Read Online Two Bowls of Milk by Stephanie Bolster - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephanie Bolster
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shade-intolerant. Branches brittle and breakage
frequent
. Limbs under water. Black ash:
Neither as strong nor
hard as white ash wood
. Black hawk falling. Squirrel call. Teeth against
teeth against hunger. Variations of predation. What’s swallowed
still warm in the throat. I don’t want the names of vegetation
in my mouth, only his tongue, his different speech. Variations
of flight and flighlessness. Crows are rooks, but rooks
are sharper and still blacker. Nettles can make healing
teas. Bluebells by the river ringing someone’s
gone too far.
POEMS FOR THE FLOOD
Hills are islands, waiting. Mountains
will wait longer. This valley
was once a lake, until we made it land. See how the rain
against the windshield turns to fishes.
Each puddle a premonition. The woman’s face
is clearer there. When I peer in,
the trees shift. The sky is bluer
than the sky and when I look deeper there is the sun.
Any rain is enough to make all the colours
come out. The fuchsias sting my eyes
and the bees shine. The lawn teems with drops
that might be diamonds, might be frogs.
The first time I ran inside and shut my house. The second
I let it all wash over me. The third time I went looking
where the clouds were and weeks later
waded back with minnows in my boots.
Between storms: a segment of train track. A red
block with the letter O. A mouse the colour
of bread mould. An ace of spades. Three steps going down
and who knows how many underwater.
I keep a canoe on the back porch just in case.
Each morning I listen for the lap against the bedposts.
Each morning I imagine my legs floating down the steps,
my hair seeping back from my face.
Watering the garden, I call the earth thirsty
and then cringe at what I’ve said. The way things are
is simpler and more difficult to understand. My throat
and the columbines open for the same water differently.
Closed rose petals, a sky not scrawled with cloud,
the small of the back, these are lesser. Beauty is the red
rectangle of a barn surrounded by flood.
The white chicken on the rooftop testing its wings.
When the first drop falls, she is there
to meet it. The underside of her arm is a fish’s belly,
her mouth a rain gauge. She is the watermark
and the water rising.
Her rusted car. Where the road was, a river the colour of asphalt.
A rag doll is growing heavier beside her boat. Beneath,
a catfish looms. Farther down, street signs
and streets, yellow lines down the centre.
Two-thirds of the earth is composed of water,
not counting floods. I’m more water than this world is.
Maybe that explains the shift of my organs
during sleep, the glass beside my bed.
The curve of the boat’s hold
is the shape my hand makes
when it wants something. How quickly
my palm fills when I stop asking.
TWO BOWLS OF MILK
Are two bowls of milk. They are round
and white and have nothing to do
with the moon. They have no implications
of blindness, or sight. They wait
on the doorstep like bowls
or like things that closely resemble
bowls in their stillness. The bowls do not
foreshadow cats. There are two
because two hands set them out
and each wanted to hold something.
Milk because not water. The curve of
milk against the curve of bowl.
PERSPECTIVE IS AN ATTEMPT
FLOOD, DEER LAKE, B.C.
I’m out in it. The water’s ruddy
with the seepage of needles
fallen from towering fir. Ice
floats thinly in it, and slush,
and patches of snow farther
back in the trees I came from.
It’s shallower there. Here reaches
midway to my knees, here
where the path was last week.
My parents have hung back
in soggy boots, but mine
can take it. I might go farther
still, not around the lake,
as we planned, but into.
The water’s clear white, flat,
under slivers of ice a duck broke,
landing. It laps at the brown rubber
of my boots, cedar trunks.
When was I not out there?
If I leave here, where will I be?
ON THE STEPS OF THE MET
When the first wasp would not stop flying
frequent
. Limbs under water. Black ash:
Neither as strong nor
hard as white ash wood
. Black hawk falling. Squirrel call. Teeth against
teeth against hunger. Variations of predation. What’s swallowed
still warm in the throat. I don’t want the names of vegetation
in my mouth, only his tongue, his different speech. Variations
of flight and flighlessness. Crows are rooks, but rooks
are sharper and still blacker. Nettles can make healing
teas. Bluebells by the river ringing someone’s
gone too far.
POEMS FOR THE FLOOD
Hills are islands, waiting. Mountains
will wait longer. This valley
was once a lake, until we made it land. See how the rain
against the windshield turns to fishes.
Each puddle a premonition. The woman’s face
is clearer there. When I peer in,
the trees shift. The sky is bluer
than the sky and when I look deeper there is the sun.
Any rain is enough to make all the colours
come out. The fuchsias sting my eyes
and the bees shine. The lawn teems with drops
that might be diamonds, might be frogs.
The first time I ran inside and shut my house. The second
I let it all wash over me. The third time I went looking
where the clouds were and weeks later
waded back with minnows in my boots.
Between storms: a segment of train track. A red
block with the letter O. A mouse the colour
of bread mould. An ace of spades. Three steps going down
and who knows how many underwater.
I keep a canoe on the back porch just in case.
Each morning I listen for the lap against the bedposts.
Each morning I imagine my legs floating down the steps,
my hair seeping back from my face.
Watering the garden, I call the earth thirsty
and then cringe at what I’ve said. The way things are
is simpler and more difficult to understand. My throat
and the columbines open for the same water differently.
Closed rose petals, a sky not scrawled with cloud,
the small of the back, these are lesser. Beauty is the red
rectangle of a barn surrounded by flood.
The white chicken on the rooftop testing its wings.
When the first drop falls, she is there
to meet it. The underside of her arm is a fish’s belly,
her mouth a rain gauge. She is the watermark
and the water rising.
Her rusted car. Where the road was, a river the colour of asphalt.
A rag doll is growing heavier beside her boat. Beneath,
a catfish looms. Farther down, street signs
and streets, yellow lines down the centre.
Two-thirds of the earth is composed of water,
not counting floods. I’m more water than this world is.
Maybe that explains the shift of my organs
during sleep, the glass beside my bed.
The curve of the boat’s hold
is the shape my hand makes
when it wants something. How quickly
my palm fills when I stop asking.
TWO BOWLS OF MILK
Are two bowls of milk. They are round
and white and have nothing to do
with the moon. They have no implications
of blindness, or sight. They wait
on the doorstep like bowls
or like things that closely resemble
bowls in their stillness. The bowls do not
foreshadow cats. There are two
because two hands set them out
and each wanted to hold something.
Milk because not water. The curve of
milk against the curve of bowl.
PERSPECTIVE IS AN ATTEMPT
FLOOD, DEER LAKE, B.C.
I’m out in it. The water’s ruddy
with the seepage of needles
fallen from towering fir. Ice
floats thinly in it, and slush,
and patches of snow farther
back in the trees I came from.
It’s shallower there. Here reaches
midway to my knees, here
where the path was last week.
My parents have hung back
in soggy boots, but mine
can take it. I might go farther
still, not around the lake,
as we planned, but into.
The water’s clear white, flat,
under slivers of ice a duck broke,
landing. It laps at the brown rubber
of my boots, cedar trunks.
When was I not out there?
If I leave here, where will I be?
ON THE STEPS OF THE MET
When the first wasp would not stop flying
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