Narrow Cradle

by Wade Kearley

  out along the apron and into ocean clutter.

  I call to you. And you, bracing your thigh

  against the gunwale, raise your hands to shout,

  but I hear nothing. The wind whips your hair,

  shreds your voice. I wave and you

  turn your face to the sea. Sail into blue polygons.

  911

  Air rushes in as the needle is withdrawn from my chest.

  Halleluiah. My memory is fading.

  I have been saved.

  —shem meditates on his disease

  There is nobody in the water. I listen to their splashing. No one sings to me anymore. And the songs rend my heart. I know we are close because we never touch. All this is true, because it never happened. And I remember it all. I practise hard to get this wrong every time.

  When shadows arise, I invite them in. I invite them to leave me alone. They knit themselves a nest and haunt me. They are guides to nowhere. I am the bones of everything they cannot resist.

  I thought only crows rested in the graves of crows. I’ve never truly understood a single event in my life. I am certain of that. And if that is the end then let it be. I will give you the ungiveable so you may forgive me the unforgivable, and then let’s all go for a drowning.

  —hit and run

  over weak coffee

        and two glazed donuts untouched

              guilt hovers like steam

  —undone

  You free wild cats from a magazine with the scissors you use to tame your pubic hair, trim threads from my underwear, snip brown leaves from the hops.

  In the dusty morning,

   you ravish your desk

    with the cloth

    you use to soothe

     the corners of my mouth,

      blunt the sting of ice on a bruise.

  You trace the edge

   of my tattooed scar

    with the same finger

    you use to uncrust

     your Persian’s eyes,

      stir honey in tepid tea,

       knead yourself to the verge.

  You cut through linen

   to the flesh,

    finger the wound, and

    lick everything clean.

  May on Lawlor’s Brook

  From farmer’s son, who as a boy here played,

  I learned the brook has changed course several times,

  Not floods, but bulldozed as developers laid

  Their pole lines, water pipes, and sewer lines.

  A suspicious otter rummages here now,

  And a small flock of ducks lingers year round;

  In spring they attend skittish peeps of yellow

  Among the rocks, nurse some to fledging brown.

  We who inherit this narrow cradle herd

  Our own broods along the gravel and fret

  That time has not yet revealed the threat

  That might steal them from us without a word.

  But with each one we lose, to hawk or earth,

  I learn to love the power in the plough of birth.

  —Calvary

  After Mary Jo Bang

  The yellow stripe goes with black, goes with yellow, goes with black, and wings that work in practise will not work in theory. So says our guide. She herds us to the almost empty apiary near the crest of a small mound.

  The one-in-every-crowd tourist raises his hand, asks how time waxes in the combs of the bees. Nervous laughter. The ohm of drones is alive in my chest. The wind tilts softly closer through the summer-dry hay.

  On I go with the other eco-tourists crowding the guide along the green path under the bower of almond blossoms. The eye of a swarm approaches, swerves and dives into the grove of nut trees. Surrounds the old keeper who weeps in his netting. We encircle him. Someone pulls off the man’s coveralls. He emerges white as a blanched nut. His hands are punctured, his side bleeds. The bees are dying, the keeper says, again and again. The bees are dying.

  Our guide laments, The hives will grow silent and the honey will harden. The group masses around her, everyone hugging. A humming from these fake bees in costume vibrates in my torso we all fall to our knees. Buzz. No Buzz. Fallow fields are abandoned, while nearby a drone drone drones from stigma to stigmata to a tower which bears witness in pocked letters: DRON BATT RY RE HARGER.

  What’s the buzz? the tourist sings. Tell me what’za happenin’.

  —mother’s day revisited

  On the first Mother’s Day after you died. I felt nothing. Whatever was between us may have been a convenient way for me to avoid saying, You left me. And you responding, You want too much from me. In later years we visited on holidays, went through all the rituals. Except, the only Mother’s Day I called was after you were diagnosed with cancer.

  You were barely twenty-four when Dad threw your clothes onto the lawn and banished you for spreading your legs for some married guy you both knew. You say it didn’t happen. Truth is you lugged your suitcase back to your mother and stayed gone.

  I have no childhood memories of you. There are pictures of a park bench and you posing with me and two of my three brothers in cowboy hats, or me buried in sand. That is someone else’s life.

  Years later, you stopped to pick up a hitchhiker not knowing it was me until I opened the door. You bought me dinner. You took me in after I left prison and fed me until I married and left home for another ocean. You even came to visit once. And much later, after we moved back, you reached out with gifts for my daughters.

