Backyard Archeology

 Backyard Archeology

If Newton really thought that time was a river,

like the Thames, then where is its source and into

what sea does it finally flow?

                                    Austerlitz

                                    W. G. Sebald

This dark: solid as soil

    solid as layers of age

        waiting.  Or not waiting.

            Just soil and all her com-

                ponents.  Planned or ran-

                    dom.  Animal offerings.

                        Detritus.  Rusty rusting 

rusted.  Cans of you choose: beef

    stew?  Spam?  (the key's

        missing but who cares, so

            is the meat) Baked beans? 

                Each has been liberated, label,

                    contents.  So, you can choose.

You can choose the mouth.  You can

    choose the occasion.  You, who on

        the handle end of the tool is made

            to dig into the sod (later you'll relate

                to your mate how dry, is it improbable?

                    it seemed, just being released from 

                        winter.  Because it's still

                                March, it's still giving

snow.  There's a chance, an almanac

    chance of a blizzard.  Remember how

        you've seen snow well enough gone into

                the month of May.  Ok.  Make this 

                    your day today:  you'll be bid to

                        sharpen the blade of the spade 

                            and make your way into the solid

dark.  You'll be bid to heft and heave

    to release and reveal the next and next

            the strata of dark.  Maybe a pottery

                shard. Maybe a heart-shaped rock.  

                    You'll still,

digging down, be on solid ground

    or something solid enough as a concrete

            vault built to hold all told and tolled (some

                but again you choose) games of table grace

                    and waste.  Pray, won't you.  I was just saying

how Newton saw time like a river

    and the question was if that's true

        what then is its beginning and then

                where does it, coursed, uncoursed (you 

                    can and cannot choose) disappear to?  

                        Today, I'd say maybe after you try to

flush it all away and it meets some solid

    and slippery companion, collar up to hide

            its face to shove it back and back to almost

                where it came from, that time is a holding

                    tank, lid reluctant to lift without jacks and 

                        levers and (you've dug enough down to see)

once the lid's lifted, a whole new world is stood

    still: swill and scums and insides come undone

        but you know it's not supposed to be this stood

            still...Ok?  This liquid solid caught in the proverbial

                act.  I'd say before the curtain falls or rises, that time is

Brian to the rescue with his pumps

    and pressured backward air to vacuum

        years of passage.  We laugh at

            our fate of being able to

                colloquial or not shoot

                    the shit or chew the fat or

                        gnaw the bone while over us

uncapped, is dark, all dark, dug

    and flung open, a grave hole 

        patient and emptying, emptying

            of all the shirkers and lurkers 

                mongers of manure, there's

temporary stay of execution, 

    there's, you choose, you, remember,

        can almost always choose, abatement.

                                

        

        

            

tea

 

tea

today

    may it be as simple

        as a cold bowl of green

            tea holding its forgotten

                own through

night-

    time, may it be, as it's

        grown bold and bolder

            in the steep decline of its

life

    be drawn to my mouth

        regardless of the bitter an-

            tipication regardless of the least

                heat of when it was first urged

open, 

    leaf from fist to fingers, just

        like before, like when it was

            pinched from the tree, like

when,

    thumb and finger rub the impos-

        sibility of such lengths of roads

            down mountains up into the air

to sit

    beneath the lid and spout

        and wait the day out and then

            the night, for lips, for muscle, 

                struck, though who can explain it?

dumb

               

1st time

 

1st time

What is the idea

that governs blossoming?

                        Jorie Graham

                        I Was Taught Three

1st times don't need us as much

as we need them.  Or even

at all:  listen: every day can be claimed

a 1st or too, last or some

-where along the spectrum, the leaves

reaching from beneath

the very thing that makes them

increase makes them

draw up water from

the dirt (or from if they're tall

enough, the sky)? Are you

concerned with things

like 1st days? Do you need

them the way you need

buttons or zippers or eye

hooks to keep and contain

a neat measure of the one

place that maybe you've been

working all this time

to be free from?  Imagine: Shakers

made wooden or metal hooks to hang

their hats their capes their chairs

their brooms, same as most,

but with their neat air 

of simplicity it becomes profound

to sweep beneath every-

thing that has been raised 

from the dead

spaces of the floor where 

motes of suspended dust 

are thrust up to the boxed

-in light and spread by

rising and routine earth turning

degrees across the floor.  1st

mornings.  1st evenings.

Will you be willing

to concede

really the only thing that's needed

is that little gaff

screwed into the coatroom

wall jutting out ready

as ever empty or not but intending

to suspend all that neat

simplicity of our most precious

things to wait for us 

while we busy

our fingers

1st then our feet and every

intimacy in between

with being touched 1st, 1st, 1st

and then washing

the drug of it off our skin

and feeling ourselves

gathered up from our roots

like it inevitably does and will, 

like called water,

and we go out naked

but clothed, taking our 1st

openings, now closed

and go home for the one time

utterly alone.

(2) hue

 

(2) hue

Old English híew, híw

 n. 1    b. concrete. An apparition, a phantasm. Obsolete.

