when you're still

when you’re still

IX.

mystery is the complexion

of a February spruce rationing sun  

in her numb gully of winter.

it is a sluggish impulse

to jump

into a breached luminosity, of waiting

to taste the salt, instant as struck flint,

in the split bruised lip i grind and dig

between my teeth. i dig and grind, dig

with the knob

of a lost grave-spade and spread

the debris on the threshing floor

and grind and pulverize

and beg

not to fade away

because I know it’s what gets me

from there

to you if I can just

hang

on

quiet grind

(moon ii)

maybe your labor toward
and into light

is so routine

its lost its ability

to be a witness

to everyone

except lovers, and

the mad,

and

mothers,

or poets who,

like li po

go into his boat

on the water

and mistake

your wavy light

for a road

and stepped onto you.

and are lost.

VIII.

it's a labor slow

a labor deliberate—

and you and me.

and once, after the too long drive

to the hospital

I’d be admitted no wider

than one centimeter.

but now they know that slow,

slow water of your world

drips out into mine…

we’d be monitored,

you’d be echoed,

and the i.v. of pitocin

coaxed you slowly.

and we’d walk and we’d sit,

we’d rest and we’d walk  and we’d sit

as though we were waiting

for news after a cave collapse

we waited

thirty hours like this

and then an epidural.

and even more hours...

early pregnant not knowing

(moon)

 in six days

you’ll be round

enough, ripe enough

to eat

.

IV.

Early March:

this blanket is a grizzled band-aid.

it's every 2:30 morning 

sitting in the glossed enamel

cool latex moon 

at the cramped desk

my great grandfather made

out of a three quarter bed

to worry words:   

mother, ,,,,,, lover, mother, warrior-mother, mystic-mother,

prophet-moth, murderer-other her hem rote...

book up book dust—

and I will lose:  

words, what I need

to get ready for:  

(when I was five

night was a musty wool army

blanket.  always awake early, I stayed

the dark by hearing

my mother make her tea

alone downstairs.  The tink of the spoon: 

two sugars and a white stream

evaporated milk. 

I didn’t move until I heard her open

the kitchen door, shut it behind her, one of six

baskets of sorted wet whites

or colors wet and starting to freeze at her hip.

Early the Nausea

Early the Nausea

VI.

Who makes the Moth

Mother?

Other?  Three or Thee

(we add an extra e—

Her own Om?

Roe?  Home?

a hem

a tree

that tore the tether,

finally,

free?

Into a Sea Change

Into a Sea

                                    Change

V.

And now

I am mornings of boiled seas and stones

I am polished salt

and water I am dissolved

rock

bottled

in my own brine I am

shelved in the dark  

nine months behind you.

The Meaning of Memory

the meaning of memory:  

II                       

it was night

                        a wednesday night

                             nearing toward eight o’clock

                                       

when his life began to go out…

this, this         your 

life began

to come in

III.

the Bardo is:

forty nine days for the soul

to give in to the sound

of a mother keening her letting go

the hallway isle—

                        how, I think of Justin, under such staggering weight

                        your sudden letting go—

                        I want to believe this: and so I do:

                       

                                    you saw the glow that we were

                        and came to be among us.

The Meaning of Barren

I.

But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
Genesis 11:30

trying to but saying it’s

enjoyable, the timing

plotting charting waiting

bleeding

year after year we went 

upstairs, year after year we’d grope

and shuffle and go again simply

for our own, for its own sake.  no, we’re

not trying.  But we were: sweat and sense—all aim

some days

and the doctors saying infertile

but not using that word.

we plumb and drill

because we couldn’t not…and once more,

always one more once more

and then finally!

I took him upstairs,

and again in the morning  

and even though I came

to do other things

                                    (it was vacation

                                    —it was late breakfast

                                    and let’s fool around)       
                        

and it was noon.  And

by one, a friend would tell me that

my student Justin

had been crushed to death

under his car.