Of a Known Vale

Nothing but catfish in the reservoir

a body suddenly

out from its concerns, another kind

of water pressure, to be free

the powerful insupportable course

tipped off & only one’s own bottomfeeders

to timelessly bother about.

So what power was wields

its body as if strung weight

spun somehow could fling

the river’s feet

in the air

held

      in attention, separate,

off its course

a great power

in this place that wastes itself

in looking. A lone eye to begin the wormy world again.

From the canoe

and the slime on my paddle

knew its unirrigated shit & wished it clean

knew steering makes it so. Intermittent light

played about the place,

or memory makes it so

(mine or the river’s? the lost flow)

though my demolished house is 

steadfast, despite the pictures

from the old witch & her sentimental

allowance-

though she never goes there

wldnt be a witch    if she did 

& there is nothing to turn over to

no mystery of cities or imbeddedness

my wolf mother’s mundus was gone in the rains

but an old fishing mount, stark, half lost in the mud still calls

to a fisherman like Ausonius who let them course through his poem

a wand he called it, not to catch, but conduct, this is the surest line,

compass balance on a drop of water.

***

Minerva 

dodging her shadow in the

moonlight, like all the country gods

and the demons are your average people

behind close doors, no surprise

greater than the fact of someone

standing there, stubborn & itself

in the back of beyond. The gods are appeased

by our old world reverence for things.

By thinking about them with that hole

in space they call mind: when you 

draw the curtain to the sky its

rustica & marble nudes,

when you slip into mom’s sheer

pantyhose and fall straight to sleep

on the black leather sofa, a flower

leapt up and attached to “the tree of night”

as the sun skillfully tans around 
the lacy strap on your bare shoulder.