*

                                They’re eggs nobody wants :snow

                                all day falling from their nest

                                and these waves broken in half

 

                                —it’s so long since I sang

                                —I forgot how a word, one

                                then another, another and I am flying

                                taking hold a mountain, somehow the top

                                then stars —even the drowned

 

                                will rise to the surface

                                looking for air and the cold

                                —all winter this sea kept warm

                                —some bomber ditched, its engines left on

                                —four small furnaces and still forging

wings

                                from bottom sand, shaped the way each wave

                                still lifts the Earth, then tries again

 

                                —each year the sea made warmer

                                by those same fires every mother

                                nurses with soft words :this snow

                                growing strong, already senses

                                the flight back as lullabies —my mouth

 

                                can’t close, a monster eating snow, my lips

                                swollen from water and cold and loneliness

                                —someone inside my belly

                                has forgotten the word I need to say

                                or sing or both my arms into the sea 

                                feeding and feeding and feeding. 

 

 

 

                                *

                                This birthmark through my neck

                                expects these storms, waits

                                the way an iron rod pointing north

                                and in the darkness to volcanoes, water

 

                                —it learned to wake my jaws at night

                                for steam, drinking from the patch

                                and grunts pushed back into the cup

                                that always cracks

 

                                that must like this portable electric range

                                filled with crushed seawalls, tea leaves

                                lightning —one o’clock in the morning

                                —one eye at first, already thirsty

 

                                already drilling for water

                                for the still wanted spark

                                —cup after cup :a bridge higher, higher

                                and the sea that was born from these storms

 

                                that keeps looking under :waves

                                that let nothing pass, taste 

                                from one arm holding another

                                attached to some invisible dog

 

                                still asleep, waiting under this table

                                as if a ladder

                                and soon more stars :missing pieces

                                melting this darkness for its thunder

 

                                its side to side through my throat

                                almost water again and my bare scar

                                as if it belongs

                                even without the stitches

                                the wires and craters.

 

 

                                *

                                And the sun in ashes

                                leaning against this mist

                                not yet split into logs

 

                                —you once flew through the sun

                                without its flames, went blind

                                watching how its light peels off

                                half born, half glowing in you stove

                                half no smoke yet, whose shadow

                                still has some heat left

 

                                is older than the ground

                                and every morning held down

                                by rope, never loose again

 

                                —even without your eyes

                                the vapor trails still pull the sun

                                closer to its fire, to this iron gate

                                left out in the cold the way a net

                                is carried across a desert, sifts

                                for missing branches, birds

                                the light covered over, still breathing.

 

 

                                *

                                You expect the noon-alarm at City Hall

                                —it’s the tangled siren from nowhere

                                skidding corners, trucks and nozzles

                                and when it’s over

 

                                the usual inspections, who started it

                                who —you almost hear the hoses 

                                clawed open, marking off where a sea

                                is buried —you’re never sure

 

                                what’s wave, what’s warm from the fire

                                —all you know is that coastlines

                                and fright have too much in common

                                with pasture, how panic

                                still excites, leads back the years ago

                                eaten to the bone and you

 

                                can hardly breathe, cover your ears

                                the way a thin plume dies out and hillsides

                                pulling up grass, breezes —it’s always noon

                                —you dread the one minute leaping overhead

 

                                from one time to a closer time

                                —you almost hear a plane, the ladders

                                and smoke falling away from you

 

                                —you can’t move

                                and the pain that once could heal

                                suddenly becomes a cry

                                without holding on to your hands

                                or the world.

 

 

                                *

                                Ankle deep it’s Spring, these stones

                                already green —to keep from falling in

                                he’s taught himself to limp, stutters

                                while I bathe the invisible dog

                                that clings to his chest, whose fur

                                bristling with gooseflesh half at the

controls

                                half iron pail for the drinking cup

 

                                —he must dread the splash

                                is trained to wade slowly and where 

                                the waves are buried, where these stones

                                harden, climb to that same altitude

                                they once flew —a sky

                                still slippery, filled all at once

                                with 12 dark-green stones

 

                                and he looks up, says my fingers

                                as if the spray reminded him

                                how his first breath is now too matted

                                though it tries to leap, its huge jaw

                                licking its paws —a few months each year

 

                                he wobbles into a water

                                that’s falling off the Earth and he says

                                his fingers are too heavy, says

                                hold him, save him.

 

 

— Simon Perchik