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| Woman in Waves, charcoal drawing by Viestarts Aistars |
The Act of Drowning
She is born of the foam, the spittle
and spume
of the sea, sand grit collecting in the seashell coils
of her ears, pearls tucked inside the pink of her
palms.
This is the baptism of her father's desire,
his washing into and through her mother
earth, globe of
molten fire at core,
and a narrow hope renewed.
Her father's gentle and most tender
violence, a passion veiled
by night and broken stars
littering the black bowl,
the soup of midnight sky,
and weeping, weeping an
endless grief,
a blistering burn of sorrow,
a longing luminous and lasting
through the thrum and split
of
the heart breaking open like overripe fruit
too long in the sun.
Such is love.
Echoed, recalled,
of
the kind that drowns
and leaves the lungs gasping for air,
for the salt of the earth,
begging for benediction.
Spells Spoken at Dawn
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances
confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live
the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected
in common hours."
—Conclusion to Walden, Henry Thoreau
Say
the words, go on, say them: e-lu-ci-date.
Divulge the unfettered stream of synonyms
for a good day (benevolent, satisfactory,
excellent,
virtuous, merciful, prime, effective, productive, choice),
the very finest kind, sun quickening
through
the blinds in new dawn,
(beginning, daybreak, sunup, aurora, cockcrow),
a hastening of gossamer hope
(optimism, faith,
confidence, trust, wish, aspiration,
desire). Seek that place,
nebulous dream (vision, incubus, imagination, muse)
come
true in the seeking itself.
Pronounce it begun—the soft delirium.
Call it done—the undoing,
the initial
mess of gathering seed,
choosing the grains one by one, the plump
and promising ones, firm to the touch,
eager for
the field (clearing, pasture, realm, domain,
blank white page, unmarred)
of the day ahead, a radiant reverie
of possibility,
a harvest
even before the hull splits in two, the root
feathering into delicate threads that grasp
(hold, squeeze,
caress) the earth to suck
(breathe deeply and inhale)
its life-giving vigor, startle of life,
and you (every dawn,
each one)
the sprouting urchin with buckling knees
standing, again, for the very first time.
Be Still, Listen
to Nothing
The murmurs subside.
For
a moment, a moment only:
stillness returns,
the heart slowing
into a molasses comfort,
sticky sweet, slow,
swimming
in its own dark sugar.
Even the breeze curls
into its nest, circling
upon itself, tail tucked in,
ears folded back
against a warm fuzzed skull.
Even the eyes close,
unseeing and dry,
rolling in towards
hidden places
where the beasts tease demons,
where their war games collide,
but for now, now only,
they sit
prissing and preening,
leaning into each other
to nab the occasional flea,
a gracious nitpicking
of each other’s
thickened hides.
Listen: silence.
All is at rest.
No weeping, no mourning,
no ashes rubbed on a pale forehead,
no breast beating or bawling,
no sackcloth bellyaching.
Unquestioned but welcomed,
life becomes
a simple thing—
a hand held open,
a sweet fruit placed within.
Mars Retrograde
Portend this day
from that day:
disjointed dreams and pale gold flights.
Open two palms, hinged at thumbs,
to release the final fledgling,
damp-feathered
bundle,
trembling with newborn hopes.
Will she fly? Will she?
Out of that pale gold sea
of yesterday. Lay waste
the
fields of fire
where now only embers gleam.
A moment of peering
into my own ancient eyes
of so many lives ago,
wondering
if I might have missed
a whispered warning, a clue,
a Morse-coded map
tapped with two soft finger pads
into this
emptied palm
or with one knuckle
at the third eye between my two
to find its open door,
to have been a better
guide
for such a stumbling path.
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| "Fisherman's Boat," watercolor by Viestarts Aistars |
Continuum
Strife settles and smoothes;
now only the silent bleed,
the sluicing away of memory,
the dim echo of long ago sirens
that sung the heart
raw,
until the vessel is empty
once again and waiting
to be filled.
There is that far horizon,
that
clean line across the mirror
of water like glass, soft lapping
at one’s feet in pious devotion,
and pebbles
washing in a tumble,
empty shells with crumbled edges,
remnants of a life lived vulnerable
and coiled tightly
inside, and
grains of sand catching sun
remind one of serenity
long before it is felt.
