Maggie Dietz

The kitchen in the house had a nook for eating, a groove for the broom behind the door and the woman moved through it like bathing, reaching ladles from drawers, turning to lift the milk from the refrigerator while still stirring the pudding, as if the room and everything in it were as intimate to her as her body, as beautiful and worthy of her attention as the elbows which each day she soothed with rose lotion or the white legs she lifted, again and again, in turn, while watching television. To be in that room must be what it was like to be the man next to her at night, or the child who, at six o’clock had stood close enough to smell the wool of her sweater through the steam, and later, at the goodnight kiss, could breathe the flavor of her hair— codfish and broccoli—and taste the coffee, which was darkness on her lips, and listen then from upstairs to the water running down, the mattress drifting down the river, a pale moonmark on the floor, and hear the clink of silverware—the stars, their distant speaking—and picture the ceiling—the back of a woman kneeling, covering the heart and holding up the bed and roof and cooling sky.

Once my sister told me that from her summit at the city pool she could see the yellow billows spread like gas or dreams between kids’ legs. In something the size of the sea, you can’t be sure who’s watching from above. Let’s say it’s the Almighty, twirling His whistle, ready to blow it at any moment and let loose the bottomless Apocalypse: the ocean would make bone of a body, coral of bone. Piss, and a tiger-fish darts through a skull-hole, a weed weaves itself through ribs. You, too, have seen the bulbs flash from the sea. You, too, have felt it breathing down your neck. You eat fish. You’ve heard that mermaids sing. My dreams are as beleaguered as the next Joe’s, my happiness as absurd, but I’m not going to go piss in the ocean about it. No, not in the ocean.

Summer-long the gulls’ old umbra cry unraveled ease but certain waves went by, then by. The sky shook out the days. The seabirds’ hunger rose in rings, flung rock-clams to their shatterings, raked gullets full, the bone-bills scraped. High noon: oceans of time escaped. * All winter we slept benched together, breakers, sleepdrunk children in a car not conscious where they go. We kneaded bread, kept out the weather, while old suspicions huddled by the door, mice in the snow. * In spring, the leaving bloomed— oak leaf unfurled, a foot, resplendent vigorous, aching to shake loose but still dependent. One morning moongreen loaves rose into bones that rose to lift our skin like sleeves, our time together’s revenant. * Perennial fall, come cool the cliffs, bring quiet, sulfur, early dark. Represent as you must: dusk, dying, ends and row us into winter’s water: The body, wind-whipped, forms stiff peaks, ice settles in the marrow bone. At the chest, the live stone breaks against the beak, beak breaks against stone.

Don't feel small. We all have been demoted. Go on being moon or rock or orb, buoyant and distant, smallest craft ball at Vanevenhoven's Hardware spray-painted purple or day-glow orange for a child's elliptical vision of fish line, cardboard and foam. No spacecraft has touched you, no flesh met the luster of your heavenly body. Little cold one, blow your horn. No matter what you are planet, and something other than planet, ancient but not "classical," the controversy over what to call you light-hours from your ears. On Earth we tend to nurture the diminutive, root for the diminished. None of your neighbors knows your name. Nothing has changed. If Charon's not your moon, who cares? She remains unmoved, your companion.

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon. Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees. Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage, While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage And gone to shiver in their winter clusters. Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin, Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters. Even the swarms of kids have given in To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure: TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains. The days throw up a closed sign around four. The hapless customer who'd wanted something Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

Hoarfrost coats and cuffs the playing fields, a heyday of glistening. So there’s hope in my throat as I walk across them to the woods with my chest flung open, spilling its coins. The light so bright I can hear it, a silver tone like a penny whistle. It’s fall, so I’m craving pine cones. Hundreds of maples the color of bulldozers! But something strange is going on: the trees are tired of meaning, sick of providing mystery, parallels, consolation. “Leave us alone,” they seem to cry, with barely energy for a pun. The muscular river crawls on its belly in a maple coat of mail. Muddy and unreflective, it smells as if it too could use some privacy. The sumac reddens like a face, holding out its velvet pods almost desperately. The Queen Anne’s Lace clicks in the wind. A deaf-mute milkweed foaming at the mouth. Back at the field I look for what I didn’t mean to drop. The grass is green. Okay, Day, my host, I want to get out of your house. Come on, Night, with your twinkly stars and big dumb moon. Tell me don’t show me, and wipe that grin off your face.

After Lyle Lovett If I had a ginko tree I'd climb it in the evening. If I had a marmoset He'd climb the tree with me. If we saw a falling star I'd wish I had a rocket. If I had a rocket I'd drag the star back home. If I went to space I'd pick up a satellite. If I had my own moon I wouldn't be so sad. If I weren't so sad I wouldn't need a companion. If I sold my marmoset I'd have a lot of cash. If I had some money I'd buy an Eldorado. (Silver, 1959, With fins like raptor wings.) I'd shine that Eldorado and drive it to my father's. If I had a father I'd take him for a ride.

The ancients would lift a clay spout to your lips— water and honey and wine. I give you milk, softened with wine, and swear you'll never hunger, never thirst while I'm alive. What suffering I can't preclude I'll soothe with singing: My future, for you not the greenness of a leaf but of the leaves on all the April branches. Fire, I give you fuel. I sweat and chop the wood. I tender forever in you who begin where I end as if your body is my body, your elegance my elegance. Sustenance, emptiness is lack of you, yearning is the road to where you are. You are the road, the where, the song, the hunger. Child, I give you sleep, I sing you there.

1. Waking First the low drone of uilleann pipes, the river of the spine just barely quivering: the froth on a half-drunk pint of Guiness shifting as the bellow breathes. 2. Waiting A pressure sprouting in the back—the joke I told about having eaten a pumpkin seed to astonish the moon- faced toddler gawping at my beach ball belly in the grocery line. 3. Pitocin What the     hell is this no one said     chaos I can't find the     cerulean beach, the sun-     rayed trail through     rain-cooled woods can't    find your face the     soft flamenco music     hurts I hate     it you turn     off it     now 4. Lidocaine Flying bullets, bats, then, finally, birds. Swallows sky-diving for mosquitos above the quiet reservoir at dusk. Iridescent synchronicity, twisting together as if on strings. You must listen hard to hear the soft applause of (closed in unison) a thousand wings. 5. Parturition Hosannas in the skull halls: I see as if from above a body brought to its knees, every one of its live cells singing Hosanna for "we praise you" and "please save us" as being trains its way into the lighted room, the ravaged world.