A Really Good Brown Girl

by Marilyn Dumont

  weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

  till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white, the white

  sheets, airborne, taken in a gust of wind and unbridled ponies, let the ponies

  out, I would open that gate if I could find it, if there was one

  to let you go, to drift up into, out, out

  of this experiment into the dome of all breath and wind and

  reappear in the sound of the first year’s thunder with

  Chigayow cutting the clouds over your eyes expanding, wafting, wings

  of a bird over fields, fat ponies, spruce, birch and poplar, circling

  wider than that tight square sanitized whiteness

  you breathe in, if you could just stop breathing you could

  escape, go anywhere, blow, tumble in the prairie grass,

  bloom in the face of crocuses

  appear in the smell of cedar dust off a saw

  in the smell of thick leather

  in the whistling sounds of the trees

  in the far-off sound of a chainsaw or someone chopping wood

  in the smooth curve of a felt hat, in unbridled ponies

  THE PAY WICKETS

  to my dear papa

  in sanitized gown between

  hard sheets buried

  in a codeine sleep

  dear papa, I know

  you’d rather be betting #3 and #7

  in the Quinella and you’d rather

  be dressing in leather

  belt and boots, tailored, rather be

  choosing your hat and bolo tie

  the one you braided and cut antler bone to finish

  papa, you’d be betting #3 and #7 in the tenth, no doubt, and

  making a big-hearted bet, more than your hands could hold

  anyway, you’d bet, testing the odds, once more

  just one more time before

  the wickets closed, the pay

  wickets closed

  WHAT MORE THAN DANCE

  * * *

  WHAT MORE THAN DANCE

  what more than dance could hold the frame

  that threatens to fall and break the kiss

  of foot and floor, in time with your partner

  what more than chance could draw out space to its breaking then

  back to close, what more than dance

  could make your body answer

  questions you had been asking all your still life,

  what more than dance could make you come

  to your senses about where and how hard

  your foot falls between starting and stopping

  what more than push and pull, this

  symbiotic rumba of sorts, what more and

  all the more reason to

  dance a jig, find your own step between

  fiddle and bow and floorboard

  what more calls your name, makes you trust

  another will know the step and won’t let go

  round and round till the dance is done

  what more than dance could make you lean to another

  as if you’d been leaning that way all your life

  between yours and that other space,

  the steps you learned as a girl to follow

  instead of lead

  ‘Oh, you knew how, you just didn’t

  for fear of having to answer’

  what more than dance could make you climb

  out of your darkness into another’s so you could

  find your own light, what more could make you

  answer, set you cold in bright light and

  let you step out through it all

  BEYOND RECOGNITION

  now when you stand at

  my bedroom door

  you are real

  only now

  it is odd

  you stand there

  at all

  one year past thirteen

  one chilling year

  past six of despair

  you smile

  and I feel

  I have never seen you

  smile before

  AS IF I WERE THEIR SUN

  the shrimp-coloured gladioli

  you push at me,

  unabashedly,

  through the door

  take my breath away and

  remind me of your mutability

  under protective crust,

  their shells open

  and then I know why

  I accept: their sweet tissue

  unfolding,

  as if I were their sun

  HORSEFLY BLUE

  “. . . d’ you believe in god?” I ask

  he says, he “doesn’t

  know,

  care”

  “but,” I say

  “can’t you see that this sky

  is the colour of the Greek Mediterranean,

  and won’t last?”

  although I’ve never seen the Mediterranean

  I have faith

  “can’t you see that this light,”

  “what light?” he says

  is the same as all those other afternoons when

  the light was receding like

  our hairlines, when it shone through

  our winter skin and we

  awoke from a long nap and

  it was light all the time we were sleeping?

  “doesn’t this light remind you of all those other times

  you looked up from your reading

  and were expecting to see

  change and nothing

  did change except the way

  you looked, the way you met the light,

  greeted it at the door as a friend

  or smiled at it from a distance as your lover?

  “can’t you see that the sky is

  horsefly blue?

  I swear I’ve seen this light before;

  before I was born,

  I knew the colour of this sky.

