style="font-size:15px;"> doubles the body
of the fish, turns it
into a mirror of itself,
the mirror being
the water’s invitation
to see a bright pool
of scales where
once there was a fish,
a school of silver coins,
a great, green-glass
chandelier dangling
in the flow, each cut-glass
drop sewn like sequins
to the wind, the wind being
the way the water moves
around the coins,
the coins being another
way to see the fish, the way
it moves through
water, through light
the way it doubles, becomes
a silver mirror, the mirror
being the fish disappearing
into a thousand versions of itself.
Learning To Pray
When I say I have passed the afternoon
watching loosestrife lean against the wind
at the edge of the lake, what I mean is
I have stepped into prayer, not unlike Peter
stepping out of the boat, and it has held me,
as prayer does, like a child holds a penny,
or ferns hold beads of dew. When slippage
occurs, as it is want to do, and I begin to sink
through unraveling molecules of faith like
a dream sinks back into dark when dawn
dissolves the net of sleep, I am caught by a
quiet grip, an open palm, the way air catches
a parachute or a June buttercup catches light,
and there is in that catching a new kind of
drowning, not unpleasant, though it surprises
at first. It’s like losing yourself to an embrace
in which the more you are lost, the more
surely you are found; it’s like the flood of sun
on the map of your skin, into your cells
and the spaces between your cells, sewing
you into its warmth, which, you realize,
is singing. How often have I stood at the edge
of the lake gazing, wholly unsure what it means
to pray but willing to step out, willing to go
down, slip through the watery blue particles
precisely to be caught, recovered, salvaged
again and again, to know once more that hand!
Make Me Chalice
Make me chalice, bowl of tears
and wine. Mold me valley deep.
Make curve this earth you wedge,
pinch, lute, glaze, coil, shape.
Oh make me open palm, vessel
of praise and doubt, basin of
dusk. Carve wide the lip, form
broad the hull, O Lord of clay.
Make room for rain; make room
for song. And I will be the moon,
which holds the sun and pours it
forth. And I will be the well that
Jacob built. Oh hollow me. Oh
make me yours to fill, to lift,
to bless, to spill. And I will be de-
canted. Yes, and I will be refilled.
Thalassic
Haunt of salp and red-shelled crab—here lives the mouthless, sac-bodied
tubeworm: white finger tentacled to vents and cold seeps, feeding
on water and sulfur and dark. Kingdom of the lungless,
the gill-raked, the swim-bladdered: the eel-like hagfish,
scavenger of whale falls; the “snot-flower” bone-eater, feather-plumed
burrower. Behold: the gulper, the swallower, all manner of loosejaw,
the wide-gaped, blunt-snouted citizens of the deep— dragon-faced
fangtooths hanging in the blackness, hinge-skulled viperfish
barbel-luring hermit crabs. Consider also the bulb-eyed jewel squid,
hovering umbrella under-studded with stars, and the silver-
scaled eye-ring of the star-washed lanternfish, thin-finned, dazzle-tailed firefly
of the brine. This is the province of the spike-eyed and light-averse,
canyon-dwellers, night-dwellers, breathers of cold and salt. This is the empire
of the armor-shelled and carapaced, the saw-tooth clawed, the tendril-danglers,
the glowers, the snappers, the mute.
M Is for Mary
Hampton Bays, Long Island
M
