Stone Bread

Here I am again, your daughter,

          in the white swale

beside the house, dry slipstream

of ants and spiders; here I am,

          in the moss and mullein,

lilies of  the valley, bamboo

in the alley, copper beetles

          you paid us to drown

from our mother’s garden,

your wife with asters in her hands.

          You loved that

photograph, and her. It is I,

your daughter, searching

          in the books of

the house and books of the yard,

pages of   boys finding gold,

          and pages of rain

raised to violets, while the great

elm stump waits, a plate for

          the ogre who comes

in fall, who eats the sun

and warmth, until our land

          grows cold, brittle-shorn,

and the creatures that stay

transform into their own

          shadows and tracks,

crisscrossing the buried fields.

It is I, looking, in the red-rock

          lakeshore, juniper island,

warped rails sunk in weeds,

in the yellowed leaves

          and the whitened bark,

in the rusted car flipped

on its back, engine long  gone,

          in broken lights

that once shone the road

ahead, a fox slinking across,

          the impact that did not

happen, and the one that did.

It is I, your daughter. I’ve built

          the house for you,

hauled the tree you split,

and fed the furnace,

          I’ve watched flame

burst up both sides of a log,

and nothing burn. I’ve

          made the beds, five

of  them, and found boys

to fill three: a boy of straw,

          a boy of sticks, a boy

of   bricks. They will sleep

through the howls of the wolf.

          Your wife, my mother,

waits for you in your bed,

and I’ve taken my room outside

          your door. The walls

warm and the night begins

with a sound that could be music,

          if it wasn’t water

and darkness covering the stars.

Father, I have drawn the curtains.

          I have set the table

with the hemlock wreath

and candles. I hold a flame

          to the four sharp wicks.

It is always this time

of year, or it is the green

          blaze in the medians,

rivers roiled to the willow’s hair,

eggs wrecked in their nests.

          It is always a year that

begins with snow. I look

and look. I have so many eyes.

          They scatter into damp furrows.

I want to say I planted them

for you; some fell on their own

          and covered themselves,

ashamed. My mirror is a rutted

field. My mirror is a black lake.

          What the ice reflects

before the rain erases it. No wonder

I found myself   beautiful inside.

          I won’t say Come back.

I am not that selfish. I am

your daughter, after all. But

          at the mouth of the cave

in the marsh, where the rock

stays bare, no matter

          the storms that beset it,

in the texture of  that stone,

which is not like flesh,

          or flour, or chalk,

but the feel of  hardened breath,

breath of centuries, wind of ever,

          cold and scraped

from some lumbering ancient lung,

I lower my mouth, part my lips,

          open my throat, and inhale

without tasting that which is not you

or anything you gave me, because

          I have to fill myself

now somehow. It is I, your daughter,

watching  you on the distant hill

          turn away, shoulders slumped,

a man in a dark coat, a man

walking from one home to the next,

          this journey that began

long before me, and never ends.

Your head down, stride long,

          you pass the lake, the juniper.

You pass the cave mouth in the marsh,

the fox in mid-jump, broken

          tendrils of the creek,

moss and haymow, barn, engine,

wren, daisy. White swale

          beside the house. Sons

in their beds, your wife in yours,

daughter outside the door.

          You walk across a pine

floor until it ends at the ocean;

you walk the ocean until

          it becomes oil and whetstone;

you walk to a park of swans

and willows; you walk into castle

          and ruin, into burning

rooftops, the shouts of fathers

torn from their sons; you walk

          into ovens of  bones,

into your own sheared hand,

into a tree blazing with candles,

          a toy soldier

beneath. You walk into the scent

of plum cake, and through your

          living brother, pulled

from the body of your dying mother,

and into your mother, who looks

          like me. It is I, your daughter,

cradling  you there. It is I,

your daughter, watching you

          from the cave in the marsh

as you turn on your distant hill,

the taste on my tongue

          nothing like rain, or music,

or darkness and stars, but

my body full of each, tender,

          as if  I have eaten and

drunk for days. Here I am:

The cattails glow in gray light;

          shadowed walls

slicken with fog. You are after,

within; my path rises, lightens,

          scratched by time

and passage. I want to kneel here,

I have become so heavy and lifted.

          The feeling

is like drowning in laughter.