On recovery: of the bonny swan, drowned by her jealous sister

within
s. lee photo

On recovery: of the bonny swan, drowned

by her jealous sister

When the tide returns

from its other life,

bearing its adulterer’s gifts

and the wrack-plastered reef

becomes again a sunk unknown,

then we should take our leave—

                                                                Kathleen Jamie

                                                                High Water

We’d arrived the both of us exhausted and wet

from separate storms and shore battered getting past

the shoals and every bit of clothing ripped

with teeth and feet or the broke mast pole I hung

to and you you’d said for you it was an upended keel

above a water field of swans you’d say even later still when

you regained your lungs and emptied them of salt

of scaring sand scraping your throat and for that you

were voiceless longer still so you told your story

on my body when your lips were healed

enough you kissed every bruise and scab I had and

each was the bowing of the way the swans

mated when they regained the same shore we were

stranded on.  We couldn’t fly or even consider

beating our wings in acceptance or retreat but we

could lie down together and stop being

naked or stranded or even married to another

who and so far off shore and saved from the storms

that threw us overboard to drift in and through

the early migrations for you the swans for me

one solitary albatross who’d glide like calm
shadows glide and let me grasp (by now the fever

being on solid ground) her tail and slum through

the deepest months of winter until I couldn’t

and my thumbs broken and my fingers and later

waking up and being loved by a deaf-mute and who knew

better who tells me to listen how far I’d been drifting

and how close so cleverly close to taking my skin

to the flat end of the earth and hurling it off so that

turning back I am all curve and bone and the sun and the wind

have their way hardening and hollowing me.  Tis the banister

of each the clavicle and the pelvis and the hair of me

you make me boy you make me and you pull each string

through your mouth and pin with my finger bones

and thumbs and keep them fast your chin to tune to
stretch to strum and pluck and speak free of water

of skin of single each you me becoming finally we.

a hammer and my finger bones fourteen each a sweet

note each hold me hold me broken without

but at home under you strummed plucked harmonic
throat.