—for my oldest
Rows of Yukon kings hung
in strips over alder frames.
A tin shack held the smoke
so it drifted around the fish,
which dripped a dark orange oil
onto blackened soil. The run
I ask the river if he were Rizal what he would be.
A boat on a river or a river in a boat.
Would Rizal rather be in the belly of a whale
or have a whale in his belly. I ask Rizal
as if he were a river and he never blinks
or makes smacking sounds to register his disapproval.
To have a blind spot
there must be
a surrounding clarity.
Being a mother
brings me the world
I have already
blindly traveled.
2 Samuel 14:14
The soapy drench is physics drawn to river
toward me, 15 feet away in my flimsy
chair. At first its body fans to deliver
brims to concrete sinks I had not glimpsed,
then narrows to speed unveiling dips and bellies,
then courses on to a hole with a remnant pool
anchored by a cigar butt. A halt belies
its reaches. A lump has pushed the grey drool
around the promised lake in delta featherings
while another drive has passed beneath my seat
to rest in my colossal shadow, clearing
its slate of suds. The flow now ponds in the heat
and readies its ghost mirror to catch me, gray
in noon’s appraisals, the reaper of the day.
c. 1490 Leonardo da Vinci
Oh, Mary! It must have been a revelation
to breastfeed your boy the will of God.
All I had to offer was the usual. For years
after my son was weaned, I still had milk.
By MORRI CREECH
The flatteries of the surf conspire to make
a stammering innuendo in the reeds.
The sun, splintered by the spume’s refractions,
sinks toward the west where it will disappear
in a violet streak above the evening dunes,
like mind considering the defeat of mind.
A cormorant in the distance breaks the surface
to wrestle a mullet from the sullen depths
farther below which no light penetrates.
The creature was flushed from the snow
& flung like a tiny, limp footbag
before I could catch up to cup it below
my hands. While they collared the dog,
Far from our house, winding roads
and years away. I promised we’d never
bring him here. Behind black iron gates,
brick walls smothered with ivy.
A public square in every town, monuments
whitened in patches by lime and bird droppings.
Streets and bridges named after those who came
in galleons. They banished to the outskirts
Close your trap. Everyone you’ve ever lost lost
everything. Life’s closed. It’s not even close. At least
they aren’t distant. As if a stiff flick to existence
flung them unfetchably far to the shadiest suburbs
of substance, where no wintry entropy disturbs
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