  When I was five

  the yard I played in

  had a sky this colour,” I say

  “what colour?” he says.

  SPINELESS

  the welcome image of you

  is gone; the unwelcome

  image of me is still here

  big, loud and bitching.

  bigger still are my myths,

  the ones I threaten your small frightened frame

  of mind with

  now finally shrunken to

  life-size.

  all you’ve heard are lies.

  and hear me

  bigger than life

  too damn wise and smiling

  bitch of the North

  colder than Jasper and 101st.

  in a minus-forty wind

  waiting for a bus

  nose dripping

  short a quarter

  and too mute to ask for change.

  BLUE SKY POKES

  blue sky pokes through my curtain

  like bluebells in the grass

  and I look into your endless eyes

  and see

  that you know

  all the things I’ll ever say

  or do

  to hurt you

  before I do.

  you know

  even before I do

  how imperfect

  I am

  how human error

  touches your gentle skin

  one fine membrane

  by membrane

  and you in your rough-hewn face and porcelain eyes

  forgive again and again and again.

  WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH MY DOOR

  now I know

  now I know why

  sounds are born from the belly

  when death and birth join hands

  in a round dance circle

  I am alone but held by the heat.

  I am drawn to you I’m scared I want to cry out

  in agony of losses. a sound collects in m
y throat

  like rain in clay pots, bursting in movement and sound.

  let there be sound of death and birth at the same time.

  the hot wind licks my body, licks

  the rustling grasses on the hill where I watch you drift by

  I want to hold you the way the swelter holds me.

  the moss-green bush,

  the muddy green river meet at the edge.

  and I want

  to reach out and make love to it

  like I want

  to reach out and make love to you

  when you walk through my door.

  WILD BERRIES

  when I watch you move

  it’s as if

  my eyes are old hands

  uncovering and furtively picking

  wild berries

  before they fall

  it’s as if

  I am parched

  and you are water

  and my eyes drink

  till I am quenched

  by your smooth taut skin

  it’s as if

  you are a gift I open

  my eyes long fingers

  slowly untying a thin ribbon

  that slips

  beneath crisp paper,

  smoothed out

  by one long slow glance

  A HARD BED TO LIE IN

  a hard night, slept up against a rock face on the side where my mortality looms like a mountain, leaving my life where it is on an edge looking down,

  tempted to jump, sprout wings as fantastic as the married arms that would catch me if I leapt

  I could have easily been a doe on a highway – you a driver, your wife beside you sleeping,

  me grazing, ruminating the coarse clover, wet blades a mixture of green desire and

  regret that I didn’t accept the offer even though

  a gold band shone like a beacon, to ward off prey – not to be mistaken for a jacklight,

  just a doe, a stretch of road, high beams

  headlights, your eyes,

  legs petrified at the speed of light, a flash burn, flare

  transfixed by the jacklight and the daylight of the woman who moves touching you with her mouth of the moist night,

  the night of my turning, aching, having to disclose your desire for me, turning to yet another confession in my bed, another crease,

  the safe imagined hand crosses my breast to my waist, pubic bone and thigh, turns to another imagined and perfect clean slice of a meeting, the one where I would have met you years ago when you were an open space, a meadow to be walked through at high altitudes

  and the nights turning

  down, wears out

  trust in my age, that

  flat sheets and a hard bed will not forgive.

  TALKING ON STONE

  pull me to the place

  of talking on stone,

  pull me to talking

  on stone, on rock, remembering

  not your face or figure, your

  breath’s weight on my outer layer

  of dust, common layer

  of dust, ash, ochre, blood,

  paint, draws us to the space, to the

  heat, we are drawn to the line, common line

  of talking on stone.

