Anna and Ben
Jefferson National Forest, 2009
Katabasis
Knowing this turgid bumbler’s teary bafflement will cease,
this sloppy, warm knot of blood and failure and shit
will slack and unravel in cooling ash or the cold pit,
this absurd creature will end, is comfort and release,
but that these two -- here twelve and eight, mugging at ease
for the camera as if their miraculous bodies will not forget
our few days of leveraged grace, our summer cabin sunlit
and shaded like the only emblem of my only peace --
knowing they will die, or, worse, tremble in fear of death,
as they will do, and soon, I would beat to shards the stone
that frames this fucking world or trade for their one more breath
this yet strong body and all the years still to weigh it down,
would damn any god for their pain and rip the sky down,
would howl in dark hell, where my father has gone before me down.
all reflexes to the state of being come together here in this poem like a stone, not to be denied but to be erected, to be prayed upon and to be flung.
ReplyDeletei am staggered. i am bedraggled. i am weak. but too, for a moment, i (also) would be strong.
were i not to know you i would know you through this poem as i know myself as a mother. were i not to already love you i would love you tragically through this poem as i love this difficult world.
knowing how you love language and how you do not take anything for granted, i see you fall upon your knees in your word choice)))
xo
erin
erin: knowing you as a mother, loving you as a mother, i know you write this poem every day, and better than this, with words and without....
ReplyDeleteyet this poem does not alter one tremor of what is to come ...
.