Medicine, No Sugar
Yet a sweet pain, stitched
and mended seams of heart
where the rips began. There you touch
now, delicate fingered, clean scrubbed,
where
you tore and prodded
before: sharp, with cruel and reckless abandon,
that blood vein that would weaken me most, drop
me
to my knees, shoulders sagging, scooped
empty of pulp. You plug that vein shut
with the soft pad of your thumb,
distracting me with your winning smile.
Hurt still? you start to ask, trying hard,
chastised with the knowledge
of heedless wrong,
but the fear of reply puts a fist to your mouth.
You want to know without asking,
without suffering
the whip
of words, their bloody slash,
drip, and splatter
on your neatly polished floor.
Messes disturb you.
I hand you the mop;
I’ll hold the bucket.
We need the words, the slash exposing raw pink
flesh to bandages,
precision stitches pulled taut,
cut places stronger now than uncut.
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| "Laundry Day," watercolor by Viestarts Aistars |
Laundry Day
Slap flapping in the wind,
sheets setting sail
to an imagined Neverland,
a feigned journey of shifty
clothespin pirates,
their snagged
bevy
of shanghaied petticoats
twisting on the wire.
Brazen buccaneers
with wooden knobby faces
pinning
satin delicates
against a shameless pillowed sky;
whipped into a frenzy
this sun-spilt day has fast become
their
sun crazed and billowing ball.
On this line, strained taut
from nail to nail,
begin all maiden voyages:
a
roiling sea of sand
beneath a dance of empty dresses
and fluttering loose stockings
that twine in slinky scandal
around a waltzing pant leg,
a cuff that glances on a skirt pleat,
a sleeve that lingers lightly on a blouse,
the
coy invitation of a shirt
with all its buttons
come undone.
Lambaste
On the surface—scatterbrained,
skittering thoughts like a dust bunny race,
multiplying beneath beds
(not always my own),
collecting in corners
for a whispery conferring of like minds
and kindred war cries, collections of lost
musings, first impressions,
final glances,
over the shoulder and shrugging,
endless parade of comings and goings,
U-turns and turnabouts,
fence sitting and jolting,
escape routes and underground tunnels.
The mind is harebrained and stupid with wondering,
or absent entirely,
a skull hollow and reverberating with echoes,
yodeling and a bounce
of one mirrored and
remirrored and remirrored sound,
begun at birth, that primal pitch and yowl,
hilltop to mesa to abyss,
wall to
wall and sky to earth,
avalanche of loosened pebbles
that, eventually, accumulate
into secret mountains of jagged
and ripped loose
summits, those flighty afterthoughts.
Stony perch for the stoned with meditations,
revelations,
giddy with epiphanies of ricocheted
reflections, sweet enough for a greeting card.
It is the rumination that makes
the man.
Gives him face. Eyes with which to see,
wading pools to a splash of soul, aching chasm
that it might
be, bottomless pit and insatiable
appetite—the cup that can never be filled
nor drunk empty.
The scattering
of thoughts returning
to form flesh, blood, spirit,
dust bunny of a soul,
held together by the stitching of dreams
and the ever-patient grace of the divine.
Dizzy Spell
The fever changes each spring,
a grade or two of cooling, a supine acceptance,
a sleek laziness that pacifies
the bones, and that—
tempered with a paragon of calm.
An unadorned and brittle hope:
the graying
heart, cells still turgid
with blooded recall
bestow their sear, a sweet stupor,
on the senses and catch
fire,
more than a flicker,
more than a blaze,
a fond and stubborn insistence
that drives the blunted arrow home.
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| "The Sea," watercolor by Viestarts Aistars |
Writer’s Wrack
The words staple me in place.
Hands
to pen to paper.
Wedged between the edges
of page after page,
a syllable of angst
slip sliding and always
just just just
out of reach.
How it tantalizes.
Tease. Flirt that it is,
the word that tickles
on the brain, under the chin,
tongue tip,
behind the collar,
between the breasts—
ants in pants.
Caught beneath a finger nail
like a sliver of sharp pain,
red rash spreading at that point,
middle back,
between the blades,
where the scratch
won’t reach.
Be still, you flea, for just this
moment.
Be mine, you, now,
held firm in my penned grasp.
Precise. Clear. Bull’s eye.
High Inducement
"Love is at first
not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another... It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen,
to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake."