  RECOVERY

  it may be too deep

  for you to enter now

  you can enter slowly

  you know

  you enter by breathing in deep

  and when you breathe out

  you’re inside

  a tree branching out

  your palms running up

  the inside of trunks

  into limbs that reach

  for spring air and hope

  spreading fingers that point

  into leaves

  blades of grass

  now fingers running through

  black

  moist

  edible

  earth

  that you inhale and enter birth

  SPRING BREATHING

  the night birds assure me

  you’re ready,

  that even though

  you’re silent,

  you’re ready,

  that even though

  you’re still,

  you’ve changed

  and that even though

  you’re reticent,

  you’re

  resolute

  like the grandfathers.

  and I go on moving

  ashamed

  for I know

  I have lost

  the meaning of your signs

  and the trust

  in your breathing

  BREAKFAST OF THE SPIRIT

  things that are

  like nothing else is,

  familiar as the smell of your own scent

  taste of your own skin

  sight of your own body

  familiar as the force of spring water,

  the sound of chickadees

  in a stand of mute spruce

  familiar as the ripple in your throat

  waiting for your voice to return

  from the sealed-off jars of memory

  released now to feast on the preserves

  after you’ve slept so long

  tasted now, at the celebratory breakfast of your awakening.

  A BOWL OF SMOOTH BROWN WOOD

  a chant, a chant of movement, a movement chant, holding light and letting go, gathering again, garnering into self, gathering flowers in a field, sweeping them into the cave of the belly, holding them vase-like, gently cradling their stems, petals, roots in the palms of several hands, cradling, suspended in the space between, in the moment between earth and body, passing light from the fingers outstretched into the room saved for our opening, our tender dangerous opening, woman’s space, space free of rule or sin, free to move, thrust out and back and around without censor, without viewer except the mind’s eye of the wise woman, the compassionate woman inside who loves the gentle swish of her womb in hips free of scrutiny

  a chant, a movement chant, chain of movements linked to breath and light and sweep and flick of letting go, pulling back to pulling into the round, space in the curve of, the curl of your belly bow, in the curl of your body-belly, arms and legs, a bowl of smooth brown wood, older than the memory of itself, itself changing, recomposing, petals drop to allow the stamen / stamina to fill out space in the positive

  pulling back to pulling round space in the curl of the body-belly, arms and legs curve a bowl of smooth brown wood, older than the memory of itself, the memory of itself changing

  YOU ONLY KNOW AFTER

  open door, opening wider to warm air, a sound so calm it opens your pores, skin pours out into light, sun falling on the warm last day

  there is something thankful about events that take place without plan, without thought of just opens like a letter from a deep friend, opens like your eyes every morning, like a curtain unfolding the day and you only think of it as you lift the cup of coffee to your lips, as you slow your steps at a corner, you only know you’ve changed after, after you turn off the light and you find yourself back in bed, in your familiar hollow

  or after you sit quiet and know that something inside has after walking down the same street you’ve walked countless times only this time tracing every line in the sidewalk, every reflection, every angle of the glass in the store window is new, every face profound and familiar

  after the voices inside retire, after they have stopped talking, after they listen, when they finally hear the sound between after they go quiet and turn their heads to the sound that suspends you over the same ground you stepped before, over the same path and wooden steps you sounded down before

  after passing through the same door to your home, after the song is over you hear it hanging in the air like clothes on a line

  MY MOTHER’S ARMS

  gentle giant in my head

  warm me.

  gentle giant in my bed

 
; soothe me,

  bathe me in love,

  in light from your eyes

  warm as my mother’s eyes at night

  in sight of birch trees

  young and white

  as I am old

  in my mother’s arms.

  GUILT IS AN EROSION

  of self, a cleansing

  a rock in a slide

  ground down

  wedged, crushed, scraped

  against rock

  against ice

  a filing

  a polishing

  what remains is cold

  black shiny

  granite

  perfect palm size

  NOT JUST A PLATFORM FOR MY DANCE

  this land is not

  just a place to set my house my car my fence

  this land is not

  just a plot to bury my dead my seed

  this land is

  my tongue my eyes my mouth

  this headstrong grass and relenting willow

  these flat-footed fields and applauding leaves

  these frank winds and electric sky

  are my prayer

  they are my medicine

  and they become my song

  this land is not

  just a platform for my dance

  ONE DAY IN MAY

  a photographer exposed you