And wind, always wind rolled over the land,
pulling the clouds thin and grey.
We had to go out — in snow, in cold, no matter —
I lay the baby in her crib to let her sleep
or cry. Some part of the fence was down;
a deer, maybe, or one of the horses run into it
in the blizzarding dark, or the wind
had sheared it off, the post long rotted
but holding taut in the tension of barbed wire
until, like someone exhausted or dying,
it could no longer keep itself upright.
Wind watered my eyes, the razored barbs
cut my hands through gloves, the bleached
bones of grass bent with the weight
of snow. First we had to pull the rusted
staples out, then the wire off the post,
the hard wooden knot like a face
etched with pain. Then a new post to go in:
the pounding of the maul, my hands
holding the new post straight; I stood
unseeing but for a smear of colour, the tremble
in my bones when my husband hit it clean, each time
missing my hands, my wrists, the skin
exposed and fiery with frost. The chokecherry
beside the cattle guard bloomed with birds
feasting on the final fruit, one hawk
on the power line, patient and lonely,
our child in her crib and her dark hunger.
My prayer for her sleep. Then the wire, coiled
like a summer rattler, pulled snug with the claw
of the hammer I held in place, my feet braced
in snow hard as love, burrs catching on my socks,
sleet of tears stinging my face,
my hands just holding on, and my breasts
sudden with milk. And when we finished,
the birds scattering from the chokecherry,
we stepped into the house as her newborn wail
shattered the air, and I, stunned with cold
and crying, my breasts burning
and the milk coming down.
Three years after I slipped back
into the world,
I lay and studied the morning bones
of my hands opening,
closing, my fleshy wings,
the house sunlit and silent as heaven.
A sudden
bang
, and I slid my feet
to the floor. A cardinal
had flown into the window, shattering
the dawn.
Light curled in sleep on the snow.
The bones of trees tapped at the frozen
waters of the sky.
My bald uncle was out in his ear-flap hat,
high-stepping in clumsy boots.
I breathed crystals onto the glass,
my palms pressing the thin
separation between us,
and watched his eyebrows turn to ash,
his gloved hand lift
the blood-red bird
motionless as the angels
in my Bible story book. Barefoot
in my flannel nightgown,
faced with death,
I never forgot the darkness
in its eyes, shining
with the last thing it had seen
before tumbling through
to the other side:
that veil
I still knew, and knew
would not let me back,
my loneliness fresh, the bruising
air of the world
stroking my strange new skin.
My little soul, fluttering flame,
flies away when I sleep. She has
no fear of death, that dark ice
floating between the stars.
She holds her infinity close
and won’t let me see.
My little child who lives in me
lies awake each night
and does not sleep.
Her ear attends to nomad birds
crying in their bones,
the humming dust of heaven,
a voice behind the blackened moon
whispering
This is not your home
.
My loneliness speaks
in the rivers of my veins, again
and again asking its name.
Remember
,
I answer. Your name is
remember
,
it is
mist in the dawn
.
Your name, I say, is
little sparrow
gleaning winter ground
.
And my mother? My father?
They live deep in a forest
I have not yet found.
My mother sews dawn to the sun,
my father unrolls the fabric
of the sky. Together, they shake out
the light of summer, fold it over
and over in winter.
After half a century of walking,
I will cross a bridge
of fallen leaves to find them.
I will carry bread to them, the seeds
of stars, the worn shoes
of desire.
I will stroke their heads and say,
I am here now, little Mother,
I heard you call in dream, Father
,
and I will place my tenderness
in jars ancient and jade.
When they sit down to the table
I will feed them from my hands,
reaching down
to the ripe fruit,
scraping each jar clean.
Another word for
daughter
is
remember
.
Remember
ripples the still waters of childhood.
Remember
walks abandoned roads,
dust clinging to her shoes.
Another word for
mother
is
silence
.
Silence
tucks the sheets around the child’s bed.
Silence
wanders in and out all the rooms of the house.
