Swan Bones. Bethany Bowman

      we couldn’t have been more corybantic.

      Summers, constructing clay diyas we’d one day

      fill with oil, light, and let loose on the Ganges

      or any river wider than the Mohawk.

      Winters, recreating silent films in the attic;

      if our lives were black and white, at least

      lips and violins, muted gestures, leitmotif.

      You followed these dreams. Traveled, studied,

      saw clearly the forces that shape the universe.

      Or maybe nothing so Faustian, but you got out.

      I broke covenant, stayed in the Valley:

      waited tables, folded negligees. I learned

      first names, favorite drinks, tastes in underthings.

      The hills became sacrosanct with their cornflowers

      and seasonal roads, during thunderstorms, coruscating.

      At some point I stopped wishing for something else.

      Kukicha

      Twig tea. I sip you and I’m wild again,

      bringing my master gifts.

      I read that you’re brewed in Liji,

      just south of Kyoto,

      from discarded stems, stalks,

      leftovers from more rife greens;

      that you’re not a “true” tea.

      This makes me sad.

      How can anything so woody,

      so vegetal emerge from waste,

      have secrets to hide?

      Clearly you come from the land

      of higuma, the Hokkaido brown bear.

      I’m in need of a near-death experience;

      I will drink.

      I’ll put my trust in records,

      since 1962: 86 attacks and 33 passings.

      Steaming earth aromas.

      I inhaled them while pregnant

      and found myself singing

      the song of a creek bed.

      Brook trout so brown, like home,

      one modest female mallard

      swimming away from the bridge

      with her mate, and yellow celandine—

      blossoms I’ve known since childhood

      which, if you rip the stem,

      drip with nitid paint.

      I will pick one when the rain falls.

      This way, I’ll have something to wash

      from my skin before I begin to browse,

      time to confess,

      because once I’m born again

      I will strip every bit of stiffness

      from your branches,

      caper with boastful wings,

      disable a dreamer’s voice box.

      Only then, when my love’s green head

      lies calm and still, will I deliver him back,

      tenderly, to the cement block steps

      of the porch he will finish someday.

      Alleys

      Behind our back yard, an alley: Daily beat

      of our neighborhood’s resident derelict.

      He pursues cans and bottles,

      tells my husband to fuck off, sings.

      Stray cats visit us here too.

      They pounce on day lily reeds,

      hunt cicadas in our tangle of sweet peas.

      This is not the hardest thing we’ve dealt with

      since the move from New York.

      Mental illness has padded after us for years,

      sometimes purring, always scratching,

      most predictably, esurient as hell.

      I’ve grown hungry too.

      Tired of being exposed, trapped,

      neutered, but not returned—

      forbidden from keeping jungly garden,

      junk cars, busted bikes out of sight.

      I want to look my neighbors in the eye.

      Sit up front in church. Join something;

      the choir, ASPCA. Or better yet,

      walk with my shadow man when night falls.

      Reason with him. Legitimize him.

      Hold his calloused hand as he screams at the world.

      Indiana Breakers

      For Suzie

      It’s a good day to paint. She has a clear view of the courthouse,

      bulwark of this Midwestern town with its bell and postcard austerity.

      Winter aconite, tiny yellow flowers which generally pop by Lent

      have finally scaled snow. Honeybees are all over them.

      Library goers, antique-shop prowlers, two police officers stop.

      They are the heart of this place—heroes who care about art,

      church, flowers. But they don’t comprehend her canvas.

      The abandoned storefront she captures was once a five-and-dime.

      Vacant for decades, the floor has caved and despite its

      pressed tin ceiling, cherry wainscoting, no one’s going to save it.

      Starlings flit in and out of clefts. Two lie dead in the rubble.

      Birds dart into the belfry of the courthouse too, but it’s the

      sunken joists of the store which seem to swell when morning

      light bends, approximating waves off the coast of Kittery.

      She won’t complete the work. By May, bricks and tile will fall,

      town will vote and building will be condemned and razed.

      The artist may or may not return to Maine, and the courthouse,

      as always, will stand fettered with flags, heritage roses on the Fourth.