"In every living thing there is a desire for love,
for the relationship of unison with rest of things."
--D. H. Lawrence
Samples from
Water Music
The first desire of the child
is to fly, which is why children
after crawling or standing,
walking or finally learning to run
are often found perched
atop a stack of books on a high chair,
hanging, one hand on the wall,
the other clutching a light fixture,
peering up, up, as if the earth
were another womb to break free from,
and once we resign ourselves to life
on foot, it becomes the desire of dreams,
so that the dream becomes possibility,
and waking, a kind of disappointment.
We try to fall back to sleep
before the dream flies away
but arrive in time to feel only the brush
of wind from its feathers
until finally
a life of this desire takes form
and in our old age
we come to resemble birds,
gnarled hands stiffened to claws,
eyes darting around our heads
which seem to tilt back,
as if setting a course,
as if we will grow wings
sometime very soon.
In the month of rain
trees turned sponge eclipse the sun’s thin shadow.
A leaf range clots sewers along the curb
and the wind, nothing more than a downdraft,
slumps tall grass. The suburbs block in storm
windows and squirrels come down to gather
all they own.
---Take a walk in the month of rain
and you’ll end up in that part of town
where alleys wear black leather and streets turn
on each other.
---But lovers do not pull
from one another toward the world. Their bodies
become tributaries to the one direction water knows,
the branches merge to one stream,
silence at the river mouth.
We accept this clouded beauty. In the month of rain
we throw up our hands, we let go.
She reaches among the marigolds
and petunias that fill a small bed
in the front yard, clawing at the dirt
on hands and knees. Behind her, the fields
unroll into the sky. The barn drips
shadows onto the pigweed. She works
a square piece of ground cut out of the lawn
near a sprawling elm and for a moment
you consider her figure balanced
on its shape, how you would walk
into this life that smells of freshly cut grass.
In the house, the towels will be folded
and stacked. Bread will rise under its pure
aroma in the kitchen. You would give
up your name and all that you have built
of yourself to become as facile
and anonymous as field grass,
as this woman whose skin is as simple
as earth. You turn the car slowly
into the dirt drive and she looks up
at you, smiling. You decide to live
out your life with her, leaving your
briefcase to rot in the backseat.
You will dig out the mailbox
and throw it into the ravine
where each year it will rust until so thin
and brown it dissolves, the way the landscape
in the rearview mirror disappears
from the dust of your tires
as you head down the highway.
copyright Robert Haight 2004-Present