masses, ice floes break up, tectonics.
India ramming Asia there, under the scapula,
Himalayan scapula where legend says Doubting
Thomas spread the Gospel, a martyr in the shadow
of Everest or these wing-boned backs. It is
good news, the teaching: The dance does not begin
on the downbeat. You’re already dancing
on the “–5–6–7–8, and–”
you enter with history. Getting comfortable,
the ex-nun tilts her chin, lowers her shoulders
barely covered by rose silk,
once covered by a white wool scapular, that
strip of habit worn between gown and cape.
Her hands flat under it, thumbs tucked
into her belt. Her body still, if nothing more,
her presentation inspired by—what?—a long
tradition of women, given. Diamonds now
at her ears and throat, hands, ungloved yet
folded. She understands medieval Eckhart’s prayer
that God should rid him of God, as she could not at 25,
longing never to lose the idolatry, feeling it go:
the cloak; the headgear of wimple and guimpe;
veil, cape, tunic; sensible grandmother shoes.
She wonders: How could she or anyone dance and not
enter with history? How does gravity, the law of the present,
perfect the dancer? The stretch at the barre, the leap and lift
reflexive as religious exercise, condition this moment.
On pointe, we are all sore-footed pilgrims performing as
our bloody footprints dry already from dressing room to stage.
RISK MANAGEMENT
History’s sculptors released their gritty gods
and animals, grimace of prayer and chisel,
avoiding faults. On pedestals
eroded figures hunch in stone,
the subjects subdued in museums.
Hammered and priceless, immortal and harmless,
none may be rained on, or touched
by exhaust or imprecation, nor lived among.
A LONG ENGAGEMENT
Tickbird sits in Rhino’s ear: trik-quiss, her hiss
and crackling sets his very horns on edge. She plucks
and crushes ticks, then sips the opened wound,
beak pressed to blood, blood the better food.
But what symbiosis is utterly benign? Who
wants myth’s arrangement falsified by fact?
BIOPOIESIS
for creative writing students
You wish the ancients’ tricks were so easy still:
Bury a young bull (which first you’ll have to kill).
Be sure his horns poke through, above the ground.
Let pass one month; check back as bees surround
the stinking mush from which they seem to rise. Alive
with fresh direction now, they build a hive,
select their queen, make royal jelly—muse;
they dance in air a map, or perhaps a ruse.
The nectar quest will turn their sips to food
that makes more food to sweeten and do good
your midnight heart as it weighs a slaughtered bull
against a swarm against gold drizzled toast. Call
this sequence “causal fallacy,” post
hoc, yet between us, isn’t most
of what we trust a mystery? Our faith
in one wildly written life revitalizes death.
HOW IT BEGINS
At two, you learn to mulch short rows beside the stone fenced orchard.
Your parents fork then rake through compost, easy in their chores until
startled by a shadow twitch, your mother ekes out
the name of your father who, now unfocused, lifts his head, as her keen edge
guides his gloved hand courageous toward the sunny stripe that parts
rye grass from granite. One foot long, the dangled snake reveals
its copper back, its belly private crimson. Toddle a fresh furrow,
earnest in your boots. You lean in to kiss what you hadn’t known was there.
Close by, the apple trees hum, your mother’s bees fuss in the petals.
NEAR THE END
of the Periodic Table, #79
The Golden Years do
bare ghastly elements
vastly attractive to
rejuvenating ads:
face filled in
by botulinum toxin
or spackle. Truss,
sling flab and that
floppy wobbleneck.
What
