Devil’s Lake

Lightly first,

then heavier

to fill the shadows

—the quiet mass

below her breast,

& gathered in the apse

of her elbow,

her neck—

because you can't move backwards. You can't undo the dark

but you can

transplant her

to paper, shut her in your book.

If you're good

enough, she will never breathe

again. Here, light

is the only absence

of graphite—here, light is just

where you haven't traveled

your pencil across the paper. A way of touching,

more alive than looking

at a photograph

because you learn to feel

the body: its artful shading. Your control.

In the classifieds,

a help-wanted ad for a farmhand declares

I must know the anatomy of a horse. Because I am desperate,

I say I do know the neck of a horse:

it resembles the gray sleeve

of the shirt he wore

in the motel off 81, and how the sleeve turned

away, and the arm inside it, the arm inside it holding open

the door for me, me already not knowing

what to say—

earlier, on the side of the road, a field of mares

pressed up against a gate.

Their long heads bent to the earth, the earth

riddled with their suede questioning.

What is anatomy if not this muscular looking,

our actions turned inward to make the outside match?

The organs planted

inside the body, the body oblivious

as a fence

surrounding the horses

gathered around feed in the field.

Has fear ever inhabited you

so completely the world becomes in its loveliness

a composition

existing only for everyone else?

There are some words I cannot say

because I can't imagine them.

Tell me we haven't ruined everything.

In my everyday carefulness,

I have worried only about death

not life or how it begins:

the one poppy opening

red in the field near the fence,

& the horse, with an eye buried

on both sides of his face,

not noticing

because he can't see straight ahead,

not at the flower, & not at the foal,

throwing its small body against the gate.