LITMIR.BIZ

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it.

      Given time, given space. Easier said than done.

      Altogether elsewhere, north, in a house by the sea,

      the landscape’s all circles and arcs. No, to be exact,

      it’s inexact squiggles—tangles, and unexpected

      headland hills undulating, a shore of irregular

      marshes and marsh flats, blurry margins all around

      in six rectangular windows, a sheen on the water.

      I learned to paint by numbers, two Pomeranians,

      eight plastic rounds of oily colors. In the beginning,

      it was nothing but faint blue lines on cardboard,

      obsessive hairy streaks of white and tan.

      One thing, I discovered, could become another.

      Now it’s all Rothko and Benjamin Moore, soft

      but definitive box squares of Cloud White,

      Tapestry Beige (a kind of fresh light celery),

      Hale Navy on the vanity with the white knobs.

      Colors of matter gathered from the landscape.

      Earth, pollen, weed tucked into an apron,

      ground, boiled, mixed in a mud hut.

      Pots and walls colored with the potions.

      First cause of all beauty beyond knowing.

      Slow day here. Fog settled in. What I thought

      was a marsh hawk is, closer, a vulture, wheeling

      and tilting. Nothing’s dead yet. Tiny people,

      a couple? a father and daughter? are walking the spit.

      Their dog off leash runs ahead, waits for the humans,

      who ignore him. They must be talking. He runs again.

      It’s too soon for the kitesurfers I saw yesterday,

      four of them under power-red curves catching good air.

      I’ve become a contemplative, of textures, of what

      I can feel between finger and thumb, of what happens

      that is not balance or clarity, that comes not from

      knowledge or training, that is at the edges of mystery

      where light is changed and water tidal, where dark

      green jags of cypresses mass along Bodega Bay.

       Swan-Boat Ride

       from a fragmented draft of an Elizabeth Bishop poem

       never completed

      In the Boston Public Gardens

      when I was three, a live swan paddled

      among artificial birds, pontoons fitted

      with tall wood wings and yellow pedals.

      The white paint peeled like feathers.

      As our boat drifted in the dead water,

      my mother’s hand meddled idle

      in the wet—dirty, cold, and black,

      then proffered a peanut from a sack.

      A thing to do to amuse a daughter.

       Ungracious, terrifying bird!

      Apparently it had not heard

      that it’s unkind, cruel to attack

      a woman dressed in blackest black,

      as widows do; she was my mother too.

      “See,” she said to me (it’s all she said),

      her black kid glove split and red.

      I saw the hole, the drop of blood,

      the hissing beak, the mark of teeth,

      the finger’s flesh, the amniotic flood.

      Afloat, afloat, atilt the boat,

      the whole pond swayed—

      breath suspends and death descends

      and madness comes

      to flower beds so bright and trim,

      to the State of Massachusetts seal,

      the State House Dome, its thinly crusted sun.

      In that dream I dream again,

      my mother lifts her veil

      to kiss me, a patterned lace I memorized—

      her fading face and fragile eyes—

      fine and dark and real.

       Shucks

       in memoriam, Alice Brice

      In a bar in Boston, somewhere near the aquarium,

      gentlemen in white coats shucked oysters. We sipped

      cold brine, a taste not of heaven but of earth,

      and the oyster, loosened, slipped from the clean inside

      of the shell, no human hand or finger ever touching,

      just the lip, then the tongue, then the teeth in that soft flesh,

      the one chewy button of muscle. Alice ordered

      Campari “with lots of lime.” “One for me too,” I said.

      Among memories of reading Keats on the lawns

      of the Yard that summer, I keep this one. The bitter red drink

      she called for years later in Santa Fe. Just a weekend.

      After persuading me to buy a red cape from a woman

      in the market, we settled into a late lunch at the Pink Adobe,

      sipping, shucking our stories. The last time I saw her.

       Red Oaks

      I wake to trees in a window

      or rather four windows

      like a Japanese screen,

      each panel a version

      of a New Hampshire wood.

      It’s winter white under the trees,

      a ground like crumpled silk

      or parchment flecked

      with fibers of rag—

      the litter of stump and stone.

      And though morning is not brilliant

      and there is no sound and nothing

      is moving, I know

      under the mounds of soft snow

      are rivulets of melt refrozen,

      layers of hard black leaves,

      white roots growing

      quietly, quietly.

      A few stiff leaves cling,

      the color of grocery-bag paper.

      The subject is trees—

      tall-slender or scrub-bent,

      brown-gray against

      white

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