Affinity
Page 7
you, and me, and others, specific,
needy, all unsortable,
there the ropy sway of acrobatic mountaineers
corded together, strung in a line,
toggled, cramponed.
And the climbing.
And the holding.
Bare ruinous coirs
threading athwart time.
There is everything to begin.
But it seemed as if nothing can or will or could
(tense problem)
(begin).
COMRADESHIP
It is node of
tightened snags;
is a knot garden;
is a splay of quipu;
is many-colored shimmers drawn
with embroidery silks
around padded trapunto;
is “a more or less complex, compact intersection
of interlaced cord, ribbon, rope, or the like.”
It is a power bundle
of peerless conjure and conjecture.
Impossible to do one metaphor only
from the sheer joy.
Of being like this.
But eventually one wakes
shaking out those silver streamers
from the nub, examining
their beauty, regarding them
suspiciously. Yet always
a little fondly.
Other moments
stayed vivid
in such flashes
as shoelaces.
Shoelaces!
What little tie will hold
when you are brought
to this edge?
THE FISHERMAN’S KNOT
Strings follow knots,
knots demand strings,
and journeys capitulate
to restlessness.
Sounds start how-where
in birds, chk-warble,
or in the silences
of fish flickering,
but they exist for you only
when you hear them.
Unless you begin thinking
of real birds, real fish,
actual water enchained and linked.
Of really being here.
Then your sense
of implication becomes
quite a bit more complicated.
Now seeing at least two
separate lines clearly,
or, as you say, clearly,
to tie, lay the two ends together
each pointing in the opposite direction.
Tie an overhand knot in the end of each
around the standing part of the other.
When drawn tight
the two knots slide together
and will not slip.
This will hold different strings
and extend them by
reciprocal pressures along the juncture.
The many times we want to use this
might surprise you.
THE CAT’S-PAW
A forty-five-foot train runs like a river
from her Red Dress.
Foldings and loopings of material
matter
more than rufflings,
though there are rutchings
aplenty.
Then there is sheer
length to consider.
One is forced to reflect
on a Dress that Big.
Extent is flooded by its flag-bright color,
a red paint poured, pooling in sunlight.
If I were an engineer
I would schedule
site assessments,
public hearings,
maybe (though conceding
nothing) recalibrations.
But even without them, the ambition is clear.
A high wind roars in the valley of the seam.
The Cat’s-Paw is a hook hitch for heavy loads.
One grasps the two bights held well apart
twisting each away from you.
The strength occurs
in the double twist
and the oppositional direction
of their bearings.
The two loops thus formed
are brought together, tensile, vivid,
and placed over one hook.
THE WALK ON A BLOCKED PATH
Itchy.
Just as the raw brown twine
with the key is, on my neck.
I walked along the obstructed path.
There was a drop on one side.
Twig piles and shagged-off branches
had been left thickly on the path
to prevent more erosion.
But this
became a further impediment, tangle
crisscrossed and cracking under foot.
Snakes hid in the side patches,
I, banging with a peeled stick
from the same woods
in which I was enmeshed.
I tripped. I pitched down.
I blamed myself.
Being
a) in the middle
of a woods, a
wayward, I
would design a way
with words,
but only stuttering
way-off words.
b) steadfast with the key still
hung around my neck
the twine itching
as I walked the key
to the hidden mailbox
with its little keyhole.
THUS
The two struggled by design.
Neither could see the witless
witness, affirm the with-ness they denied,
though they were two ends
of the same rope,
wrestling with
themselves
locked into, snarled up, and
roused beyond by power and by
seeking it. Or seeking
to be overcome
by contact and searing.
CROSS AND TWIST
Is this possible—
being given, and driven by the knot?
this set of tracks
these woven intersections, intricate lines,
the turn and fold,
and the monumental desire and failure?
The ropes are scrolls
the scrolls are ropes,
Their rubric words remain bright red.
And these almost invisible bumps and swellings?
Nodules of commentary.
ANY REGRETS?
It was all necessary,
the desire, the loss, the itch, the anger,
the impossible push,
the separated cartilage.
And what now?
Acknowledge
that it was all necessary?
Or just refuse to concede?
STRING THEORY
Inside there are three strong stands
on which one’s past is tied:
carrick bend
(for heavy ropes
that cannot be tightened by hand)
sheet bend
(unties easily
without injuring rope fibers)
and sheepshank
(used to shorten rope).
So bright and clear
in this billowy air,
there is no sense of solidity,
no sense of crux or knot.
Yet it is all knot,
knots to which one is apprenticed,
knots pulling contradictions tight,
spun solids spiraling into void,
wads of matter,
the efficiency of the splice,
the memorable torque:
it was all there
although also all air.