--Rainer Maria Rilke
There I seek: in the rich and the ripe,
plump with harvested wisdom – a seed,
heat of life and love
contained inside.
I seek: in the cool sea
jade of your eyes,
there in the warmth
of your open palm, fingertip
tracing the kink and curl
of your finite
lifeline.
The things one remembers:
your open lips soft over my open lips
as the length of you settles
against
mine. Air blown sharp
between the edges of your teeth
at that moment of infinite sweet.
Love is like that: curve
against
curve, angle inside angle,
yin to yang,
the mistaken turned pure.
Love is less and more,
attachment
unfurling, release of the thread
broken, then another, another, still
another, until we hold
by gaze alone, by
thought, by common
goal, by focus trained
on the same tiny point
on a farther horizon.
More: a simple swirl
of light circling, slow and sure,
beacon blinking, a guide
through storm and stillness alike,
the time-stopping
moment
when you wake at dawn,
pale rimmed and flushed,
with but one thought, one only,
that of the way your
name takes shape
on the curve of my honeyed lips.
Then in That Moment
--to Maya Angelou,
in tribute and in reply to her poem for the United Nations, titled “A Brave and Startling Truth”
When we come to the truth,
will we
bear its shining?
That glorious blaze, that roaring heat,
that gaze into the eyes
that pierces every fog?
The
strangeness of morality,
values we have shirked from our shoulders,
become a beggar’s threadbare and tattered
coat,
more holes than fabric, more stitch than warmth,
we who have become such suave experts of evasion,
escape
artists from the weight of a yoke
of avoided responsibility. Not me, no, never I.
Will we wear this patched
and humbling garment?
That we might cherish such words
that do not slice and cut and wound,
but apply them
instead as balm and heal
the long-aching wounds of mistaken passion –
the greed, the avarice, the lies.
To
polish away the centuries of tarnish
of words coated with sheen of gold
but beneath the basest metal,
a trickery
of hissed apologies
when the heart was hollow,
of honeyed seductions
when the heart was empty,
of illustrious
praise
when the tongue was forked.
When we come to it, when at last
we arrive – will we recognize
this
beauty that is, once was,
or might have been – ourselves?
The gallant spirit of ordinary goodness,
the reach
of a warm and loving hand,
the medicine of a kind word,
the strength of a shoulder
that leans against another
and together walks a common path.
We are neither devils nor divines,
but the brave if faulty heart of a single
good man
and the singing spirit of a single good woman,
and the shining arc of a globe
that circles and twirls
in its smooth orbit
of a peace found, understood,
cherished, and retained.
When we come to it,
as we must,
in our evening of peace,
on this lonely and silent circuit
with scrubbed clean faces,
hand holding hand,
bless
us in that moment
with the ability to not only see,
but to endure the radiance of light.
Starfish Reverie
While sandpipers negotiate
sand grains,
secret, musky fish bones buried as treasure,
and waves spit and fizzle around our heels,
collecting
into the row of cups left behind,
the sun loosens, wavers, slowly slips
from an empty blue bowl of sky.
I pick
at sandy clamshells,
scrape crusty mussels from the broad cheeks
of boulders huddled like old men
appraising the
movements, the inner whisperings,
the ancient wisdoms and mariners’ tales,
mysteries of the sea and all the
unfathomable beyond.
You perch on the slouched shoulders of a boulder,
and with painstaking care –
cup the
protective curve of a palm
and light a cigar, caught in reverie,
caught by the languorous slip of sun.
Found starfish
in hand, I watch
a ribbon of smoke like escaping daydream
lift from the instant of flame
you hold between your
lips.
It is the same daydream I kiss.
Hunger
I return from an author's
reading panting.
Believing myself to be well fed
until I am given this food -
a smooth grape, shock of sprayed
juice
between the clean snap of teeth,
a luscious tart, sugary sweet and sticky,
sour lemon slice forcing surprise
onto my lips like an unbidden kiss.
Suddenly dizzy with hunger.
Must eat, must bite
down hard on words,
sink
teeth into the solid meat of consonants,
break open syllables like crisp seedpods,
peel off rinds to expose plump
ripened vowels,
dripping with juice,
shucking shells of sentences I have cracked
over my shoulder,
and deboned
paragraphs,
filleted then poached to flaky whiteness,
sucked clean ribs
exposed in neat rows
to the white
sky of a page,
the rich and promising soil
of a single word.
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