  I am grateful for all of that, and your weakness for strays. You reached through me to heal deeper regrets. For that I loved you. Enough to be there for one last muddled game of cards, for a last drink together, for your last attempt at suicide, to ask you, Where should we take your ashes (that was a mistake), for your last breath.

  There are other times, like today, when your hand is cold on my shoulder and I relive every memory of you, searching for a warm touch or a glance. Each time I come back empty to this longing, and it hurts because my grieving is easy.

  —a reason to smile

  I choke on my own voice

  and run into the driveway,

  angry with you, angry with me,

  that I let you make me spin out of control.

  I feel like a knee-jerk watch dog.

  I wash your clothes, mind the grandkids.

  Inbound jets come roaring out of the sky.

  Things could be okay.

  I stub my toe on a brick someone left

  in the driveway. I pick up the scooter

  and the bike, hobble them into the backyard.

  Everything is alright.

  The garden is overgrown, grass in thick clumps.

  New leaves hang frost nipped, last year’s grapes

  are raisins on the vine, and I realize

  the weight I feel in my bones

  is mine alone to carry.

  I see a stranger in the street

  with a woman on his back.

  They don’t know me,

  but I wonder if they could tell me

  why I’m laughing?

  —he drank the river

  It is late when the sun

       melts shadows from the alley where he sleeps.

            Darkness drips from the hem of his coat.

       Just off downtown Yonge Street,

  old Acorn gasps on the flop-house steps while

       a dark rivulet stains the curb, the greasy gutter.

            Not yet old, but nearly gone, he heads

      for the Waverly to steady his nerves.

  So many words yet to find—in this trade

      that leaves him falling for alcohol, calling,

  and falling, fermenting, fomenting,

      taking flight along Donwood Ra
vine.

  Lost for months now, or is it hours?

            It is ten years yet before his ex-wife

      will put her head in a gas oven. But before that

  befalls them, he must drink himself to death.

            He must put dreams to paper.

      He must be here, intoxicated by his vision,

  publishing mimeographs from a bunker

      for young writers in every dive,

  snatching anything he can steal

      from bohemian embassies, fermenting, fomenting,

  gnawing hollow bones.

  In the alley Acorn, with adoration pooling around him,

      envisions his future in a half-full glass,

  a lifeline blurred by beer and memories

      of hostile gunfire that punctuate his sleep.

  He knows the revolution will not wait.

      He knows streams are converging along the edge.

  One small victory is all he needs,

      and he sees it in the tears of his acolytes,

  sees the river slowly carving deeper channels.

      He christens the movement, toasts voices with alcohol.

  They echo inside his hollow bones.

      He must take flight over the ravine.

      Acorn, eyes like a bird,

  drags his battle feathers out

      of the alley to skirmish in the open

            flow of the sidewalk,

      into the streaming honks

            and down the street,

                 even as the concrete heaves,

                      tilts him sideways

  and he pukes so hard he forgets he can fly.

  From his habitual bar stool, he recalls submissions,

      staples the corners of anger and love, gives it away,

            gives away the song inside himself.

      Fuck, he is thirsty. He is thirst.

  He drinks the river of his pain. He is fermenting,

  fomenting for the people.

      And their song

            lifts him out of himself.

  June on Lawlor’s Brook

  The pools green with weeds, and the water seeps

  Over the rocks and fills this tributary,

  Carrying seeds and mosquito larvae deep

  In dark, mirrored clouds rising from the wary

  East. They are coming, and we grow weary

  And slow in the heat, forget to keep

  Faith with the widening commentary

  Where this brook and Virginia River meet.

  And so, I fear, I’ve drifted through my days

  And let the thoughts that carry me sweep me

  Away. Just now I sensed the quickening

  Of early summer rain, when nothing stays

  As it is for long before rushing free

  Down river, to the sea of awakening.

  —coming clean

  In the shower, warm water

  pours over my head and chest.

  I’m stepping out of my skin.

  Becoming droplets. Becoming that river.

  Do you remember how we lay there?

  Arms bent in the coolness, seeking

  speckled trout where they hid

  underneath the banks. Rubbing fingertips

  along smooth bellies, I grabbed for the gills,

  flung fish thrashing into the grass.

  You always wanted to put them back.

  The shower drums my ribs,

  a torrent of rain that patters a pool.

  Near the bank, two cranes wade, necks long

  and supple, arms intertwined, their beaks

  imitating hands. I want to reach out,

  hold you close, but I so often failed

  when you needed me, that now

  I’m afraid we’re too far apart.

  The water trails down my back

  and licks the inside of my thighs.

  The rivulets converge

  at my feet and I am reminded

  of our last hike together.

