After Impact: The Persisting Dependence of Lies

After Impact: The Persisting 

Dependence of Lies

The work of existence devours its own unfolding.

What dissolves will dissolve—

you, reader, and I, and all our quick angers and longings.

The poem carries love and terror, or it carries nothing.

                                                                Like an Ant Carrying Her Bits of Leaf or Sand

                                                                Jane Hirshfield

It’s possible for sound alone to leave her mark,

a scar in the listening part

of the brain, and make a permanent space that’s raised

on occasion,

the way dehydrated Jacob’s Cattle beans

are raised, long after being taken from their pods

and spread out to dry in time, in time.

(I once put them on to soak and forgot

about them being

in the back pantry.  The bubbles too were clear

and awful.

And the rank fart about them—

So I had to, I held my  breath to carry the pot

lidded but it was a crock

so it slipped, the lid, and fell, and cracked against

a stone, out behind the barn

and left them on top, pot and all,

of old grass clippings, weeds limp and gone

by, left them foaming and soapy, bubbles

popping while I walked away.)  What I’m saying

then, about some sounds being

like this, forever inside once they’re planted,

is I remember the night

they came on to you with fists

and sticks and ripped you out

of your bed and never let up

until you were bloody and finally

quiet and I crept to you

when they were through and dabbed

and doted, and rocked until we both fell

asleep.  I’m saying it was your scream

that tendered me

to you and has even after

all these years of you doing

the very same coming on to me

though not with sticks, no, not with sticks.

Sister, I’d like to know if the lies you make

rise like dehydrated things and if, in

the beginning they need shelter

in their birth, like a new-

born entirely on its own

and defenseless to the pack snapping

at its loose strip of diaper, or the softest

part of its cheek?

And if you shelter it the way

you sheltered  your head, two arms

too few and if you coo

and kiss those raging cheeks

and breathe life into them

while it cries and isn’t and won’t ever be consoled.  So

far from each of these is a need

to take such a baby, such a bean

and bundle it and tuck it

under the stern of the boat

next to the rudder under the floor

so it’s never lost sight of, so I know

I know and I can finally have say

in its life and direction and purpose. There’s

a spot on the water just past the buoy bell

that will take whatever I can

give it and swallow it like a sin-

eater. And I want to take it, your bundle of menacing

lies, (the why of them is irrelevant here)

tight but working through its traces,

to that particular place and heave it

off (because it’s grown, just from

the cove to where it will, hove to,

splash and kick and bubble and spit)

to watch it sink with the stones

I’ve weighted it with, stones I combed

the cove for, weeks and weeks of combing

for the perfect shapes and weights.

And the ceremony only a small bell on the buoy, ringing

like the calm Zen monk it reminds me of

in time, in time, a cotton wad

for the ear canal,  the swollen throat, both yours

and mine.