it seems mostly a delicate, black

negotiation

and the sky at night when it wants

for stars.

Wild bird

at rest

in the very hand to which it once was blur

entirely,

all resistance—

Had I not

called it a thing done with

already, the better part

of pleasure? Did he not find me

lying still

in the part at least I had thought

to keep?

CANOE

The brow of a man who,

when he takes to his own

another's body, means

somewhere also
I would

like to help.

                    The lake a compass,

the canoe its needle,

ourselves inside

that—

            The way

what's missing can go

unnoticed beside what's there,

until we notice: these

were his arms,

now raised, now dropped,

lifting.

            Slight pockings,

like the chips that give

historically more character

to marble retrieved

after long burial,

bust of

the emperor Hadrian

in that period just

past the death, on purpose,

of his boy favorite.

                                   Lilies,

lilies.

          
Watch,
he said; and

bringing the paddle

up, vertical, leaving

only the blade submerged

—stilling the blade—

he dragged the water:

we were turning …

                                    Lost,

as a thing

can be, beyond all calling

of it back—none, anymore,

calling—

                 It seemed related to

what I'd heard

about cars, ice,

steer always

into the skid's direction—

those lessons where

to have learned means nothing

next to having had

to apply.

I want forgiveness to be as easy as the gestures for it, it

isn't, is it?

JUSTICE

Nameless, or else

many-named, no matter,

but the dog must come

with an allegiance heightened,

almost, to machine.

I want her lean,

I want her hungry. I want her

ruthless, or not at all.

Mornings,

let her lick the grass dry

of dew, my tired hands,

by night, of the lives

unwittingly, indifferently,

they've touched. Oh,

who is heartless?

Ghost-dog. Mirror-dog.

Shadow whose every move is

nothing, nothing without

what casts it.

Let even the most

trained of eyes

find the difference

between us

hard measuring. Of

that which cannot be

had entirely, understand:

I'll have no part. No

feathers, then—blue,

obvious; nor the yellow

undershaftings, either,

that the otherwise mostly

spatter-and-bronze

flicker shows best

in flight.

No.

Let the dog be

ever memorial to that

precision that makes geometry

more than seem, again,

worth trusting: the gun

—raised, fired—the line

traceable from where hit to

where the bird, broken, falls,

and the dog knowing, already,

where—making

for it …
Bring it back.

Give.
Only then. Let her

drop the bird whole—dead,

undamaged,

mercy—

from her mouth. And want no more.

MINOTAUR

What stalked the room was never envy.

Is not regret, anymore,

nor fail. We are

—discovered:

we resemble hardly

ever those birds now, noising but

not showing from their double

cloisters—

leaves,

fog.

I miss them.

I forget what I wanted to

mean to you.

                        I forget what I

meant to give to you, that I haven't.

Ménage.

You, in sleep still,

the dog restless, wanting

out, like a dream of the body caught

shining inside a struggling whose

end it cannot know will be

no good one.

Outside, the basil shoots to flower; the neighbors'

burro, loose, astray, has

found the flowers, his

head enters and tilts

up from the angle confusable with

sorrow,

adoration. His hooves pass

—like God doing, for now,

no damage to them—

the heirloom tomatoes: Beam's Yellow Pear,

Russian Black,

Golden Sunray, what sweetness once

looked like, how it tasted

commonly.

All that time.