Don't You Know

Don't You Know 

Maybe memory, in order

to commit itself some

-what toward entirety or 

at the very least leave

a print or two surviving

the damage or the con

-valescence or what

all comes between, needs

to be paired, needs to be

hung to a sticking

post to hold the reins, leather

strips or rope strips brass

ringed into the bit on each 

of the mare's cheeks.  and

maybe the brain is that mare

i ride or at least some

of the time and train the be

tween of her ribs to my grip

of  knees or, all in now with time

and holy matrimony come to

need the reins less and less

so we both can know

where it is we're going.

Association.  Only in my own

knowing of home if I'm going

to the old swing rope will I

see the boy there and how his toes

hold the throat end (he called

it that, the choke over the bone, a

half-way down bobber every time

he swallowed.  I'd watch it near dis-

appear under the collar of his 

cotton rock-n-roll motley.  He'd

stolen the rope from his step

-father's boat.  He'd told me going

up was like knowing the way

husbands go know their wives best

friends and he let slide one eye and one,

then two, fingers to my elbow

then through my shirt and the curve

edge of a new restraining toward an

unrestraining test.  And up

the rope he'd go.  And only in this 

version does it hold, through cold

winter snow, through assuming it's mine

now that he's dead, knowing shoes

are not at all necessary, or because

he always did it bare

footed, all toes and soles.  

Now, I'll take my own life

time to climb the height

of that rope into the sky

and straddle the branch 

where it's caught and knotted and the three

of us coming up over the rope,

growth rippling like the winded 

withers I'd hoisted myself up to, 

and give my curved back to, and his

and let him turn me, eager bit

strained, unrestrained, cut, 

and sent through the branches

to the trunk of the only one

still standing in all her braggable 

height