Making a Living

reflection 

christina's world

cushing

Making a Living

(on Wyeth's Barn Loft)

Accommodating swallows, the barn

doors stayed 

open, the broken window

in the loft stayed

broken.  In the cold weather

when they'd flown, he'd close

the doors for a good few

months and come to some secret

agreement with the missing 

pane, the way he'd had to

hauling in his dory in for good

and forever to tend

to her.  The water would rot

the nets and the deep

driven posts in the cove would bare

all like a mouthful

of old and disobeyed

morals.  Work went

inland.  The barn,

where he and Christina used

to jump from mow to mow

and slope to slope

and feel both

weightless and suspended,

would argue if air wasn't really better

than salt

water.  They'd both take

a fall like grownups

and grin in front of widows

that would later make them

famous, or

at least his cripple sister, and who'da

thought?  And in her favorite

pink dress, still watching

the swallows, their darting

attention, flying in

their flying out

from down below that knoll, some

new birds, some returning, always

bearing home.

gull

flock

There is no resolution in the fugue.

                                    Mark Doty

                                    Grosse Fuge

How many per acre, strung from poles, some

in the middle, some along the cliff-

line?  Gulls on a lead rope, dead

except in a wind or breeze.  They rot

above the blossoms and then ripening blue-

berries, like an olfactory thought going on 

and on and on to their brothers who'll

come to strip the fields and barrens

of every berry Alvaro's meant to

rake and take to town.  Decorating

the acres, does killing a gull and knotting

her orange leg make of her an oracle to rake

under, to take its place within the clarion of wind

instruments?  And what must it

look like from the sky or smell like,

carcass-rot of blood blackening stench,

of heavy salt--from on bottom

it will be ribs wide open like they were

in the yard, like they were when they were being

 riveted and  hammered 

within the shell enveloping the albumen

and the skin of keratin firming pale

and once its use is through

thrown to the cove 

-opening at the turn of the tide going

from high on out.  Watch.  The gull

will float for a while and for a while

it will soak itself in 

the fog or the sun or what-all weather

and soon enough it will sink

when its full, of itself, of one

or two or a whole slew of the coveted

blueberries or adult gulls it gorged

itself on at the end of last winter and all

the smorgasbord of chicks it sent off when it was 

living and now, when when it is dead.

Beneath the East Eaves

Beneath the East Eaves

                            Love,

little pilot flame, flickering,

    listen: I've been no one

        so many times I'm not the least afraid.

                                Mark Doty

                                "Nocturne in Black and Gold"

Raised, at first it's just a little fist

of skin above my wrist, inflamed from

participating in staging the climbing 

ivy and one particular variety of rose

we hope is inclined to like the east

side of the trellis.  It was left, and the dying

morning glory vines stick it out

in the cracks and spaces in the frame.  These

couple three days of evading the raised 

red flesh...but this morning it's just enough 

to distract, to annoy, which is what

some bugs do, come and go in stealth

intelligence, numbing the nudge, under

the glove, to do its own work drawing out

a piece of you before bumbling along

drunk for their luck.  We don't

even remember the encounter most

times, a one-day stand if there are

such liaisons, wham bam

thank you ma'am and the fling

is complete.  Blink and it's done.  It's only

later, a day, maybe longer, we'll wash

that exact spot of penetration and thumb

the reddening, lick it with our tongue.

Some things last longer than the opening

and closing of a miniature sting, blink

or sleep.  Between the horizon and sweep

of last season's brief blooming lilies beneath 

the eaves of kitchen's hip roof, it's 

a deep enough hue of green most people

would never think is even green or 

something other than black. We pass

by daily and never raise an eye, never

let ourselves settle in the itch that's coming

just under the pinky, so pinched it looks

like the coming open of a rose

or like the eye of a wood duck

plotting the bog's tidal offal.   Maybe

such a mesmerizing eye occupies

us enough going by we're trying

to decide which is the day's wisest

catechism to attend to: petals coming

undone with the lift of the sun

or this simple itch in the thick

of our skin?  Lick each maybe? 

Put our teeth to it.  Lick them again

and again, to taste the way the day's

been made, some wash, some pollen,

some bug spray, and some, 

because blood was negotiated,

blood was drawn somehow, (but

blink it) of rust. 

 

Point of View

salt marsh fog

lubec, maine

Point of View

 

Shadow is the queen of color

                    St. Augustine

Consider everything

she didn't

have to bend to

to tend to:

indian pipe, lupine,

blue vervain, mint,

bleeding heart, columbine,

morning glory, phlox

every living/dying

thing beside/beneath

her and pressed

to the pattern

of her tipped hip

bone that on some days

is the shape of the gone cold

scythe blade kept

dangerous concave up

against the gunwales

of the dory on the second

floor of woodshed

attic or scrapes

made by simply getting by day

after day of making

the same kind

of bread or pie

time after time

and cranberry for some

variety or what-

all bog fruit.  Eye

to eye with every blossom

on the lawn, a rug

that doesn't

need sweeping (that sleeping

one-eye open wild

feline beneath that dun 

gunwale) and if the wind's up

they all bow pliant

to her, august as she is

diadem stems of unctuous  

hair lifted from her cheek.

What of It?

What of It? 

What of it?  The grain

bag limp in the middle 

half gone invitation

to rats if it weren't

for the sentry tom, his

knotted paw (caught

in some trap or shot

and all the more caustic

for it) and the dust

coming up in the mote

of sun early enough

from may on through

who needs the brief

kerosene limp in her faux

crystal base and teetering

fingers filling her in

the dark after the globe's

come off and laid new born

baby like in the dry

sink clean of the weeks

of keeping the wick just

clear enough of the draft

burner to see what all

of the buckets and the odd

missed thus unmilled

kernel picked up by the hob

of his boot and left off

on the way to the coop what of

it easing itself in the mud

if there is some and it 

dulling in the rut before

some dove comes to

sooth the view into 

a descending fog in front

of the sun and what's already

come and gone and done

its dust job on that grain

bag, heavy enough fog

that won't burn off.  And all

that walks in and out 

of ill or good will be omens

will be thrown some briefly some

forever by the jittery needle

excited by the iron shoved

in the fire to light the pinched

end of last summer's news,

the come and gone of men

and the aging hen on the block.