Lavender Water

Lavender Water

Above all, be alone with it all,

a hiving off, a corner of silence

amidst the noise, refuse to talk,

even to yourself, and stay in this place

until the current of the story

is strong enough to float you out.

                                                                David Whyte

                                                                Coleman’s Bed

The length of time something sits, once

all mixed and stirred and beaten in things

are poured and contained in the shape

it may be condemned in, years

maybe and then have need of it

and more awfully, have faith it is

all the same and no change what-so-

ever is possible and maybe the need

is a stumbled on thing, a minor

injury calling for a remedy, a dot

of that ointment my friend spent

an entire summer growing and feeding

and tending with her own

breath until the day it was cut

down to be what it was always

intended for: ointment.  Today

I opened, not it, but something like it,

upside down and it was like the day

my water broke: just a few drops

of a clear stain and I thought

it’s not time it’s not now I’m alone

I’m not enough I’m far away and in public

a restroom too small for me but I watched

the blotch spread clean and become

gone, absorbed, and then a wrinkle

in that thin barrier a cotton crotch

is and misunderstood my body not

for the first time and though listen

just get me all the way home

and I did and we both stayed close

for days even under the lip of the cliff

of blankets and fever we’d almost reached

the top of and later the scar

would remind me of a grassy mouth

and it weeped clean puss and my friend

sent a jar of ointment she’d made

and I covered my staples wit it

until they shone.  It was more

than enough for what I needed so I kept

it and sometimes when I would cut myself

I would remember it and try to

find the safe place I’d put it nearby

but it was years, yesterday, and today

I had an insignificant need, a cut

on the end of my thumb and again I was in all

about sealing it shut such small

pains are distracting and cowardly

but I reached for something and opening

it, it bled a rancid water not unlike

her formula of Jojoba, Orange Flower,

Chamomile, Lavender and Cucumber

all over the page I’d been too distracted

to close and funny how I was thirteen

years ago walking then sitting as I watched

the water spread, funnily enough under

a poem called “The Seven Streams” and he’s

telling me everything

I need to do to come out of it

clean: “Come down drenched…

with the cold rain so far into your bones

that nothing will warm you…” and all

this time the water of my life is

pouring out of itself after those years

on a shelf are reached for and settled on.