Infertility

 

Infertility

 

And when at last the leap comes, it is most

often also from the side, the rear, an overhead

perch; some word-blind woven

of brush or shadow or fire.

 

                                    Jane Hirshfield

                                    Poetry and the Mind of Indirection

 

How long, wanting, to root?  Does turning

in or turning away?  Or tuning for for that matter. Does sideways? 

Does

sight but not sight only and scent does scent then its becoming

somehow tongue?  A mouth and then

a lid for the eye.  Then the other eye. A summoning

of touch?  You want the moon don’t you you want it

rough & sudden and, also not, you want soft you want

the sorrow that launched as shock that given

time is ground down precise as glass is

ground down to exact prescription to be

stationed at the meeting place of seeing of being

and of waiting to be

when the sky is alive & bright with the flight

of eiders gliding their migrating lives through the night

and for another night and another night . . .tell me can you

tell me what is that magic sleight

of hand called? right: legerdemain. The playing 

 

game we played and were both drained by, see it don’t see it

give it take it away like breaking the returning wave made (be

patient now be patient ) of her

own breath & umbilical blood forged to pump

& pump & pump until labor is

it is it is it is

huuuuuuuuuuuuu        h

undone sudden

those months of root to root to root to fruit to fruit to fruit

to

t

o

o

r

up