A pair of Poems

Ante

Some drops of water will not slip
Even off the waxiest leaves.
I learn a new way to know eggs:
The kind which amble in curving arcs;
And those which lie still on tables
Holding themselves against tremors.
The first kind have skins both smooth and engraved
Like a beach fired badly and then cooled.
In water the others are silent divers
Which calcify even as they disclose their porosity.
I could let one of these rest in my grasp
And describe the volumes within.
If I hold it long enough my hand will forget
And the shell collapses, weightless.
For now paper eyelids open and close like moth wings
While I envision the oily surface inside the pearl.


RMT Dec. 10, 2003




Post

There is a brown germ in the blue of my father’s eye
When I look at you I see him
When I look at him I see safety.
You cracked like the faintest trace of light under a doorway
It hurts you to keep it closed
But you push your whole hard self against it
Muscles bound up tight
Blood held in close
Words vetted and vetted again
Choking you with what they want to be.

I like the look of your shell
Smooth and fine and the color of chalk
It felt different from how it looked
Cooler and more leathery, like a reptile’s egg.
I picked it up like I had not been skirting it the whole season
Keeping it free from cover by dark seaweed
Safe from the hungry gulls, the rising tide.
I held it and could feel no movement
But it was not as cold
As the wet sand, the wet wind.

The smell of salt made my wrists heavy
And the light changed in an indiscernable shift
Above me were callous legions
Of sea birds black against the grey of the sky
I pressed you.
The skin gave under the weight of my thumb
And I left it where I had found it-
On a basin of sand
On the edge of the tideline
In reach of the sea.



RMT
March 23, 2004


© RMT, 2009