"Poetry", "King Canute", & "Dominion"

Poetry

                                           No longer mottled, driven off,
the yearling makes a new path through forest—
                                going left, going right, snorting at
                                                 nosed branches which invite
                                                                                             its body
—we will forever
be finding our own ways to it—
                                                                                             around
                                                a stubborn, wet stump                   
across the bog, the scattered bones,
back to its grazing art, each spring
                   a tired, brown line.

                                            Born to green, yearlings
                                                         startle
                    themselves
                                                                          to a musky vim,
                                               creaturely sound, unseen
emerging from the crackling canopy
                            or passing unheard
                                                                        —and bow heads
                                                              and kick alive—
                                                                                     and gone.
                                           Ancient, unnamed,
                                                        a humid bubble
                             leaves our mouths to hang
                                          among the bulrushes, heavy, glassed
                                                                         with ice, leaning into the road.

‍

King Canute

We are debating the limits of power
late one night at the kitchen table.
“He told his soldiers to attack the waves–”
says my father
                           “—and there his reign ended
but for the crying,” I cut in, mocking.
He looks surprised. I am thirty-one, tired 
of the wise king’s lessons. He sighs,
says the king was trying to say something.

In the window, reflected, our deaf-mute
alternates swing mythic objects, stabbing
at doppelgangers in silence.
                                                         Outside
by a gopher’s den, furred shoulders shiver
and crows blink their third lids. Under the grass,
water marches, slaughtering the hills.
‍

Dominion

i.
‍
At the cabin door
                             spring wavers.
Undressing, sighing

seal mitts
              great coat
                                              beaver hat
a gaunt figure
                 unwound, the tartan scarf
                                       revealing a face—

ii.

Birch creak and deer bark and
                                            other alarums.
They come
                               wrapped in rabbit hoods
with spears.
                               Others
come wrapped
                                               in sheep’s wool
and Christian fervor.

In their ordinary desperation
                                            they know why
not what
                                  they are accepting—

iii.

Drive by your old life—
               the hills produce shadows
               the future buries

and the birds sing oblivion
               estranged from all things

as you follow an old Abenaki trail
               through ghostly thick-rumped horses

past the grey-green, half-forgotten monuments
               mottled by pigeons
               imperial in their silence

iv.

Our canoe keeps sinking.
Something inside remains too heavy,
flowing in and out when seasons change,
escaping all our frantic bailing.

Who stands vigilant on the shore?
What animal calls from the ripening wheat?

v.

Northern fields
                            depend upon
blackened snow
              the mud glistening
with pure             cold water
beside a fawn’s
                                          skeleton

vi.

My mother sings along to the radio
                                                         looking back
over the car seat, smiling down—
                                                         she knows
how to draw a protest
                                           a grudging laugh
out of me.
               And in that moment
                                           a grain slips
to mind, and the heart
                           starts to itch
and lacquers itself
              by accident
into memory.

vii.

Let the spell of unspoken
                                           be broken.
Let the spoken be acted upon.

Rightness cannot be inherited.
If you want it
                              you must
obtain it by great labor.

Dominion                 help us
                                 love you
for new reasons.
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