Other words for
daughter
are
stranger
, and
shadow
—
the child wakens in the night and knows
she is a stranger
to those who sleep in the other rooms,
as
remember
and
silence
meet each other,
one on the top and one on the bottom stair.
Not even the geese know her, who pass in the sky
riding two long wings, their music
another word for
poverty
,
which echoes
through the shadowed chambers of her heart.
And another way to say
heart
is to say,
little drum beating
under the moon
.
And another way to say
moon
is to say,
blue crayon circle
caught in night’s branches
.
And another way to say
night
is to say,
remember
—
the ruddied face of the moon
she reaches for,
a memory
of those who loved her
before she became human again,
snagged in the branches
of her bones, the radiant hum of heaven
dying in her ear.
I knew then there were infinite possibilities.
The world was catching fire.
Leaves turned one by one to flame.
I saw my life clearly, in an instant:
I had travelled by train, the long scarf
of its smoke the colour of your hair.
Once, the conductor turned his head to look at me.
His eyes told me he knew.
I travelled by foot the rest of the way.
Someone else had planned this journey.
Someone knew what my life was for.
I am here now. This is my story.
Lift your head and I will tell it to you.
This is the dream that has recurred
all my life. It is the farm
I love and long to return to, and know
I cannot.
It is no place I can find in this life.
They are still young,
my mother, my father,
the trunk they carried off the ship
hunched and weary in a corner
of the cabin they built together.
The hearth logs lick the flames
of their desire,
her dress rumpled on the floor,
his hat hanging from a peg. In the loft
where I will sleep in the bed
he will make for me,
I hover, listening,
the night pregnant with stars,
the plow horses’ thunderous feet
quiet in their stalls,
the milk cow curled in the straw, all
waiting for the day I will reach out to them
with my curious hands.
Tonight there is a moon
in the window
of the barn. But I remain
with the mother and father I will love
even beyond this life.
Like the rain
before it reaches us, like music
before the first note is struck,
I am the pearl
that will gleam inside her,
I am their song of songs.
And when the bright egg
of the sun dawns,
I waken and rise, wondering
where in the world they are now,
certain I would know them
by the sound their hands make,
their quickening breath,
their sighing just before sleep.
I have come from the other side.
I have crossed the field of battered weeds
and discarded tires, of razored glass and despair,
and I come searching for you. I am the voice
of the naked branch scratching the sky,
I am the groaning throat of stars, glaciers
of original light. I have touched the soles
of your shoes and tasted their dust,
I have counted your scars and hear
your hymns of grief. I carry your dreams,
the ponderous and prophetic, weighted
in my arms. I speak them into your ear
as you sleep. Beneath the insouciant moon
I hover in my lonely dress, my moth-wings
drawn to your lighted window, and there
I find you, burdened by memory, chained
by desire, your slow tenacity in scraping pen
against a page as if you chiseled words
in stone. I, who know only peace
and the inexhaustible light, come again
and again to stroke your silvering hair, marvel
at your thread-bare heart, your exquisite pain
here in the lovely, lovely dark.
Dawn, the lynx-eyed moon slides down,
a dim sun in the West,
and the birds
cluster in their nests for the moment
of their rising. That pair of horses
hang their heads and wait
for the night to die its little death.
And the bones of deer and bison lie
beneath their skins of soil,
fluted, sharpened
into what a hand could make
to be of use, render to stone:
an image of itself and of its universe.
The house you wake in sleeps,
just as the one you made
in crayon as a child,
slept on its sheet of white,
a white house, the bright grass
at its feet, the light waking
behind trees holding their breath,
and the small fountain
you have fashioned in a bowl
pours itself out again and again,
one leaf
lying happily at its depth.
The rose you set into earth
has begun to think once more of roses,
and the cats
place themselves at the door
because they know you will step out,
walk down the path singing
whatever hymn you devised
in the furious clatter of your being.
And now the sorrel gelding
rings the bell of the gate
with the hard fist of his hoof
and thus begins his prayer
that you come down
because he knows,
and the cats, raising their tails to you, know
as rose, water, the trees’ stony arms
and the moon, all know.
You are a god, and all your kind.
Always so have you been.