    2. External appearance of the face and skin, complexion.

                                    OED

This is the story of a small strict obedience,

human blood.

And how it rivered into all its bloods.

Small stream, really, in the midst of all the other ones.

                                                Jorie Graham

                                                  At the Cabaret Now

She paints wounds on her face, great un

-plumbable landscapes of raw or coming-to-

new palates of healing reds and purples

and blues all the hues you'd see in a grievous

sore if you'd let yourself see grievous sores. Her

upper and lower lip have kissed and kissed 

and kissed to a burn, or burns, some layers 

a scorching kind of burn, some layers a wind, some

(and here I can see she's leaned deep 

to her need) teeth--hers and his and the bit

put in as though on a deeply freezing morning.  

And for those of you who know horses, you warm

the metal between your face and hands, 

you bring it to, don't you, your own cheek

so that the mare's wet tongue and lips don't stick 

and don't thrust and nip for her own head and direction

to be all skin pulled off in the slip.  I'm learning

not to parent with my own pulled back bridles, 

and friend I'm here to tell you how hard that is when

there's eyes bulging beneath lids blood-shut 

above the aqueous dream, how the only thing

to keep me sane on my guard-rail edge of a deep

end was to see them not as they were in my own

mother's head but as as some exotic warm water

sea fish, a three hundred pound goliath grouper 

some guy named Ernest tamed with his own

time and line and filleted straight away from the

pumping lungs and the blood was somehow it was

different because it seemed to me they were each

making an exchange that the fish had waited

all these pressured years to be brought to, a kind

 

of Cabaret by Hemingway.  Maybe.  Maybe

not.  But my daughter is not my mother.  I thought

as I watched the on-call trauma nurse talk

to the doctor and say quite plainly because 

my mother was in a coma, how in all her years

this was the worst victim of a domestic

beating she'd ever seen and she looked at me

with what?  pity?  sympathy?  that somehow I'd

too abandoned her, and faithlessly?  Maybe a great

many of anythings accusations I couldn't then

and still can't today read but somehow believe

at least the last of them even while I was deep

between divorces and second marriages.  Do I

need to read anything of it today, how does it

relate to this girl I've who's raised who's painting 

her face and making it look like the lady who raised me?

The men who stole my mother are probably dead

now.  Or maybe they are still living, and one

of them is shifting from room to room in a house

down the street, passing my father sometimes

in the bank.  In the grocery.  They nod politely.

Shoot the shit.  Who knows?  Or even suspects?

Because my father wasn't home when they broke 

her jaw and rib and wrist bones for the dope 

they'd hoped to roll her over for, though it was so low 

a dose they'd done her the way you can only see 

it in the movies.  And so.

Back to those two grouper eyes.  Back to

that hook ripped lip.  Back to the tubes she breathed

through, back to a lonely room in Idaho and a shot-

gun wound.  Gunmetal blues.  I'm telling you,

it's hard to live through hues (the OED has five

different definitions).  Think: color.  Think: Clamour.

Think: calabash.  Think: fashion.  Or think: Cornish

canneries.  A whole plethora of nouns and palates

of transitive or intransitive actions.  Today maybe 

my growing up daughter is none of these or between

one of each - it begins with being pleased to meet

and see yourself, a discrete tongue between the teeth

and somehow pretty is skin deep, somehow she sees

and needs to see herself on the inside bleeding: a spleen

two sets of knees and suddenly she's a fourteen year old 

haunting a grown-up lady and me having none

of it but having no choice but to take it and take

it silently and while taking it, after I look away, 

because we're trained to look away from pain, for face 

value.

 

 

(1) hue

(1) hue: 

Lagenaria vulgaris: local name 

for the bottle gourd

                        OED

every day i make another attempt

at mastering infinity.  i get it for two

minutes and then it slides away

as if on ice.

                        elizabeth bishop 

                        in a letter to marianne moore

months ago not and on the downward slope

of the cusp into winter, i stepped toward

the river, different now for how the trees had

relieved themselves of their canopies, 

different now that the all summer's green 

reeds had gone gold, had let go all their song

of root and surrendered instead to the wind,

pacing themselves maybe for the coming on

of snow that just now the beaver-tramped,

mouse-skitted, fox-shadowed humps 

of ground and earth could tell them about.

the river was as low as i'd seen it all season.

a great and aged log had been caught and lodged

in the cleavage of rock in the middle of slow

water and sometimes three siblings? parents/

child? mergansers pampered themselves there 

and let me watch them preen and nip and sift

their breast feathers, lift one webbed foot

and close each of three filmy inner nictitating

winking eyelids and take in as much sun as would be

offered that day.  it was familiar enough this bit

of river bank, even if i grunted and stumbled in the false

foundations and sunk sometimes up to my knees

and ruined a new pair of shoes only a few miles

old. but for all the myrtle and vines i missed finding

the gourd entirely day after day making for 

the riverbank by mostly the same way until

i was up to my face in a fall on a clod i wasn't

properly introduced to. nothing soft about that:

thorns and beaver musk and ass-over-band-

box i sat dignified as a shag, those fishing birds

from back home that hold to their own post

the wave swaying pier and rope to fold out 

their wings to dry in the sun, our own version

of the goddess Maat because they're not

waterproof like other river or stream or sea

foul.  i dripped a summer's comings and goings

of puddles between those humps of grass 

and saw, lodged and squeezed between 

beaver- teeth- kneaded trees, the blond body

of the bottle gourd and brought it to between

my knees.  how completely unlike a place

and maybe waiting to be shaking by someone

less clumsy as me--it was dry and hollow

and all the seeds inside made the child in me

smile at hearing them sift and separate and settle.

