Monday, June 16, 2025

Provenance of Rock Bottoms

the dead pearl diver
benjaman paul akers
portland museum of art, portland, maine
 

Provenance of Rock

Bottoms

 

How sometimes my neck bones are a many


fathoms chain & my head its anchor sometimes

at rest on bottom and then, when those immobile

bones ache

to move, I’m able

to withstand my bow’s prow-dip first

to the calm, then to the wind.

 

How dropping

my body means or seems to mean it can’t

rest benignly in its anchor box . . .

 

how I want to contemplate

the provenance

of the bottoms I’ve been on, and dug into,

stabilizing me there as the part of me on the water

twists and tries to

rise to float but

how I wind up wrestling, me

both a Joseph and an angel

God,

 

and how in the place where sky meets water

I come to

wonder how even on bottom

aren’t we always still

somehow in the sky?  Even if that sky

is humidified?   Whatever the height?

The depth?

 

How head and hands and pelvis and knees

and feet lifted mere millimeters is this:

my skin always touching

the surface

of the bottom, scissoring it open, depositing

it to the sky.


young mother in the grotto
Auguste Rodin
portland museum of art, portland, maine


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