Flood and Fire and Bureau Drawer; Warming the Wax; The Pool
Flood and Fire and Bureau Drawer
The Water Andric, once a slender thread
flowing clear and brown, is now a flood,
white water carrying downed trees along.
The Sheep Dip, once a swimming hole, is gone.
Over in Montpelier, canoes
paddle past the Capitol. Confused
cows in a bedroom; trout in a bureau drawer.
The rains let up. And then it rained some more.
The rushing water had no place to go;
creatures and crops alike lost in the flow.
Carrying her dog to safety, she
lost her footing, slipped, was swept away.
Relentless power of water on the move,
as strong as gravity, stronger than love.
More and more the elements conspire,
confronting us with water or with fire.
From Rhodes to Maui, a thin strip of sand
to huddle on, with death on either hand;
and migrants setting sail to hoped-for lives
pack into boats, are swallowed by the waves.
What’s the best vantage point? From where can we
get a perspective on humanity?
Find a safe place, Lucretius writes, and you
see struggling people—it’s a splendid view.
Pythagoras too, a passenger on cloud,
saw mankind as baffled and afraid.
Some of us help our neighbors in the flood,
after the fire, as we always did.
Love and dread, the known and the unknown.
We try to live as we have always done.
How long can we go on living this way?
Is it too late, as fire and water say?
This house sits on a hill; we’ve had good luck.
Still, windows, doors, and bureau drawers are stuck.
Having tugged a faded T-shirt out,
I breathe in layers of memories: summers, sweat,
and sunshine—fragrance fainter than the mold
or mildew (these shirts, like me, have grown old)
of winters in this empty house whose cold
rises like a specter from each fold.
Warming the Wax
Sympathy is not only listening
to someone else’s troubles.
It is also passing them back with something changed.
Beeswax malleable from many palms,
rolled into one long amber candle and curled up,
was placed on Nicolas’ chest as he lay in his coffin.
I can remember his face.
The women of Ormos keened.
This was 1971. I stood at the threshold
of the room, the ritual, the culture,
and the realization that it was possible
one didn’t have to suffer things alone.
Fast forward. My friend and I were talking
and in response to something I must have said,
she paused, then said That’s huge.
2008, this might have been. What was huge
I don’t remember. What I do remember:
her words, her voice, her gesture, that she took
my cold hard lump and softened it
between her palms and passed it back to me,
the wax now warm, ready to be reshaped.
The Pool
Up in the attic,
a partition,
relic of a past generation.
On the wall,
stained paper. Peeled,
who knows what
will be revealed?
And there’s more.
Step out the door
to a clear pool
not seen before:
roundish, small
not shallow or deep,
not warm or cool.
Rinsing. Renewal.
Bath of sleep.
Naked, open,
we both lie
back in the water,
stare at a sky
of palest blue.
It’s barely dawn.
It’s twilight too.
It’s very early.
It’s getting late.
We are here—
no time to wait.
The earth is frozen.
It’s winter now,
but spring will come.
New plants will grow.
Their roots reach up
from underground,
already stirring
toward the sun.
You turn to me.
I turn to you.