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KEEL That half-moon smooth beam, I think someone made it because they had a spine and wanted to make a stronger one, and they sent the little skiff out to sea for years, and it went on boot-thudded and shoal-scraped, and it went on boot-thudded and shoal-scraped, and it held all the while like it holds in the boatyard, though it is belly-up on blocks to keep out the rain, now, and it does rain here, and did again this morning when I was walking your dog, Love, thinking how I, too, have been boot-thudded by love, I was my own storm once, so young and eager to raise the sail of my wanting, and I just wanted to tell you I love this old boat, this settled-in thing. THE DOUBLING Though the rain tastes like nickel it is not blood, but like blood makes the child, rain plumps the melons beneath thick leaves this summer, and each summer, and it’s a genius I rarely think of, this world swelling, the hay field rising, and I was not ready for my love to be suddenly amplified by the ultrasound, but it was, the little heart drummed over the speakers, and the room swelled, and it hurt the good hurt, and though the June bugs beat against the night, the sound is not a heart, but like the heart it is dumb in its brazen pulse and smack-the-screen joy, and like the heart there are billions here, each alive and mostly well, here, where two legs pressed against two legs become six legs — and that is not an impossible math. I could believe the world only wants to double. The hay field rising into seed. The June bugs’ dumb love lifting the night to its feet. BECOMING THE BOY First, let me admit I am a counterfeit. A sleek composite. The fourth meal of the day is paraphernalia. Which is another way to say, I learned how to man, and I worry when I’m not careful, I drown out the seven parts of me with one abominable baritone. Should sounds so much like shove, doesn’t it? It gutters the cold rain and dumps it on your head. The soil grows whatever it’s fed. Everything entering the ear takes root. And speaking of dirt, think of the dandelion weed —those little puffs blundering the backyard with their furry spray lifting to flight. All it takes is a weak fiasco of wind. But first, the bulb must bloom yellow — and pretty even —from a knot as tight as solitude. And still it scatters like a fist of warm dice. You too began curled and cooed awake, then some blue lung began to chant a boy should this and a boy should that, and you shouldn’t listen, little corn-shuck, it’s a strange song, mostly sad and hard to dance to. STRAWBERRIES FOR DINNER Good for the strawberry for wearing all its seeds on its skin — too few things say here’s all of me like that —not the apple and its wooden center stones, not the peach’s chipped-tooth pit, not me in my muddy work shirts, which I generally ditch after slumping home at the end of the day the instant I hear the front door click. So tired I become working days like this, I could believe the mime’s gloved hands pressed against the almost plastic case placed one foot around him. Limit is a cocky fellow: a pallbearer in a vibrant suit. He named his daughter Bootstrap. He loves the word “retirement.” He thinks the myth of Icarus should be printed on the back of every birth certificate. That’s a cautionary tale I think he’s wrong about. The boy fell. He did. But what about the blooming hurt gnawing at his shoulders as he rose? It must have been excruciating. His comfort melted long before the wings. There must have been a moment he could go no further, and yet, he did.
