My Mother's Body (9 page)

The moor land, the dry land ripples

bronzed with blueberry. The precise

small hills sculpted with glittering

kinnikinnick broil under the sharp

tack of the red-tailed hawk cruising

in middle air. A vesper sparrow

gives its repetitive shrill sad cry

and the air shimmers with drought.

The sea is always painting itself

on the sky, which dips low here.

Light floods the eyes tight and dry.

Light scours out the skull

like an old kitchen sink made clean.

We are cured in sunlight like salt cod.

We are cured in sunlight like salt cod

stiffened and rot repellent and long

lived, long lasting. The year-rounders

are poor. All summer they wait tables

for the tourists, clean the houses

of the summer people, sell them jam, fish,

paintings, build their dwellings, wait

for the land to be clean and still again.

Yet blueberries, black- and elderberries,

beach plum grow where vacation homes

for psychiatrists are not yet built.

We gather oysters, dig clams. We burn

oak, locust, pitch pine and eat much fish

as do the other scavengers, the gulls.

As do the other scavengers, the gulls,

we suffer, prey on the tides' rise and ebb

of plenty and disaster, the slick that chokes

the fisheries, the restaurant sewage

poisoning mussels, the dump leaching

lead into the water table; the lucky winter

storm that tosses up surf clams or squid

in heaps for food, fertilizer, future plenty.

This land is a tablet on which each pair

of heels writes itself, the raw scar

where the dirt bike crossed, the crushed

tern chicks where the ORV roared through,

the dune loosed over trodden grasses.

We are intimate with wind and water here.

We are intimate with wind. Once

this was a land of windmills flapping

sails like a stationary race of yachts.

We learn the winds on face and shingles,

the warm wind off the Gulf Stream in winter,

the nor'easter piling up snow and wrecks,

the west wind that hustles the rain clouds

over and out to sea, the cold northwest.

We are intimate with water, lapped around,

the sea tearing at the land, castling it up,

damp salty days with grey underworld light

when sneakers mold like Roquefort, paper wilts.

On moors webbed in fog we wander, or wade

in the salt marsh as the wet lands ripple.

They are bits of fog caught in armor.

The outside pretends to the solidity of rocks

and requires force and skill bearing in

to cut the muscle, shatter the illusion.

If you stare at them, your stomach

curls, the grey eyes of Athene

pried out, the texture of heavy phlegm,

chill clots of mortality and come.

They lie on the tongue, distillations

of the sea. Fresh as the morning

wind that tatters the mist.

Sweet as cream but with that bottom

of granite, the taste of deep well

water drawn up on the hottest day,

the vein of slate in true Chablis,

the kiss of acid sharpening the tongue.

They slip down quick as minnows

darting to cover, and the mouth

remembers sex. Both provide

a meeting of the primitive

and worldly, in that we do

little more for oysters than the gull

smashing the shells on the rocks

or the crab wrestling them open,

yet in subtle flavor and the choice

to taste them raw comes a delicacy

not of the brain but of the senses

and the wit to leave perfection bare.

Seen from the air, when the small plane

veers in and hangs for a moment

suspended like a gull in the wind,

the dune grass breathes,

hue of rabbit fur.

The waves are regular,

overlapping like fish scales.

The Cape in winter viewed

from above is a doe

of the small island race

lying down but not asleep,

the small delicate head

slightly lifted. She rests

from the ravages of the summer

as a deer will take her ease after

the season of rifles and boots.

On the peach's wide sieve of branches

the buds crouch already in whitish caterpillar fur.

All winter they must hold tight, as the supple

limbs are strained wide by the snow's weight,

as the ice coats them and turns them to glinting

small lights that splinter the sun to prickles.

Must hold tight against the wet warm tongue

of the thaw that lolls off the Gulf Stream

smelling of seaweed and the South, as if

not spring visited but summer in January.

Hold tight against the early March sun

with the wild tulips already opening

against the brown earth like painted mouths

when the ice will return as a thief

to take what has too widely trusted.

The news they carry can only be told once

to the bees each year. The bud is the idea

of sweetness, of savor, of round heft

waiting to build itself. As the winter

clamps down they hibernate in fur,

little polar bears on red twigs

dreaming of turning one sun into many.

They must be clean.

There ought to be two of you

to talk as you work, your

eyes and hands meeting.

They can be crisp, a little rough

and fragrant from the line;

or hot from the dryer

as from an oven. A silver

grey kitten with amber

eyes to dart among

the sheets and wrestle and leap out

helps. But mostly pleasure

lies in the clean linen

slapping into shape.

