(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.