Carol Frost

The mourning dove wearing noon’s aureole coos from the rhododendron, oo-waoh, shadow o- ver what to do. Oh. And the sad rhetoric spreads through suburb and wood. Those who hear dove moan love no querulous warbling more— the going hence about which is there no- thing to do? From no small rip in fate the you you never shall be more will be extracted. Dove knows the rubric and starts in, who, who is next and soon?

It was dusk, the light hesitating and a murmer in the wind, when the deer, exhausted, turned to look at me, an arrow in its side. Though I pity dreamers, taking a thread and weaving it upon the loom of Self—the secret, gaudy, wonderful new cloth—, I will tell the end of the story. His shoulder was torn, the joint held by one sinew, which I severed with the blade of the arrow, so when he ran there were no impediments. The black dogs that followed were swifter, their barking ancient, despicable. As he fell, his chest turned to breastplate, his one powerful arm covered with pagan signs. Nearly stupid in my waiting for what would happen next, each breath propelling me and him toward dust, I woke, the sheets soaked, heart fluttering—: When death comes into the sleeping room as through a tiny hole, like a rent in the Covenant, it hurts.

Into the changes of autumn brush the doe walked, and the hide, head, and ears were the tinsel browns. They made her. I could not see her. She reappeared, stuffed with apples, and I shot her. Into the pines she ran, and I ran after. I might have lost her, seeing no sign of blood or scuffle, but felt myself part of the woods, a woman with a doe’s ears, and heard her dying, counted her last breaths like a song of dying, and found her dying. I shot her again because her lungs rattled like castanets, then poked her with the gun barrel because her eyes were dusty and unreal. I opened her belly and pushed the insides like rotted fruit into a rabbit hole, skinned her, broke her leg joints under my knee, took the meat, smelled the half-digested smell that was herself. Ah, I closed her eyes. I left her refolded in some briars with the last sun on her head like a benediction, head tilted on its axis of neck and barren bone; head bent wordless over a death, though I heard the night wind blowing through her fur, heard riot in the emptied head.

No more savage art: filleting: a deft pressure along the backbone from tail fan to the red gills: fighting mystery with a honed blade through the small bones: salt and scales on face and hands:: the Greek God, as well, found flesh unmysterious, but in anger and disappointment:— seagull cries, your music, are all about you: Apollonian but hungrier: nature is hungry:: the brave fish dies the birds swoop for the insides in no lovelier spirals.

I I’ve felt undeserving. I’ve made myself ill with the glory, in the unleavened garden disgorged the lies and scared away with a stick a snake. What made me cover that which I could not have? I’ve grieved and walked in catacombs, I’ve felt undeserving. I’ve made myself ill with the glory. Even the falling leaves gesture their renunciation. I disgorge the lies and abhor the serpent’s hiss. I remember seasons, things I bring from far away, and grieve. I walk in catacombs. In gardens now, by the stone walls, sunlight closes, the falling leaves gesture their renunciation. I remember being in a field touching a man’s body. I remember seasons, things I bring from far away and things that hold their breath for shame. His skin was soft as a girl’s and he closed his eyes. I placed apple petals on his eyelids; we were lying in a field and I touched his body. Then there were clouds, an uncanny silence, as when in a green place the air holds its breath for shame. What made me covet what I could not have? Ill with the power and glory, a thrashing in my chest, I remember the unleavened gardens, petals falling singly, the yellow snake disgorging lies. II I’ve grieved and walked in catacombs. I’ve felt undeserving. I’ve made myself ill with the glory, power and glory-- a thrashing in my rib cage. I’ve gone into the unleavened spring garden, disgorged the lies, and scared away with a stick a snake. I’ve grieved and walked in catacombs. What made me cover that which I could not have? I’ve felt undeserving. In this bright land that changes from yellow to green and back to yellow, I remember seasons, things I bring with me from far away and things that hold their breath as if for shame. I’ve made myself ill with the power and glory. I’ve gone into the unleavened garden and startled a yellow snake disgorging lies. A thrashing in my rib cage. What made me cover what I could not have? I remember   seasons. Things that hold their breath for shame. Things I bring with me from far away. III I’ve made myself ill with the power and glory. I’ve made myself ill with the power and glory.

After there were no women, men, and children, from the somber deeps horseshoe crabs crawled up on somber shores: Man-of-Wars' blue sails drifted downwind and blue filaments of some biblical cloak floated below: the stinging filaments. The cored of bone and rock-headed came near: clouds made wandering shadows: sea and grasses mingled:: There was no hell after all but a lull before it began over:: flesh lying alone: then mating: a little spray of soul: and the grace of waves, of stars, and remotest isles.

