Heart of Scrimshaw

I gave love back to the universe, and 

all the marrow I scooped from the sun

I returned to the sun and kept the cold 

rock of the moon. 

I wound every smile back

into the skein.

A beautiful dinner that night:

all hen-of-the-woods and morels, 

chanterelles and I lost myself in the saucepan, 

still heart for a moment during the strange,

gray May spring. 

Missing a thing defies the entire landscape

and is blasphemous in no worthy way. 

Yet my bones sing the tired ache, 

I'm real down and out, 

I wipe dust from my eyes 

and consider my keeper.

I have poison thoughts that taste 

bitter and half-cooked, like 

Love is a big dam exploding 

and nothing good happening.

And as time confesses, 

I see that it's true:

Much is fluky, 

maybe unavailing, all in flocks

and scattered showers,

The sky-the bird, 

the cloud-the need,

like a past poet said. 

I remember that bird, looking up at my 

lingering face as it died in my hands

soft and tiny. 

I am not your woman, 

not your fox hole, belong to nothing 

but the roaring vacuum, 

nothing but the scream of 

wind the only embrace for the poorest. 

Poor poor soul, 

wishing for unintelligible extravagances. 

Knives stuck in hides.

I will be in San Simeon soon,

to gaze down on the rookery of seals.

Fully bereft of all but the present-

full galed, full upright. 

I have feared all the changes- 

I've dreaded the mornings,

I've needed more rations

than the rations

I've gotten,

past is a volume on a high shelf

but I am tall and sometimes too tall. 

Brave and sometimes too brave,

asking the earth to offer equal, 

time and long drive crease my palms, 

love I am your ally always. 

Coast recognize

my heart of scrimshaw