Whenever I fold a fitted sheet

making the moves that are like

closing doors, I feel my mother.

The smell of clean laundry is hers.

Gathering tomatoes has no art

to it. Their ripe redness shouts.

But the scarlet runner beans twine

high and jungly on their tripods.

You must reach in delicately,

pinch off the sizable beans

but leave the babies to swell

into flavor. It is hide-and-seek,

standing knee deep in squash

plants running, while the bees

must be carefully disentangled

from your hair. Early you may see

the hummingbird, but best to wait

until the dew burns off.

Basket on your arm, your fingers

go swimming through the raspy leaves

to find prey just their size.

Then comes the minor zest

of nipping the ends off with your nails

and snapping them in pieces,

their retorts like soft pistolry.

Then eat the littlest raw.

Surely nobody has ever decided

to go on a diet while in a tub.

The body is beautiful stretched

out under water wavering.

It suggests a long island of pleasure

whole seascapes of calm sensual

response, the nerves as gentle fronds

of waterweed swaying in warm currents.

Then if ever we must love ourselves

in the amniotic fluid floating

a ship at anchor in a perfect

protected blood-warm tropical bay.

The water enters us and the minor

pains depart, supplanted guests,

the aches, the strains, the chills.

Muscles open like hungry clams.

Born again from my bath like a hot

sweet-tempered, sweet-smelling baby,

I am ready to seize sleep like a milky breast

or start climbing my day hand over hand.

I am at once source

and sink of heat: giver

and taker. I am a vast

soft mountain of slow breathing.

The smells I exude soothe them:

the lingering odor of sex,

of soap, even of perfume,

its afteraroma sunk into skin

mingling with sweat and the traces

of food and drink.

They are curled into flowers

of fur, they are coiled

hot seashells of flesh

in my armpit, around my head

a dark sighing halo.

They are plastered to my side,

a poultice fixing sore muscles

better than a heating pad.

They snuggle up to my sex

purring. They embrace my feet.

Some cats I place like a pillow.

In the morning they rest where

I arranged them, still sleeping.

Some cats start at my head

and end between my legs

like a textbook lover. Some

slip out to prowl the living room

patrolling, restive, then

leap back to fight about

hegemony over my knees.

Every one of them cares

passionately where they sleep

and with whom.

Sleeping together is a euphemism

for people but tantamount

to marriage for cats.

Mammals together we snuggle

and snore through the cold nights

while the stars swing round

the pole and the great horned

owl hunts for flesh like ours.

No task could be easier.

Just dig the narrow hole,

drop in the handful of bone

meal and place the bulb

like a swollen brown garlic

clove full of hidden resources.

Their skin is the paper

of brown bags. The smooth

pale flesh peeks through.

Three times its height

is its depth, a parable

against hard straining.

The art is imagining

the spring landscape poking

through chrysanthemum, falling

leaves, withered brown lushness

of summer. The lines drawn

now, the colors mixed

will pop out of the soil

after the snow sinks from sight

into it. The circles,

the casual grace of tossed handfuls,

the soldierly rows will stand,

the colors sing sweet or sour.

When the first sharp ears

poke out, you are again

more audience than actor,

as if someone said, Close

your eyes and draw a picture.

Now open them and look.

We pour a mild drink each,

turn on the record player,

Beethoven perhaps or Vivaldi,

opera sometimes, and then together

in the steamy kitchen we put up

tomatoes, peaches, grapes, pears.

Each fruit has a different

ritual: popping the grapes

out of the skins like little

eyeballs, slipping the fuzz

from the peaches and seeing

the blush painted on the flesh beneath.

It is part game: What shall

we magic wand this into?

Peach conserve, chutney, jam,

brandied peaches. Tomatoes

turn juice, sauce hot or mild

or spicy, canned, ketchup.

Vinegars, brandies, treats

for the winter: pleasure

deferred. Canning is thrift

itself in sensual form,

surplus made beautiful, light

and heat caught in a jar.

I find my mother sometimes

issuing from the steam, aproned,

red faced, her hair up in a net.

Since her death we meet usually

in garden or kitchen. Ghosts

come reliably to savors, I learn.

In the garden your ashes,

in the kitchen your knowledge.

Little enough we can save

from the furnace of the sun

while the bones grow brittle as paper

and the hair itself turns ashen.

But what we can put by, we do

with gaiety and invention

while the music laps round us

like dancing light, but Mother,

this pleasure is only deferred.

We eat it all before it spoils.