Spirit Of The River (Lutra canadensis)

Red, Red, Red

Anger, yes. Anger, anger and a
Strong compulsion, and
Violence, violence before a silence
Like plunging through an ice hole,
No fishing line, but water,
Cold and sharp as a hook
Plunging in my eye, suspending
All the world in silence,
Silence.

Anger, yes, but also passion.
Ruled by love these
Actions moved, stop, then
Move a fraction of an inch,
Metal picture, move again, a
Thousand images moving in
The mind, images in my
Mind and love the puppet
Master,

A thousand strings to every
Muscle, beholden to the heart.
Sinister, quite sinister this
Comedy of mine. The
Set a house, the characters a
Family, a family of five. There
Laughs my boy in the garden
Front, in front the house out in the
Woods,

Brow wet with sweat, soaked
Shirt, shovel clenched by
The iron trap of fingers. How
Sunlight glistens through the window
Sill, glistens on my daughter, still,
Silent, sleeping with a pillow
Over her eyes. How bright my
Home, with screams of laughter up the
Stairs,

Joyous, so joyous the breath and
Racing heart of the flesh who
Cleaved unto my own, the flush,
A bowl of petals, floating
Red under her eyes. My hands
Upon her lily’d throat, the petals
Drained, breath held in ecstasy, both
Our gazes smiling on our baby
Boy,

Baby, baby, bouncing baby
Boy, playing in the watered tub,
Content to sit beneath the ripples
Dropped from the shower head,
Content because he did not know, did
Not know he was already dead. Dead Haha!
Dead-dead-dead-dead-dead, six
Months to learn to laugh and eat, but not to
Swim.

And red behind my eyes, red that pours
Out from wells in the corner of my
Sight, red floating clouds in white watered
Tub, red kisses on a lily’d throat,
Red hands on pillow white, red
Sweat upon a brow staining the
White threads of a shirt, the ground, a
Shovel’s edge, here, red wet upon my pale white
Hands.

Anger? Anger, yes, but also love,
Love for this beatific scene
With house and family. All
Silent like that icy plunge,
Bodies frozen, air still, except for
Me. Over and over the movie plays
With their laughter in my head, with me,
The painter, my face and clothes and hands in
Red.

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