Hole, Where Once in Passion We Swam
By Dave Smith
The sun frets, a fat wafer falling like a trap of failed mesh.
I watch the pin-glare of a mockingbird’s eye cut sharply, descend
on the blank water, then emerge from himself naked
as a girl who shimmered here, once, for me.
If we come back like penitents to kneel over water, bass swirling,
scattering the mayflies that often, in silence, graze
lips, what is the word floating out from the mouth unbearable
as a bird’s black grin or a madman’s lust?
The word is not we, but me. Giving it again and again
brings no one out of the willows and I, willing to believe
like a sap in whatever dives or rises hear no voice
but the mist sizzling on stones. I lift my head
for echoes out of trees, for the flashed recoil of flesh hung
cheap and gaudy, wingless, above the stab of water
that crunched her like a beer can. Toads honk
the only answer. Among them, a boy, I felt
the grotesque pull of the moon all night, peeled and went slowly
down in terror, rising, falling through the pulpy leaves
until the sun caught me, drained, and I was no one
wanted, so walked away from all knowing,
walked into town and drank, calmly, an illegal beer, then slept.
The hooks, in hairy hands, clawed it smooth as a dish, a super-
human search by flood and fire light. What could they find?
Like many, I have been out of town a long time.
I wish the face floating above the chill at my knees opened
the door of a drab hotel. I wish it said Go to hell
or Do you know what time it is, anything
that, if I heard it, I could kneel to and swear to be faithful.
Copyright Credit: Dave Smith, “Hole, Where Once in Passion We Swam” from Cumberland Station (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1976). Copyright © 1976 by Dave Smith. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source: Cumberland Station (1976)