I have a sister who takes care of animals, whose artistry is flesh and blood mixed in with a dream or more she tries to give her son. He cuts school and drinks with his friends in the scrub woods behind the school. He thinks he wants to be an architect; he thinks the poems he writes are portions of his unmixed spirit. His habits of mind aren’t settled, ossifying so slowly for many of us, we can’t know, and no one can tell him anything about cigarettes, bad drugs, his fragile mortal spiral. He can’t cry anymore—it’s the wrong style of feeling—, and he only half knows that like his mother he will have to descend before he can break into nakedness, as if from the warmed surface of loam, from slug-soft matter that breathes or suppurates. My nephew Samuel has the same name as the son of the famous surgeon Dr. Gross, painted by the American realist Thomas Eakins. Samuel chugs gin, takes his tokes, and helps his mother with preps— a Betadine swabbing, “like a ritual,” out from the site of the incision. He confuses his mother. In this poem I want to try to stand at their shoulders in the clinic. I think I could come near to swooning from the obscene odor in the air, but I can try to imagine something beyond the surgery, the fur and the glistening blood, and I wouldn’t leave them. — The flight of gray gulls over the bay accompanied my early wrestling with flesh, “Blue Suede Shoes” playing on the radio in my parents’ house. The fluency, then, of hands and lips threw seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant fluency when I was thirty. Then I believed in the beauty of Helen and sometimes, as the fullest truth, in the colored clouds above apple trees full of blossoms and the reddened fruit afterwards. In the end, of course, the fruit turns to mash, and wasps burrow drunkenly in the meat no longer crisp. — There is a terrible beauty in the speeches of Nestor after Agamemnon has called out the spirit of his army by inviting them to go home. Imagine the sober tones of the generals and the old king, his face a lifelong gallery of portraits, grizzled hair an aura, as he faces them with his counsel. From his lips a kind of honey mixing with the bitterness of those two quarreling. He asks them for their mettle, earth born, and leans, foreshortened, his robe exposing a scarred and whitened chest. A vignette of what we cannot learn, or outlast. — One who loves earth and the sun and animals stands over the necrotic thigh of a wolfhound with scapel and rongeur, a patina of antiseptic reddening the bare skin around the wound. The odors are a mixture of rotted flowers and fruit and the beautiful blood oozing from an incision above a honeycomb of maggots, swollen, moving. If you can bear to stand close and look closely at the dissection, you will feel your own stomach turn and your nerves grow a little cleaner, and you may feel puzzled how a person would want to know that much anatomy. Wasn’t it like this for Michelangelo? This lesson of body? And the artist’s revulsion, someone trying to look beyond heroic contours of ruined flesh— softness of hip and buttocks—into the serum of spirit? To live while another no longer can live. This flesh and that muscle, and tinted spring forests, and mausoleums.

As a child I parleyed with animals, stuffed and real. Making my kitten pilot of a boot, I guided from one end of a string the dizzy flight and collapse. I was fearful of people as well as things, and my faithful toy shepherd with his painted face sat by me on the bed in the gloom. I was disdainful of dolls as weak people. In the favorite story I told myself my parents were made over into fair-limbed, brave angels who smiled into their god’s eyes when summoned. I was benevolent, afraid to let go of this image at night because I couldn’t hide deep enough under the covers to be overlooked by death, the angel bending over me who had been wronged. I read histories of queens, regal and barbarian, whose leopard’s eyes restrained man or wild beast. I rambled along tidal rivers and in the marshes where the green-golden grasses dazzled the sun, and felt the ache of sea-air in my lungs. I saw water spume near Atlantic cliffs. I examined lichen. I saw great light drown darkness. Then at thirteen I lay in the bleak bed before sleep and heard the pleadings and the murderous kisses; and burned, like a bear his fat, my soul. I quaked at the sound of my voice whispering,No, or turned my face to the wall and wept salt onto my knuckles. In the serene light of sun-up, before sparrows tumbled up from the earth, whispering and singing, and the exquisite sea and sky mobilized their heavy, blue currents, I was consoled. I walked through beauty without knowing why and told no one, wanting nothing else to touch me and never to move anyone in any way. I hid away from the house and learned the dark was not a dream but could show the pale gravel of a real driveway. I saw for the first time later the new moon and the full moon in one piece. I no longer feared the night, night like a bear at ease in his wide habitat. In the greatness of such space I said,This is me.

Pushed prow southerly into the golden wind: hurt the eyes: gold pelted water: so looked less far away: plovers huddling on the tide's last piece of shore: Rise up in brightness: clap wings:: I told myself I'll go where eagles go: if to brimstone: my wake a narrow river back to its source in cedar: and when sunlight embers the shore's soft fleece will be before me.

The tortoise walks on tiptoe in June, the month of his ardors. Buttery light, distant thunder in the month of my ardors.