at allantide continued

iii.

Something in this cold day reminds me of sunlight in michigan city indiana,

reminds me of marching up and down one half hour to the beach to be

confronted by the silent scream of blue water and nothing to do but

be in its nothing, no distraction from the action of all of those mermaids,

all of their tails flapping, arms waving saying, this bitch is a liar, this bitch is a liar,

don’t trust her round fat ass or her check mark eyebrows,

this bitch is a liar and it was we who would see

that she never come here.

The river is fat and muscled, waves rolling into waves, satin and oil, copper

yellow and brown on allantide.

It flexes its liquid flesh, fuller than its been since springtime, thick and high

the shagwa opens its breast, takes in the sky and sends it back in muted shades,

oak leaves like little starry hands flap to fall on streets making yellow carpets

everywhere they meet,

carpets to milk and cookie the earth and water mud for the older year

turning the new year on the day of old souls as we slip candles into windows

and yellow flames in terra cotta pots lick the black night telling lost souls

to come in.

Old souls come in, kept souls come in, souls forgotten come in,

souls that are dim, all of them who help me here,

dragonish souls come in, grandmother come in,

i’ve got your cigarettes on the altar,

Linda come in, the boy who fell in the river come in.

Sit here and listen to the psalms, now, on the longest night,

remember all the songs.

bible verses from the book of Daniel.

Everything that passed passes through again,

by this spark of burning light I swear,

everything lost is found again.

You were eighteen and just a baby when you fell into

the winter water and like moses or elijah no one knows how

it happened, we thought we’d never find your body.

Just a baby, washed up, a boy under a bridge,

destined for so much, but reckoned for dead.

In this small space I hold the moment of your passing.

It isn’t mine to let go,

my letting goes are yet to come.

iv.

at allantide we arrive at the Eight Gated Castle, and it is the one

that can’t be seen. This is the mountainous mother, twirling and turning,

never seen on peaks or islands, but reached through them,

reached through the rivers and running under earth.

by hidden gates we leave the common world.

this is the Not World, the Un Season.

this is the birth of all of our births.

we want a world without seasons. That’s just a fact.  John for Jesus

and roses for snow.

But we know Christ was born in winter, and came to the frozen world

from the depths of a cave on the very back of a stag

from the house that overlooks the copper colored river she sees a gate

to Annwn, and in it all her forty years twisting out before her.

they untwist in the taste of whiskey on her lips, the smoke of the sacrifice

rising from the tip of her cigarette.

Her breasts are still full.

heavy on her chest they are her pleasure.

All her body is a pleasure and she thinks

It has taken twenty years to learn that

the lover I yearned for was really just

me wanting a distraction from becoming me,

I thought I would do that when he got here,

that he would take care of all those things or

better, that I would take care of him,

that finally I,

who didn’t want to live for myself,

could live for him

and put all of this away, but this life

is my baby and my husband and how do men hear this?

they don’t want to hear this,

my poetry, is the living with the eyes wide open.

Oh, lady who keeps my eyes wide open,

don’t let me drift back to the troubled sleep again,

the place of nightmares                         

let me be here on the edge, no matter what.

                          I can’t ever ask for anything better than that.