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| About the Author | 181 | (3) | |||
| Colophon | 184 |
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Chapter One
HOMO SAPIENS
Imagine a morning moon the color of cream
still steaming, a soul
newly-minted each exhalation of light,
omphalos quick with swirling aura.
Then the slow dissolve to absence.
Who can hold her?
Struck by the cold, the absolute
clarity of this nth morning of creation,
who might articulate this emotion
that somehow slipped past the masters, unnamed?
That creature whose skull was found
fragmented in lake-muck
more than one million years past her last
sigh--was she also struck by the icy
spill of moonlight so close to her cave
she might have stretched her fingers
toward its receding source?
Breasts milky in the afterglow,
she must have been beautiful, wild child,
stunned for a moment into consciousness.
The moon arcs now from that dawn to this,
passing over the bewildered
brilliance of van Gogh who brushed the moon
on thick to halt her travels,
over the unraveling intellect of Céline
who pinned the moon to a page
to prevent her passage even one night more.
But the moon forever fails over blight-scarred bark
while some early riser bears witness, fixed in the moment,
this day entered into
the log of creation by the soon-to-be forgotten
who tumble into passions
impossible to tame.
The wilderness remains with us.
The moon rises and beckons, leaving
a residue still too ancient to name.
* * *
THE STORY OF THE CAUL
When the child woke to the world,
the caul wrapping her breath
like some cheesy cloth, her
eyes filling with the billowing
clouds, the wavering gauze--
little bride, shroud-bearer--
the doctor snipped her pale
veil at the hairline,
to sell to a sailor for luck.
She remembers, she tells me now,
the mist lifting from her face,
the milky web broken,
the opalescent lights blazing back
to her kindling brain,
the shapes swimming before her
assuming flesh, more warmth,
ever more wonder--
and she closed her blue eyes
and slept, and could have been
content not to open them again.
She knows, she tells me now,
how the world begins to come true
if we stare long enough,
if we stare hard.
Be patient , Grandmother tells me.
Be still, sometimes,
to allow the numinous net of air
to mend over your face.
* * *
POLLEN
You see it as summer begins
to shimmer on the rims
of ponds, in rifts
in stone where ants assume
their awesome responsibilities,
on eaves of Victorian mansions
limned with last light--
pale curtains sweeping
among the generous trees,
messages sent between green
families, greetings
before the heat strikes us
too lazy to speak, or even
nod in the sullen breeze,
surging across the vast
expanses of lawns, past
new screens, tumbling
through rich stories of air
to dust floors, mirrors,
every surface with a frail
film where a boy can trace
his name, then raise
the finger to his lips
to taste the feathery
light, the bright ash, the yellow
powder etching the whorls
of his finger's tip with mild
fire, incandescence,
this swollen glimmer, loose
spirit, the hours' aura,
the plush, allusive
tremble of pollen.
* * *
READING DICKENS
Not long after the war, my father
bought, by mail, the complete set
of the works of Charles Dickens,
each book bound in black and red
imitation leather, the titles
embossed in gold.
The set filled a small bookcase
near an overstuffed chair
where my father spent
languid evenings in lamplight,
feet propped on the hassock,
while David Copperfield
and honest Nicholas Nickleby
fought their unsure way
through a wicked world.
He might have imagined me,
his only son, not yet born,
on his lap, learning to read.
Each time he finished a book,
he slipped a dollar
between the gilt-edged pages--
some nights, the money low,
he and my mother bounced
before the bookcase, shaking
each volume, the few bills
falling, enough for dinner
or the double feature.
Decades later, reading Dickens,
I imagine those early years,
their slow stroll home,
her arm circling his waist,
the whistling, papery leaves,
the bath she drew before bed
while he waited downstairs, reading
Dickens, happy not to be
living some great adventure,
happy to close the book
before my mother slept,
saving the ending for tomorrow.
Copyright © 2001 Michael Waters. All rights reserved.
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