Election

Suddenly as he peered down
and down into its depths, he
profoundly saw a white living
spot no bigger than a white
weasel, with wonderful celerity
rising, and magnifying as it
rose, till it turned, and then
there were plainly revealed
two long crooked rows of white,
glistening teeth, floating up
From the undiscoverable bottom.

—Melville, Moby Dick

Did You elect me for
these blueblack forges
far down under
or did I choose You?
The answer I believe is not
knowable in any enough way,
and even more, perhaps, the
question’s moot, as all quests
are less decided by their
ends than by the ache
inside the questor’s boots.
No one chooses the killing
swoon so necessary to
preface every magic
room which grails
the mojo of wild passage,
but now I hold those
dread wounds dear,
the essence of this Theme.
My bad history comes to
light as the harrows
of a cavernous magnitude
in which I found two
extra bones of lead
soldered on back,
the only ones which
You could hammer wings
onto and use to fin the
depths of night into
toward the sweetest physic
of them all, the inside
sooth of blue arrears.
My catalogue of smarts
was once a map of scarred
nights, scoured with all
the holes I fell so greedily
in. That book I now read as
skeletal and scoured, the
stripped bones of awfulness
which were reforged with
a cartilage of an awe which
I’ll never find or own
but still ride, like waves,
to You, my whole life long.
It’s a still and drippy
this morning as a dreary
maul of Gulf moisture
commingles with a weak
cold front, producing a
gruel of incessant rain,
a pall both miserable
and fructive, depending
on which rear window
I choose to peer through.
The roads of my commute
were pure miasma yesterday
in that soupy soak, two
semis jacknifing into
each other on I-4 like
dead bikers sprawled
into each other’s knives,
a tanker on 441 tumbling
on the roll and spreading
fuel for blocks, and dozens
of smaller scrapes ‘n’
benders around town,
like hives on the body
of our daily grind. Can’t
do nothing about that:
Nor can I do much to
heal our suburban blight
in its viralish malaise,
where greed and self and
fear sots the land with
an insatiate thirst for
more. How could this
drone of chanting lines
on paper charm and rout
the such grand illness
in our tribe? It can’t;
but perhaps You never
could either beyond
the fakey incantations
of your imp-ravaged
and salvaged brain.
That You existed
at all beyond Your cave
only meant that wounds
might have an exit in the
magic of Your songs;
That actual wounds would
or would not seal to Your
rattles and etched
swastikas was never
the point of the whole
dance. My job here is
just to try to see all You
did when You feathered
and fell and returned
in that harrowed swoon.
And so I hinge the tropes
of transformation here
behind the paper heart
and lungs which ached to
breathe the sweetest air.
My job, as I see it today,
here at 5 a.m. on a Friday
off from work & with my
wife now groaning up
from sleep to sew curtains
all day long, with us near
broke and worried and
never happier, with
the cats hungry for love
and food in incessant
pour: My job here is to sing
back and down and back
again the wild shapes
heaven takes in its
demon amplitude: To be
as loud ‘n’ proud as
a whale on the wave,
beyond all shores and
‘burbs: To muse the
wounds inside my years
and pan Your nuggets
from my mess, ingots
gold heaved by the stars’
own cleavage, silver
chalices delved from
chthonic loins under
the underwearing tow.
Celebrant of blue spittle
I hawk and hurl these
lines back into my day,
not for eyes that will
ever read them but
for the joy of daily rides
upon the back of Moby
Dick, who may have
come here as You wish,
or simply rose when
I peeked down into
the lavish blue. I splash
my mornings with a
daily jolt of the coldest
waters in the world,
to bless and brace what
still remains of all that fell
thus flew.