  You spied a newborn calf, and then

  its mother, her head immersed

  among pond lilies. Returning for air,

  she was startled by our closeness and gave chase.

  I raced you all the way back to the car.

  Naked now on these cold tiles

  I am ready for my confession.

  —amy chains

  Lyrics: Wade Kearley

  Music: Tamsyn Russell

  Never had no other lover could get inside my head. My face is crying in the mirror when I remember what you did

  Chorus

  You took a taxi to the station, you boarded a one way train. Now I feel so damn broken, I just can’t stand the pain

  Chorus

  It meant nothing that I loved you, love’s chains are all I get. They’re wound so tight around me, that I never can forget

  Chorus

  These heavy drag down blues, got me chained up every day and I never saw it coming, until I saw you walk away

  Outro

  Oh yeah Amy, Amy, Amy, I said Amy unchain me.

  Go on set me free.

  Tell me what I need to hear

  go on Amy unchain me.

  Set me free

  —and now that you are not there

  If I could see you tonight, we’d sit in the car,

  rain hitting the sunroof, the windows ajar,

  admitting the mist, a hint of grass

  laden with pollen and dust from fallow fields.

  I might bring tulips or white and purple lilacs,

  or perhaps the peppery lupine plucked

  along the path. I might not bring you flowers

  at all. I might bring honey. I might bring

  an emergency roadside flashlight. I might bring

  a hymn torn from your book of songs.

  I might caress your feet, press my fingers

  between your toes, imagine anything was

  possible. Our gossip, weeds in a greenhouse,

  stalky and tangled, impatient for sunlight.

  Alone as the sun bows the horizon,

  sleep forgotten, I recall the promises forsaken,

  the vanity that permitted my betrayals.

  And as my needs slowly untangle, I pray

  for the flicker of a songbird

  and the moment when desires take flight.

  —postcard from the hills above clarenville

  The morning glowers as I shiver up through the dawn. Birds chatter in the trees, thunder tumbles. In the narrow clear-cut, fog scours tree stumps, dampens piles of blasty branches with a heavy mist. The wind combs blackflies into my hair. I hurry on under the brow of the storm, knowing deerflies will sniff me out if I stop for a breath, knowing I have a hundred miles and miles more, before I shed the weight on my back.

  I try to think only of where I am right now. Let the distance take care of itself, one step at a time. And in this hush thoughts of family—of my sweet daughters darting barefoot through their youth.

  And now, the crackle all around as lightning rips the morning open. I feel a nudge from each of the people who shared their homes and lives with me for a laugh, a meal, a night. My home is five days’ hike away, but tonight there will be refuge under another stranger’s roof.

  July on Lawlor’s Brook

  Kneeling, I found a frog in my tomato patch,

  Hidden there under the protective scrim

  As summer forgot to deepen and the frog to swim.

  As it bobbed in the bucket that I’d fetched,

  I vowed it would not die under my watch,

  This soft-skinned pr
ayer. Grandchildren on a whim

  Decided they knew what was best and fed him

  Crackers on his plank boat, then went to dredge

  Worms and black beetles from the river mud.

  Cold blooded, I pondered the lost years I took

  Worshipping in my garden as if it were a nave,

  Me wholly hidden, harrumphing like a dud.

  And so, I sloshed the bucket to the brook,

  Decanted the only hymn that I could save.

  —postcard from under a bridge

  The thumb-sized beetle shoves its brown body from the brook and climbs a boulder, clings there, pushing and shoving at the husk of its underwater life. New flesh emerges, emerald shingles and the shimmer of transparent wings. It waits there, buffeted, gathering all the wind can tell. Wings turn like antennae sensing every draft, unfold, flicker as its colours fade to black. Almost torn from the rock by the wind, it climbs slowly to a smooth lip of granite and, its lessons at an end, the dragon flies.

  —il cauto

  (study for a documentary on the secret life of squid)

  She jets away from her squad,

  her three hearts all pumping copper blood,

   then she darts through my breath as it worries upward.

    Her tentacles drift over her funnel and mantle,

    then trail in streamers as she circles me,

     pulsing red. In a cloud of blue ink

      she dives upward to glide briefly

       into the air, then returns to the sea.

      She cloaks herself once more in blue, but her fear

     dissolves when a school of small fish sprints by.

    She snags one with a tentacle and deftly drags

    the herring fry into her arms,

     subdues it with toxins that kindle its heart.

      She shreds its flesh with her beak

       and then flies away. Her wing-like fins

        beat as she descends, avoiding my slow-motion pans

         that would record her secret life. I trail her