DRECK

CODY-ROSE CLEVIDENCE

JULY

"life is not woven without grief on the loom" Alkman trans. Davenport

"I undressed before silence and peed in the creek" Frank Stanford

I.

 my summer river’s
full of herons one
 upright, long necked
& white as that first
 chalk mark hatch-
marked against the sky-
 blue sky stands
still dead vertical
where green edge
meets its mirror
greener edge & also
 this summer in particular
is offering up all
 these black-glint
crows cawing their
 intelligent black-glint
caws they are racing
 their shadows
over my dry white stones

 then down a sharp
chute of pure shine flung up
 & all around & in that
scattered light lost
 the roar that rides right-
high above silence & I
 became in that instant one
instance of molecules
 who happen to be
arranged like this
 called to flow along
& concurrent with
 other forms in their own
molecular arrangements
held in suspension while
 time’s bow-wave
 flows through us,
around us, carries us bodily
 along like a membrane of sail
in a time’s full force &
 particulate wind

but this is the slower, lower river,
when the steeper throat dries
up its blue holes & stones
 I come here
in its languor-shade dappled of
 grasshopper green,
of katydid-green
 long algae-strings flow
like hair where
 in the low current the sun light
gets through; extending
 sensate extension’s
 perpetual existence, cicada
drone of pure Arkansas summer; so
 strike up the frog choir let
loose from this planet’s tattered
 cassock the 10 billion
bugs the great chariot
 in its ordinary mystery
wheels overhead the vireos
 thrum in their tiny
throats, compress
 small glissandos
of air waves in air,
 send out brief-
vibrating ligatures
 that float across
this small gulf
 from streaked grey
bluff-rock to me
 on my opposite
& composite shore

 then in a fling of a wing
summer tanager’s scarlet
 darts as if shot from some
other dimension, some
 scarlet dimension, a crimson
thread-stitch through
 green shine of hot air then in bright
towers a tumult gathers up
 its high ringing hems in
blue heights huge peals of thunder
 shake loose huge sheafs
of light they fall
 all around me. air was my
friend then it broke around me
 like laughter & the devil
was making love to his wife.

sound is my guide now
 & a number of small
green herons which are not
 green they obey
their own precepts &
 specialized
perceptions & step
 among small wet stones or fly
 with their yellow legs
outstretched behind them
from local place to local place
 their eyes intent
on the flashing fish,
 the splashing riffles, small
muscled movements displacing,
 scattering light;reciprocal
as three crows & three
 shadows

July communion;
 friend season,
head filled with words
 in networks of words,
  relations, untangling,
retangling the various nets.
 humans live in worlds
of reciprocal belonging. OK.
 accept it, Cody-Rose, you too
are a human being
 in a webbed world
of necessary feeling,
 a human world
of others & of living things.
 there will be time
for your pure silence after,
your long grief like a flute
or a tooth or a root
silver as lightning & blue
as a cup
 time to hold open your
 emptiness, awe’s silent
presence of however-present
 you-can-get-your-eyes
& only-as-empty-as-a-mirror-
 can-be-empty mind,
another cupped hand
 of plummeting time, mine
to hold & mine to pour out
 from time’s long
ladle & dominion.

II.

now the horses snort in a sea of laughter,
 a pasture of green sound the waves crest
& wave back as light’s play off the water

“bye boat” says a little kid
in a neon life vest
, “bye kid”

a great blue heron flies low
along river’s sinecurve
honking like a goose

Cody