poem of address

If A Body Catch A Body

I am a girl seized in the silence

and alfalfa, who skipped stones

across Salt Brook and grades in school

who’s woken slowly—as gouged shin, the egg

raised from the bone attests: it would

be okay to have lit my way—who walks

a harbor past a migratory blue

momentarily alight on still-damp green

and russet, opaque-white of plastic bags.

                                                                                                         

I am the blonde you wanted.

Your nights inking dots and hatches

have turned you to a crane

so as we circled Spy Pod you were ahead of me

although our feet moved side by side.

Next day I arced the Cape, turned right

at the Bull Ring, checked into

a barn near land’s end, and I slept.

The search a dream. We whiled hours on the line—

except we’re cordless. Slap and ebb of our drives west

different years, an eternal husband, double ex-es.

From my dusky woodland deck

as cicada drone shifted to the cricket’s

bright saw, to find you, phone you, hear you

paint the North Atlantic’s colors

as you listened to it roll.

Stained creased toes press the damp with the familiar

out-turn I’ve been working to correct.

I am the grown girl who knew you—nail-bitten,

sideburned, crotch bulging with honey—who loved

all that grunt and curdle, arc and flight—

not flight—who lets the calm sheet of the bay

tuck its nap below the tide’s leavings.

An inch of water shines up multicolored

stones that dried would hardly be impressive.

What kept my hand from your torn fingers

that day in the city? The hundred

take-me-back calls? Your one, waking me

beside the man I’d found?

Let me hold you to my ear. Let’s

look north along the shore. The gulls

are absent early morning.

I am the gone girl ripe to learn much

before we walk into the world

of sparrows, sparrow hawks.