i've seen them in museums.  clean and lacquered

and made personal, made to own and show

off to the audience, to the orchestra.  i wondered

how--and could only conclude--did it arrive on

this bank of river some three hundred inches

from the water, from being some hermetic 

moses boat, that it had fallen off a truck come to town

for the farmers market and laid there season

after season surrendering its flesh the way

things do in the mosses forgotten crawled on 

and over and lifted by frosts and tattooed 

by leaves or at least one leaf and all that drying

mud and drought and snow and ice...i've had it

all this time, propped in different corners

of the house, in different far reaches of soot

stained hearth-brick and both ignored it 

and contemplated its girth its thin neck 

and the numbered seeds inside.  most days

it goes like this.  a prize a miles and miles

carry home, a low corner of the room and eyes

and then not eyes.  i don't know why I take it

up today and spray away some of that river-

mud and made the sways of wet dirt create

figure eights beneath what if this could be

a female nude, the navel, you know the one,

don't you, the Venus with no arms or head, only

full breasts and torso...and i swayed the way

i've seen cello players sway playing the body

between their legs: eights    eights    eights    

eights.  and i can think of this as my only 

daughter turned suddenly into Persephone 

swept beneath the heaving detritus without me

seeing.  green being! who went sneaking between

the leaves and cut you loose, releasing you

from my vines?  and all I heard or could 

was the sigh and in hindsight it wasn't why

didn't you save me but why did you keep me

so long between you and releasing that i had

to lie you even made me i had to lie.  Demeter,

i try lighting a fire and like you i'll feel the rise

of ire and i'll feel the rise of lung-plunged sighs

and lowered grieving eyes and the embers live and die

as they dry from the once green now cracked down

one side (only implying life's inside, that rattle

of seeds) gourd who housed a girl who fled

for her life and like you i'll try to stand by

while flights while suns and moons while starlights

suffer in sight out of sight while violence

while scouring while firing chariots ring out

desire, desire, desire. remember, Mama? Desire.

            

enough rope

   

         

enough rope

                I'm trying to lean into those

        marshes and hear

    what comes clean,

        what comes through changed, 

having needed us.

                Jorie Graham

                from: Breakdancing

don't we parent through our own

story or stories and not only

what we remember in our minds

but what we remember in our body

or bodies: the stories that go

straight through the smoke

of letters beginning to be tuned

to words straight through yes and

into the flesh.  and some find a home

there these stories conjured from

their rest by circumstance by

coincidence like touching 

the shape of a particular type

of boatman's knot and holding

it in the middle of my fist 

knuckles over knuckles and

suddenly there's the boy who would

later be killed in that speed of taking

a right angle curve in the edges

of ditch  and night as deep as oak

pitch or whatever you wish pitch

of drunk-driving roll-over meets 

trees... those memoires live in me they live

in my biceps and triceps and maybe

a chord or two in the crotch where

the rope knot hunched up like a pommel

horn it's the place he held to

when he took me into his humble

bony clavicle into those trees

along the creek until there was

no more to go into and who knows

if it was the tension of two

bodies almost able to hover

above the unsudden spring ice melt 

then the one block finally disgorged

enough to let the winter come

through who knows who it was

who let go first.  the shaking

was the same clavicle to scapular

closed around the flesh and bone

the boats of the pelvis the shaking

behind the fist of rope who knows

as much?  it is at once

a place of holding on isn't it as much

as it is a place to let go to and watch

it swing first with people

and then unoppressively by it's 

lonesome breeze swing animal 

swing stiff flaccid stiff flaccid 

going the only way its abandonment

can go roped to the limb slow, slow

eroding while the both of us are thrown

one into this future and one into etched

memorials set in front of the ocean

to be touched in mornings, during day

times, during hot July fire

in the sky while it all breaks 

apart like fraying, like it shouldn't

but does because that's the way we weather

it, god-dam-it, that's the way we weather it.

Talking to My Daughter

Talking to My Daughter

1.

Today you are five 

thousand two hundred and thirty

five days old. And I want to ask:

are you the axe blade or

the handle are you the wielder

or are you the birch are you

the arms that lug the load are

you fingers that tear yesterday

or a month ago's news are you

the shaper or the shapes

of kindling beneath 

the chimney are you the match

striker are you the striking 

plate are you the match flame

are you the hovering over 

the low barometer are you 

the breath or the smoke are you 

hands over the coaxing 

flames are you the keeper 

of them are you the coals aglow

even as you go from the room

upstairs upstairs are you the stars

in your hair