Book of Dog. Cleopatra Mathis
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arranged it so as to see the colors as they dried,
the veins rising, shuddering with my breath.
But now, this ant has found its way
under my immaculate shack and climbed the pilings,
through gaps in the floorboards to one leg
of my writing table, and up that to the surface
plane of three cracked boards, where it scurries
to the moth: my creature.
Pulled from the sea with my own hands—mine, I think,
because I believe my very will can save it.
If only the bird had been alive, not something dead
delivered onto sand; and not this packed cold sand,
where nothing moves even slightly, no blow-holes,
no scurrying things, and if only the shore birds’
seaweed nests, that little piping, hadn’t been smothered
by a freak spring tide. Now the plovers must begin again:
eggs and hatching, the mothers’ fake writhing
when they see me, squawking and dragging their wings
to save their chicks. Oh save me
from the whole painstaking work of early June—
this blowing fifty degrees, no sand bed of heat
in some dune bowl’s hollow, no love,
and on this outer beach Euphoria
just the name of the shack I want in this driving rain.
And if only it would stop, shut itself up for good—
this off-key if only that goes on singing,
like some deranged child, repeating.
We pretended to know nothing about it.
I withdrew to childhood training: stay out
of swampy undergrowth, choked edges.
This was around the time
we were too cruel to kill the mice we caught,
leaving them in the Have-a-Heart trap
under the sun-burning bramble of rugosa.
But moving up the trail, we caught a glimpse
right at the start: the fox just over the hillock
on the dune-side slope, spoiling
the grass-inscribed sand. Neither of us looked—
it seemed best to back away.
On the dune’s steep side
we surveyed what we’d come for: ocean’s
snaking blues beyond the meadow, the silvered
blade-like wands lying down. Lovely enough
to hold ourselves to that view.
But the currents of an odor wafted in and out,
until the sweep of smell grew wider, wilder.
The heat compounded, and ugliness
settled its cloud over us, profound as human speech,
although by then we were not speaking.
Chippy fallen in, little head bobbing,
and from the second floor, dark in their conversation,
she runs to rescue. No handy net to lift it out, no
chipmunk-sized anything, so she throws
her shirt, a raft of sorts to scamper on,
too heavy, too close—how could she not know this,
her usual way of jumping in before thinking—
and it flips, goes under.
The broom, she’s calling now to the silent house,
bring me the broom.
The creature fights itself up, and she leans
to grab the baby belly and soaked heft,
pluck it out to the air where it gasps a little, chokes out
water from a gaping mouth. She massages with one finger
where the lungs might be. More droplets gurgle up;
mouth to mouth is needed
along with pumping. But she can’t, not without
some small opening to blow through,
safe distance from her own mouth, which
has released a little drool, working in sympathy
as if she can convince this thing to be saved—
how hard can it be in the tame backyard pool?
And why can’t he come out of the house
with some other idea, that tumbler of straws
plain on the kitchen counter; why
for God’s sake, won’t he come out and help?
She was thinking of his explanation
as a kind of Möbius strip, circling
endlessly, seamlessly reversing and twisting
to reveal the underside, on-going words. Lost in it,
she reached down into the limited
rough space between the bed and the wall,
and her hand came up skinned, the top layer
from knuckle to wrist peeled away.
This was part of her usual vigilance—
He would spill something, lose something, and she’d
rush to wipe away, find the missing,
like this automatic retrieving of his sock—
Beaded with blood, she examined
the wide scrape in addition
to sunspots, moles, the wormy down-under,
raised-vein look of her skin. Another thing on her body
to heal outside, while inside
running through her, the ribbon of his words:
no, then yes, yes, and no again. Oh what did he want
and how could she manage to wait
for the circling to stop—
how could she keep still?
When She Spoke, He Closed His Eyes
So she tried to disappear, obliged
by his own disappearing, becoming
who