by Jorie Graham
Those neck-pointing out full bodylength and calling
outwards over the breaking waves.
Those standing in waves and letting them come and
go over them.
Those gathering head-down and over some one
thing.
Those still out there where motion is
primarily a pulsing from underneath
and the forward-motion so slight they lay
their stillness on its swelling and falling
and let themselves swell, fall …
Sometimes the whole flock rising and running just
as the last film of darkness rises
leaving behind, also rising and falling intiny upliftings,
almost a mile of white underfeathers, up-turned, white spines
gliding over the wet
sand, in gusts, being blown down towards
the unified inrolling awayness
of white. All things turning white through
breaking. The long red pointing of lowering sun
going down on (but also streaking in towards) whoever
might be standing at the point-of-view place
from which this watching. This watching being risen
from: as glance: along the red
blurring and swaying water-path:
to the singular redness: the glance a
being-everywhere-risen-from: everywhere
cawing, mewing, cries where a
single bird lifts heavily
just at shoreline, rip where
its wing-tips (both) lap
backwash, feet still in
the wave-drag of it, to coast
on top of its own shadow and then down to not
landing.
• • • • •
Also just under the wave a thickening where
sun breaks into two red circles upon the
carried frothing—
white and roiling, yes, yet unbreakably red—red pushed (slicked) under
each wave (tucked) and, although breaking, always
one—(as if from the back-end-of-distance red)—
and that one flowing to here to
slap the red it carries in glisten-sheets
up onto shore and (also as if onto)
my feet.
• • • • •
[Or onto my feet, then into my eyes] where red turns into “sun” again.
So then it’s sun in surf-breaking water: incircling, smearing: mind not
knowing if it’s still “wave,” breaking on
itself, small glider, or if it’s “amidst” (red turning feathery)or rather “over” (the laciness of foambreak) or just what—(among
the line of also smearingly reddening terns floating out now
on the feathery backedge of foambroken
looking)—it is.
• • • • •
The wind swallows my words one
by
one. The words leaping too, over their own
staying.
Oceanward too, as if being taken
away
into splash—my clutch of
words
swaying and stemming from my
saying, no
echo. No stopping on the temporarily exposed and drying rock
out there
to rub or rest where nothing else
grows.
And truly swift over the sands.
As if most afraid of being repeated.
Preferring to be dissolved to
designation,
backglancing stirrings,
wedged-in between unsaying and
forgetting—
what an enterprise—spoken out by
me as if
to still some last place, place becoming even as I speak
unspeakable—
and so punctually—not even burnt
by their crossing through the one great
inwardness of
mind, not by the straining to be held (grasped) by my
meanings:
“We shall have early fruit
this year” one of the shades along the way
calls out,
and “from the beginning” (yet further on). Words: always face-down:
listening falling upon them (as if fromabove):
listening greedy, able to put them to death,
flinging itself upon them: them open and attached
so hard to
what they carry:
the only evidence in them of having
been.
And yet how they want to see behind themselves—
as if there is something
back there, always, behind these rows I
gnaw the open with—
feeling them rush a bit and crane to see beneath themselves—
and always with such pain, just after emerging—
twisting on their stems to see behind—as if there were a
sun
back there they need, as if it’s a betrayal,
this single forward-facing: reference: dream of: admission: re
semblance: turning away from the page as if turning to a tryst:
the gazing-straight up at the reader there filled with ultimate
fatigue:
devoted servants: road signs: footprints: you are not alone:
slowly in the listener the prisoners emerge:
slowly in you reader they stand like madmen facing into the wind:
nowhere is there any trace of blood
spilled in the service of kings, or love, or for the sake of honor,
or for some other reason.
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