fragment from a hand-held device #3

a memory came to him of swimming in the dams at the farms of his friends.  how the cold water lay eighteen inches or maybe years below the surface, and would caress the limbs;  stretching its hard fingers through the syrupy warmth to catch and clutch.  how it could tighten around the chest like a python, and squeeze breath from the body.  those fingers, that would sometimes steal a small child or a drunken man, and give them back empty.

those fingers.

that need.

they also serve..*

  (a sonnet for Anzac Day)

With all the rest you stand and wave,

and from your summer dress your arm

exalts and lifts your brave

heart too, as striding down the palm-

strewn avenue they come to raise

you up.  With fluttered hand you bring

them on;  your fingers writing praise

and lifting voices up to sing.

You raise your arm to wave,

and in its secret hollow:  blue.

Still smooth from your last shave -

and this so very mortal part of you

just in this moment makes things good.  It makes things well,

and makes a lighter journey of the heavy steps from hell.

*from John Milton's sonnet   "On His Blindness"  

reach

clicks n taps

a morse languageof
dotsndashes
onesnzeros
andno

-spaces-

a window discloses only
the ambivalence of

- halfdrawn curtains -




in braille
the fingerpads

loom large

and soft as pomelo's
the page makes its many points

the awl always
fitted to the palm ready

for pricking small boxed meanings




the trickle
of watersoundstherush of
skiesandsatellitestherelaystations

bristled porcupine antennae

balled around the soft belly
and the head tucked in
the nose in the navel




the scent of one's self

onthefingersthepen
mostespecially

- on the fingers -

a hypodermic whisper

to inoculate against



- the reaching silence -




sshhhLISTEN

the hush
the hushed
the hhhhhhhhhhhh
we have ears for the unsaid
we have mouths for the unspoken

skin
for remembering
skin


for



- reaching -