The Carrying. Ada Limón
Читать онлайн книгу.
to sink would be easy
and final. I ask the dog
(that is also the child),
Is it okay that I want
you to be my best friend?
And the child nods.
(And the dog nods.)
Sometimes, he drowns.
Sometimes, we drown together.
THE LEASH
After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear,
the frantic automatic weapons unleashed,
the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands,
that brute sky opening in a slate-metal maw
that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s
left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned
orange and acidic by a coal mine. How can
you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek
bottom dry, to suck the deadly water up into
your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to
say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish
comes back belly up, and the country plummets
into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still
something singing? The truth is: I don’t know.
But sometimes I swear I hear it, the wound closing
like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move
my living limbs into the world without too much
pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight
toward the pickup trucks breaknecking down
the road, because she thinks she loves them,
because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud
roaring things will love her back, her soft small self
alive with desire to share her goddamn enthusiasm,
until I yank the leash back to save her because
I want her to survive forever. Don’t die, I say,
and we decide to walk for a bit longer, starlings
high and fevered above us, winter coming to lay
her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth.
Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe,
like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together
peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.
ALMOST FORTY
The birds were being so bizarre today,
we stood static and listened to them insane
in their winter shock of sweet gum and ash.
We swallow what we won’t say: Maybe
it’s a warning. Maybe they’re screaming
for us to take cover. Inside, your father
seems angry, and the soup’s grown cold
on the stove. I’ve never been someone
to wish for too much, but now I say,
I want to live a long time. You look up
from your work and nod. Yes, but
in good health. We turn up the stove
again and eat what we’ve made together,
each bite an ordinary weapon we wield
against the shrinking of mouths.
TRYING
I’d forgotten how much
I like to grow things, I shout
to him as he passes me to paint
the basement. I’m trellising
the tomatoes in what’s called
a Florida weave. Later, we try
to knock me up again. We do it
in the guest room because that’s
the extent of our adventurism
in a week of violence in Florida
and France. Afterward,
the sun still strong though lowering
inevitably to the horizon, I check
on the plants in the back, my
fingers smelling of sex and tomato
vines. Even now, I don’t know much
about happiness. I still worry
and want an endless stream of more,
but some days I can see the point
in growing something, even if
it’s just to say I cared enough.
ON A PINK MOON
I take out my anger
And lay its shadow
On the stone I rolled
Over what broke me.
I plant three seeds
As a spell. One
For what will grow
Like air around us,
One for what will
Nourish and feed,
One for what will
Cling and remind me—
We are the weeds.
THE RAINCOAT
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five-minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving