That Said (6 page)

A message from a distance is soon to be received

Be suspicious of well-meaning strangers

Important news from an unexpected source!

 

A message from a distance is soon to be received

You will meet a dark and handsome foreigner

Important news from an unexpected source!

Do not take unnecessary chances

 

You will meet a dark and handsome foreigner

You have a fear of visiting high places

Do not take unnecessary chances

Your misunderstanding will be cleared up in time

 

You have a fear of visiting high places

Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance

Your misunderstanding will be cleared up in time

Sometimes you worry too much about death

 

Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance

You will recover valuables thought lost

Sometimes you worry too much about death

You will go on a long journey

The children vault the giant carpet roll

of waves, with sharp cries swing legs

wide over water. A garden of umbrellas

blooms down the stretch of beach. Far

offshore always I can spot that same

pale thumbprint of a face going under,

grown bigger as I approach, the one arm circling,

locking rigid around my neck. The other

as its fist hooks and jabs my head away.

Ear to the conch, ear to the pillow,

beneath a canopy of bathers each night

I hear the voice and pry the jaws apart,

choke on the tangle of sable hair that blurs

the dead girl's mouth: that anarchy

of breath dog-soft and still at my neck.

She calls from the water glass I drink from.

From my own throat when I swallow.

This is a remarkable depth for so small an area, but not an inch of it can be spared in the imagination.

—Thoreau

 

The one cloud

in a blue sky

is also the one cloud

 

in the lake, the feeling

of something

to be distrusted

 

that cloud

constantly

reinventing itself.

 

In long light

minnows move like stars

in shallow water.

 

Who can calculate

the light-years

from fish to fish?

 

You're living

your whole life

with someone

 

who is more

important to you

than skin.

 

I watch the white

boats shift

lakeside to lakeside.

 

But the cloud

in the lake

is more beautiful,

 

its shimmer,

in which I constantly

mistake myself

 

and fall in. This is

how it is

with you and me.

 

I would rather be the lake

filling the silent

yawn of the earth

 

where trout

move

through clear water.

 

I would rather be

the trout, or

the dream of the trout,

 

the spasm of cloud

in the trout's brain,

oh anything but this

 

feeling, which is

what breaks me, friend,

when you enter.

If exposed to total darkness for seventy-two hours, the retina degenerates, causing partial loss of vision
.

 

1. North

 

Wisteria worked its patient violence on the house.

Working at civility, we moved

from room to room like diplomats,

dividing china, dismantling the easy chair.

Out from the linen closet, the tent collapsed

into a small bag of telescoping poles; the compass;

the Coleman stove's blue bracelet of flame.

Your Swiss Army knife tamed any emergency—

miniature corkscrew, screwdriver, fish scaler, file—

blades snapped into that miracle of steel.

I slipped it in my pocket, the red handle

shining like a deep wound in my palm. Only this

I kept to cut my narrow path away from you.

 

2. Haiti: Skin Diving

 

My legs break

the thick glass floor

of water.

 

My foot magnifies

blue as the foot

of a corpse.

 

One unshuttable eye

spans my face

and sees easily

 

what two eyes

can barely see.

I breathe

 

and go under.

Sea urchins fan

black sprays of quills.

 

Sea fans sway

at right angles

to the current.

 

My snorkel's ball

spins in its atmosphere

of breath

 

like tiny Mars

above my head.

The sixth sense

 

must be gravity!

I measure distance

now by fin-kicks,

 

the sun's angle.

Finned, the swimmer

wades backward

 

to the sea,

waist-deep, to plunge

and turn almost

 

weightless inside

the moving

body once again.

 

All the lyre-tailed,

stippled, rainbow-

flecked bodies

 

flash—shaped by water.

A school of fish

spills from the coral

 

and circles me.

I stiffen

without moving.

 

My fingertip's

slightest tremor

could shatter that order,

 

blurring

as my breath

clouds the mask.

 

3. Port-au-Prince

 

In the thatched
choucoune,

I learned Creole proverbs

from the maid.
The fish

trusts the water and in the water

it is cooked.

 

Was that thunder in the harbor?

Smoke funneled from the Iron Market.

The gardener shinnied up a palm tree

like a sailor up a mast,

binoculars bouncing against his back.

The maid translated his shouts

half in Creole, half in French,

and still I could not connect.

I telephoned the Embassy—

heard, fractured by static,

“...an old military plane

crashed in the street,

skidding into a
tap-tap

jammed with passengers.”

 

When the hawk strikes,

if he doesn't take feathers

he takes straw.

 

All varieties of blood

bloom at eye level.
Flamboyant.

Belle Mexicaine.
Acres of poinsettia

flame up the cliffs

along the Kenscoff Road.

 

The last hurricane

cut the banana plantation down.

The way an image

inverts inside the eye,

bunches of bananas jutted

like chandeliers out of the ground.

The palace leveled by jungle,

accessible only by air.

Violence civilized

by machete, jeep, and climate.

 

4. Blackout

 

Only the knife knows

what is in the heart

of the yam.

 

A blazing eye

will not set the house

on fire.

 

All electric power out;

I swung the shutters

open and leaned

 

over the fretwork

of the balcony,

as the city

 

sank—tier

by brilliant tier—

into the harbor.

 

Stumbling toward

the door, my fingers

skimmed the Braille plaster

 

of the walls, until

my bare feet

felt the landing,

 

the wooden boxes

of the steps.

In my hand,

 

my butane lighter

slid a small circle

down the stairs,

 

and the stairs

became all motion,

surfaces angled

 

off to surfaces

I couldn't see;

and I, suddenly

 

brave among shadows,

yelled out

to scare the maid,

 

“Esprit! Esprit!”

thinking it meant

ghost...