After Wyeth's Ropes and Chains

After Wyeth's Ropes and Chains

 the rope always hoisted the 
just lambed does
up off the ground and out 
of the mouths of the coyotes...

Maybe memory, in order
to commit itself some

-what entirely or in part
depending on your port

of entry into your own
bravery, or at the very

least leave a sneaker print
or two surviving the damage

or the convalescence
or what all comes between,

needs to be paired, needs
a sticking post of old oak,

a branch to hold the reins,
rope strips ringed into

the bit on either side of
the face.  And maybe

the brain is the mare or
stallion or gelding you

alone ride or at least most
of the time and train her

or his or their ribs to ease
into the grip of the knees

or in time and matrimony
come to need the reins

less and less so both can
know where it is they're

going.  Association.  Only
in my own knowing of home,

and only if I'm going to
the old swing rope will I

see the boy there and his toes
holding the throat end

he called it stolen from his
stepfather's boat.  He'd told

me going up was like knowing
the way husbands know

their own wives and he let
slide one eye and one closed,

fingers to palm hand over the salted
rope and then one then two

fingers to my elbow then trough
my shirt and the curve

edge of a new and suddenly
unrestrained test.  And up the rope he'd go.

Only in this version does it hold,
through cold October, through

assuming it's only mine ,
now that he's dead, and was

that next summer.  And because
he did it with bare

soles and toes I take my own life
time to take hold and

fist over fist hoist myself
up to give at last my curved back

to his permanently
in the sky and then let him

have his way with me
turn me, eager bit strained

finally, finally, exchanged.

Who We Choose

 who we choose

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise

And newness in the back yard of our life

As if something callow yet tenacious

Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

                                                          Seamus Heaney

                                                          Mint

the puppy, wanting the nuzzle

of love coming from

the huffed and whiskered

muzzle of his mother, comes

again and again to 

the drip of milk his siblings

kick and scratch and lift

him from.  the one festering,

level with his jaw and along

his neck, puncture wound

soon soothed, soon, soon soothed

after the true air is out

of the womb new and kept

free of the hush-dug tombs

of such mongrels, the boy 

comes empty but fore

-front coverage: the rusty mud

from the puddles coming up

like geysers after his parting

tires, the rush to the runt

and the cuddle and hug 

to the stew of his new love

his cooling chest-sweat 

and, hunkering his beauty

in, wool.

slack tide

the copper's bronzed atop the tips of the white 

pine grove again.  and behind a cloud of rippled

batting, that if you were to open the rubbed

and rubbed seams in the family heirlooms

you'd see into the gray waves such stuff

as old squares have kept sewn and mem-

orable and ever moving like flesh and bones

in all it's stages of sleep: needing warm,

needing to be free of warm, needing 

the between the sheets evening of ligatures

at ease at being Eve or Adam or one

or two bums who've come to take in wrinkles

or mussels in some saltwater cove and only

at low water every wig-rigged rock a 

bladderwrack patch of flattened capacity

and then puffed up against the pull and slack.

when the sky at last penetrates the attic

window and wakes  him there, it's no  

mystery that the first thing he touches

is the thinning corduroy of his coat

she'd sewn and taken in and let out 

like a stray who has her reasons for leaving

and now it's beneath his knee

at night sometimes when the wind

isn't up enough from the river to give

relief.  she'd made every piece breathable

and believable, I mean, think of it:

you can read a quilt the same way

you read a book the same way

you read a recipe the same way

you read the land before you start

putting your time in.  which, like an empty

bed, like a cold pipe come morning,

are fields left fallow in winter

to slump under their own self--she'd

taken all that into her lap

where eventually it made him

infant to boy to man

sleep the sleep any day's great 

reckoning can afford, or sleep

the sleep a sea sleeps beneath

the sheathing and unsheathing

shade/blades of boat and bark

bottoms, or of clouds skirting

the surface so silently they move

nothing or everything, you choose:

the pinch, thumb and finger, with

a needle, the grip, fist over fist, 

of a hoe handle and work-

thinning blade or a brier wild

in its own desire to flower

and root and tangle boots and make

to come loose the hemmed threads

of rovers day to day to day on their way

to the grave.

Christina: What It Means

moss heart

Christina: What it Means

or what does it mean, staying

until the end or a month 

to the end because what if 

they take me

alive from here

and not if they take me dead

what if it's like my last

thing to know I'm losing,

something I've known about

all my crawling life: the par

-ticular lineament 

of every floorboard and knot

in the them and how on

especially tired days

when he'd be painting

in one of the attic

rooms I'd settle

my hip at a half

-way point and make myself

a story how if I could

write them they'd change

day to day depending

on the light or lack

and what all's been put up

with or taken

down, hands or feet or these

days and years the rug beneath

and the heat we meet with, me

and this hip/in/knit and friction.

Consider this: fingers

sifting through each strip of ripped

denim and other salvage then tucked up

in the warp like Al dancing out

of the whole tub of rope

on the boat before he lets it

go and knowing those

lobster traps will set on bottom

and just wait it out and never

know when he'll be back or that

he brought his boat in forever

for me and they'll never

not ever see him again

or the weir net he knits and knots

all winter the way I knit and knot

all these strips of cut up coats 

and all what are come to rags

and we make it

the two of us in this house

all these years with little

or nothing to go on but what's under

us and Jesus they'll come in later

pinched and coughing and plugging

their noses and take

every little take and maybe 

burn the rest: Mama's dress Daddy's

wool vest that by some magic

I'd made into a sleigh and pulled

myself through

every room I could

knot by knot board foot by board

foot and after all

this time

beside any replica you care

to find and believe it once was

mine there'd be

between certain pine boards

and me

Andy stepping

never in a goddamn hurry

to get me, and yet tender

to his dead Helen

back to where I was

before who? Paris? and he'd come

and brush from my cheek

the dust and cinder and (tucked

in the side of my lips)

a strand of needing a wash hair.