Kate Reavey's poetry
|
|
Too Small to Hold You
|
|
"Kate Reavey's poems have weathered a lot: relationship and marriage, a new house built, the nurturing of two small children, a mother's struggle with cancer, the death of several friends. A lot for such a young life. As we read, we see the poems have weathered in the same way boards from our western red cedar assume the silver patina dealt out by rain, by fog, by sun. Underneath, the wood's strength carries on, protecting those it shelters.
|
Table of Contents
Recovery
Mother and Child
At 8 Months Pregnant...
The Waning
At 3 a.m.
After a Reading...
Dressing Up
For Sharon...
Birds
April
Near Christmas
When We First Met
On our 4th Anniversary...
Neighbors
Jessica in Childbirth
Kindling
Owl in Preschool
February
Technical Climb
after a line by Robert Francis
Today, I abandoned all my other lives
to go berry picking in the Sequim Valley. I rejoiced
with the soft tug of each fruit
as I held on
and it let go
of the branch.
Every few berries, I put
a single one on my tongue
and warm
it dissolved
abandoning juices, filling my mouth.
I stopped picking when my small bucket
was full and walked back to the car,
laughing aloud at the question my mother had asked
when she last visited this farm: Do you weigh us
before and after picking, to check if we've eaten any?
The farmer's son was watching over the cash register.
It turns out his father died the winter before.
We just check your tongue, he said. Purple tongues
are a real giveaway 'round here.
And today, my fingers
stained with juice, I call to him--
My tongue's a giveaway. Come see.
I am full of life as he looks up,
abandons the shade of the little hut,
steps into the open light,
and I half-expect him to break into dance,
spin me through aisles and aisles of berries,
color spilling from the bucket
hung loose on my wrist.
for Bruce and Tracey
It would be easy to describe
the horse's flank-those thick,
dark muscles invite metaphor
and the word flank resonates
with all that power of speaking
something solid, something
that can stand tall
against our hands
then gallop away.
And the Belly River Ranger Station,
its cut logs holding us in-glaciers sloughing
off granite above us and the Perseus showers
falling the kind of fall we've waited for-
loving the words slough and shower and stars.
Tomorrow, we will leave this camp,
set out along the river on foot,
yelling and singing to warn the grizzlies.
This morning, the two of you climbed back into bed,
letting us sleep,
the smell of cinnamon rolls
rising and seeping through cracks
to tempt us,
and I imagine you
held each other close, as you do on these long
summer mornings, letting nothing,
not even sound,
slip away.
I can see the rough gravel that brought us here--
the way my mother's face winces
with some of the deeper bumps
and washboard grade of the road
as storm clouds darken the upholstery
and I take my sunglasses off.
It has been five months since she left my father,
six since she last kneeled down
on the padded kneelers
of Our Lady of Victories Church.
We are searching trading posts,
not looking for anything,
but the flavor of dust,
the smell of tobacco, old Pendeltons,
scattered sage at the doors. We are two women.
Alone.
* * *
When my mother was twelve,
the nuns told her she was tone deaf
and asked that she mouth the words of the hymns,
let others sing.
That she, silent, listening,
should only move her lips.
I have my father's lips.
Small. Precise. Outspoken.
Hers silently wince and purse
as we cover the bumps
of McElmo Canyon Road, en route
to the next place
where we can hold clay in the palms of our hands,
saying, Oh, a wedding vase.
Didn't you like that one?
Some trading posts hold silver, dangling
like a promise under glass,
bits of turquoise, broad-brimmed cowboy hats,
and coffee if you'd like a cup.
And there was the one on Hovenweep road,
where an old man asked where we
came from, listened, then left as we looked at old tools.
I wanted to follow him
find him,
say, I'm sorry that I didn't talk more,
that I am afraid here,
twelve miles from water, fifty from a phone.
But he was gone, and I could only imagine
the cab of his truck
full of music and one rifle
strapped to the window.
* * *
Today, we are tired as we stop
at the smallest trading post yet.
The door is low and we duck our heads down,
slip across the wooden threshold
into a small cloister of blankets and beads.
The owner is a frail woman, knitting a child's sweater.
She does this by habit, and my mother walks straight
to the blankets, strokes them.
In the corner of the room a cobweb is caught
by wind, and the clouds move on to the next town.
I buy my mother a Squirt,
and for a moment we forget the silver and sage--
listen to the fizz
of a grapefruit drink, rising like water
from the dust of McElmo.
The taste of citrus is a miracle,
and as coins clank
on the counter
I hear notes--
believe my mother is singing.
are all around me
as I, in my own bed, dream of being
a mother. The lampshades
are milk-white, and every dimple
of stuccoed ceiling is a cleft of skin.
I ask for stretch marks,
silver as the fine hairs across
my mother's brow. I want creams and powders to stroke
over my stomach as it grows.
No more
stick figures.
I want to stop bleeding
for nine cool months.
Get fat with life.
Drink cartons of milk,
imagining I could put my lips
to my own breasts, if only
to remember the heat, the sound
as I swallowed all she gave me
all I've ever owned.
[after a title by Robert Hass]