ANOTHER METAPHOR
In the closet
the basket falls over.
nineteen spools of silky thread—
all the faded thread that chance had left here—
have rolled into a corner
noisily on those wooden spools
the way they<
br />
knock about and ricochet
down the already tangled
warp of strangeness
pink notions, green cotton
mercerized,
thick black coat thread
a few pearly shirt buttons thrown in,
a hook, an eye, an allegory, a clew,
ball of old yarn rolled out
and traveling toward the center of the labyrinth.
Yards of yarn
loops of line,
texted and tangled
the wild loose threads, their unintended knots.
How did they manage such a colorful mix
from random thread spools knocking together in corners?
How could we not honor this urge for entanglement?
And intransigence—the thing that ties double knots.
Meaning that: first things are tied, then untied,
first raveled, then unraveled,
a joke
like flammable and inflammable.
So bound by the twine
that unwound in this labyrinth
quickened by the mystery of maze
we get tightened anew in the center of words,
clotted like blood and snared at the core
of former days.
—June–October 2007; November 2015
NOTE. The found language in this poem, including its title, is from the pamphlet “Useful Knots and How to Tie Them,” a free handout from the Plymouth Cordage Company in Plymouth, Massachusetts, copyright 1946, and distributed by Louis E. Helm Marine Company in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in the 1950s. “A more or less complex, compact intersection of interlaced cord, ribbon, rope, or the like” is the dictionary definition of knot from The American Heritage Dictionary. The Red Dress that makes an appearance in one section is by the artist Beverly Semmes, 1992, seen in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.
North Brother Island: cottage overlooking East River. Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives.
Where You Go I’ll Go
Elizabeth Gaffney
15 SEPTEMBER 1907
Blue and bright white, a sparkling day. I am out of gray yarn.
Sometimes she daydreamed of bodies washing ashore. Or maybe those weren’t dreams.
The boat had sunk three years ago, before she ever came to the island. A thousand women and children drowned or burned when the steamer Slocum went down just off North Brother Island, a thousand souls, a thousand ghosts.
She glanced over to see if Tyrone could see them too, smell them, but he slept on, twitching and farting.
She stared out the windows at the riverscape, vaster than any possible from the city. Not quite the coast of Ireland, what with the oil tanks across the water, in the Bronx, but the air was damp enough to let the skin breathe. And here she sat, leading a life of indolence, when her mother’d never rested an hour straight.
It was a dream, a life of ease—if only she had chosen it.
It was a nightmare, a foreign prison—which might have been tolerable if only Freddie were with her. They might have enjoyed the quiet together, except for those sodden limbs scudding. And if only Carrie Bowen weren’t out there among them, little Carrie, skipping along the shore like it was the coast of Maine, counting the bodies the same way she used to count anything—lobster boats, seagulls, lady’s slippers.
Four hundred eighty, four hundred eighty-one, four hundred eighty-two. Mary tried to calculate how many minutes it would have taken the child to count to a thousand.
She wondered how she’d survive without company other than ghosts. Reading, knitting, housekeeping—for what?
They said she’d sickened people. Clearly a lie, for only such a very few of the people she’d cooked for had ever taken ill. People did take sick just on their own, after all. If the miasmas got to them. It wasn’t the cook’s fault. It was the doctors’. They were the ones who couldn’t help when Carrie was stricken, and Mary’d been made the devil. Now here she was, forbidden to cook or break bread with anyone.
There were twelve windows, nine panes each, 108 little windowlets. She’d counted them and she’d cleaned them with sheets of The New York Times. Flashing in the sun, the windows wrapped around three sides of her one-room cottage. You couldn’t ask for a brighter, airier place, but somehow the light just made the loneliness louder. She looked at the sweater in her basket, still short an arm and no yarn left. More was on the way but for now she got out her tatting instead and peered through loops of white thread at her own hand.
2 NOVEMBER 1907
Greenish and greasy, like dishwater, overcast. A strange woman knocking at my door.
She peered through loops of white thread—the curtain she’d tatted—at a woman’s face.
“I’ve brought you a parcel. May I come in?”
“Set it on the step,” said Mary.
“I’d like to speak with you too, if I might. Would you walk with me to the ferry landing? It isn’t cold.”
“Ah, so they haven’t given up on the samples, after all. You shy or just tactful?”
It made her sick, what the doctors wanted from her, a scoop of her own waste every day.
“I don’t know anything about samples, Miss Mallon. I’m nothing to do with samples.”
“What are you to do with then?” Mary wrapped her stole more firmly around her shoulders.
“I work at the hospital—I’m a nurse—but only here to be sociable. I heard about you. And, well, you see, I’ve already had the typhoid myself.”
