Читать книгу The Heronry - Mark Jarman - Страница 14

Expected

That sense on a fall night driving home

that I will see something and must see something,

climbing the hill toward the reservoir.

I will see the shadowy buck grazing in a hollow of lawn

and his antlers emerging like a doused candelabra,

and stop the car to peer beyond the street lights

with my headlights off as he watches me and decides

to dip his face back to the dark grass.

That sense of readiness prepared

by so many unexpected things.

The man lunging onto our car in the Metro,

the doors hushing shut, the gendarmes slapping their hands

on the windows as we pulled away.

He glared at the one couple who dared to look at him

and excused himself with a barked curse.

That sense recorded in the lifted arms and curved fingers

of the Highland dancers to honor the deer’s grace

as he eludes the hunter.

That sense derived from my mother

who saw an angel by her bedside as a child

and knew the ghosts who attended her

as she cleaned house were playful but indifferent.

Seeing her during her difficult recovery

naked in her diaper and helping her dress

and washing her hair, that sense that I would find

the dimple in her scalp where the prosthesis was inserted.

It gathers in the strange and makes it yours.