Water Weight
Water Weight
Weight of the water on the land, percolating down
Cold as frost on the rocks, crisp crunch
Of talking with time’s little process.
Incremental in bees bent with pollen in
Their blooms bigger than their bodies.
The exquisite sense of chemistry and gravity
On the drive train of light
On the bottle of brown, medicinal glass,
Familiar skin touched by two skeins of braided hair,
Each a formula of the inner,
The crescent of the sensitive,
Touch of source, of brocaded cable
Holding the painted bridge,
Between us and us, a universe of likenesses,
A harrowing of the harvest,
As the teeth masticate on a meal of toughness, husks,
Shells of meaning twice digested.
In each other’s eyes we transgress, twice mirrored,
Seasoned with someone else’s bed.
Some unisex of feathered and furry pets
At trough or at table, making the economy purr,
She murmurs her illusion of needs,
Of wish fulfilled hunger in the hive of multiplying
Like a war, a gendered car crash with glass and plastic splintered on the asphalt
Like an eye askance and clouded in a gutter of not seeing,
In shuttered cloister of not being able or willing
To haul the water up the hill,
Like the sun does with her storm head clouding,
Her immanence enfolding, her brood remembering
A time of hooves and bestiaries in the straw castle of the bedroom,
Strapped in leather,
Liberated as from the cooling lather of a well worked mare,
Her breath steadying now
As if the heat were all around,
Not only in her now but shared,
As we might recline in a retreat of ice water and dew
Left by morning that couldn’t reach the sky
Or once there, returned with our form to lay about
As nowhere to nobody in the treasure we misplaced
In the sureness of an earlier misjudgment.
How can we ever recover?
How with our riches spread all over the ground
Like a cold, sparkling blanket of your ideas,
My breath clouding,
Thoughts ill formed so early
As if just born as a calf on wobbly legs, a parameter, a juncture
Of our meeting be it noon or midnight or never.
Blades for the heart,
Punctures of the lung,
The air wheezing and rushing with the barn door open and
The slats of the fence and wall
With peeling paints of intention
As another temporary chemical fix,
A hole in the innertube of our longing,
Now hung limp from a nail.
How hang the essence of me
Like a trinket, a moon shot,
A souvenir of the fallen soldier’s belt.
Buckle up your bibles,
Rake and winnow in the sinews of slaughter done in the yard.
Your heart is here too,
Not as accusation but in question of your mead and means,
Your quaff and stomach for such stunning, unmentionable endings.
By Rolf Stavig
Comments
Water Weight — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>