Mary looked at her, pondering whether she was genuine. “Have you then.”
A warm day, for fall. The stones crunched under their feet.
“I’m on the children’s ward. I gather you’ve worked with children.”
“The families I worked for had them, so I fed them, washed them, scolded them, and put them to bed at night.”
“We have many children here, not enough matrons.”
“I thought you were a nurse.”
“I am a nurse. They need more care than nurses can give.”
“You’re asking something of me?”
“We could use your help with lessons, reading to.”
“You don’t worry I’ll make them sick?”
“They’re sick already. And you’re not going to cook their meals. What they need is kindness.”
“Who says I’m kind?”
“What you are is here. Here when their mothers can’t be.”
“I’ve never been sick a day in my life, you know. I’m not sick now. I’m as strong as an ox. It’s madness that I’m here.”
“You’re clearly in good health. And of course you don’t want to be here. But consider this: it’s a gift to the children that you are. That’s the wonder of it.”
“Some wonder, locked up on quarantine island.”
“You must be so bored, with just your needlework, a few magazines.”
“I’ve got Tyrone, haven’t I?” Mary nodded her chin at the yellow dog who loped along beside them.
“By the way, I’m Addie. Adelaide Offspring.”
“Are you then? Good for you. Don’t guess I need any introduction.”
“No, Miss Mallon. You’re known to me. That’s why I came.”
2 JANUARY 1908
Cold, pale sky, like shreds of white lace on the ceiling of the heavens.
“I came because I wanted to say how pleased I am. How well it seems to be going—your work with the children.”
“Milk and two sugars,” muttered Mary.
“Why, yes, that’s right. Thank you.”
“Never forget how a person takes her tea,” said Mary.
“So, how are the children? Are you enjoying them?”
“Ah, well. Most of them are brats, but that’s children for you. I like the one called Gwennie. She has pluck. I’d like to see her make it home.”
Addie smiled. “She might yet.”
“Best thing for her’d be to go home to her mother.”
&n
bsp; “The rules are hard. Speaking of which, how stands your appeal?”
“Wrote to the judge again. Told him I sailed to this country for freedom, not to live in a jail when I’ve done no crime.”
“Any reply?”
“None yet.”
“It’s smells good in here. Baking?”
“Raisin tart,” said Mary, thinking of Carrie Bowen, whose favorite it had been. And then she hesitated. “Care for a slice?”
Addie swallowed. “Yes, thank you. I think I would.”
When she finished it, she smiled. “Would you cut me another, Mary? It’s delicious.”
25 JANUARY 1908
Sky is oatmeal today, dull and lumpy, snow coming.
“Won’t you cut me another, Mary?” begged Gwennie, holding up the chain of paper dolls, little boys in short pants joined at the toes and the hands. “But make it girls this time—girls in dresses, with pigtails!”
“Oh, you! Girls are more difficult, you know.”
But she’d cut out girls for Carrie Bowen. She could do them just as deftly as boys. Her reluctance came from the last chain she’d made for Carrie, the one the girl had colored in so carefully, when she was ill—collars on their dresses and rosy cheeks and all, perfect in a way that paper dolls weren’t meant to be.
Mary had crumpled them and watched them flare up in the grate when she was cleaning the sickroom afterward.
“Please, Miss Mary, won’t you try?”
So Mary folded a sheet of newsprint like an accordion and took up her sewing scissors. Snip, snip. It didn’t take her long. She handed one end to Gwennie, took the other herself, and shook the cutouts gently till they bridged the gap between them like a merry gang of schoolgirls, heels and skirts flying in the wind.
“When can I go out and play, Mary?”
“Soon enough. It’s too cold now. First you need to rest, rest and drink your broth, little one.”
Gwennie was feverish and shallow of breath. Her hands were translucent. She couldn’t make it to the toilet without help, much less go outdoors. She was as trapped and alone as Mary.
No visitors. No visitors at all to North Brother Island. Only inmates—patients, doctors, nurses, and workers. Thank God for Addie, Mary thought, remembering how annoyed she’d been the first day she came. Addie had given her the chance to work with the children. And Addie sat with her as the sun dropped behind the pipes and tanks of the oil yard and the shadows rose—keeping at bay the ghosts of the Slocum. Now they came only on the weekends when Addie wasn’t there to discuss the news or play backgammon.
Mary didn’t know why she enjoyed the games with Addie so much. Addie always let her win, like she was some child. Every time, she told Addie, Play for the win, this time. And Addie would start out as if she had a strategy. Mary’d think she had a chance of losing. But every time Addie would pass up some obvious move. She couldn’t bring herself to send Mary, so trapped there on North Brother Island, back to the start.