The Maynard
Spring 2018

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A wrist, a wren, a small knife

                                                                     —after Gerald Stern

What I thought was an accordion dangling from an open window
turned out to be a man’s arm, his shirt sleeve wrinkled in the summer
evening. I thought he was handing me an air pump for my troubles,
instead, he gave me a blank check, pressing it to me with care.

What I thought was a spring bubbling from the hill by the side
of the road was instead a thin blue blazer belonging to a girl.
What I thought were a pair of shoes lying there, instead, were
her pearled feet where she lay sleeping in the fitful weeds.

What I thought was a dark apartment in the city, turned out to be
a church aisle I wandered. And the baby I thought I saw there,
an amberjack floating in a deep rock basin. What I thought was a couch
to lie on, instead was just a single cushion resting on worn stone.

                                                         *

I thought I heard a bamboo flute wending across the town.
Instead, it was cake batter spun thin inside an olive bowl.
I thought I saw a needle flash in my grandmother’s hand.
Instead, it was a camel from her Bible lying open there.

I thought I saw my brother’s jeans hanging on the line.
Instead, it was a roofing nail flashing on the shingles like a gun.
I thought I saw a gazelle loping through the chartreuse corn.
Instead, it was a ladder carved into the horse chestnut tree.

                                                         *

Whatever I was looking for—rust by the railroad, wild oats sprouting,
a boy’s hair, peat moss piled for the garden, the way the mind sponges.
My father’s sharp trowel I have carried these thirty years, a watering can.
The tire swing frayed and fallen, the windmill of my mother’s luggage.

She was a wrist, a wren in the morning grain, the scaffolding, elaborate
around her, starting to fall. Somewhere in the haze of my early days, she
rose between the geese and the geraniums, a small knife in her grasp
to peel potatoes—holding the key to our front door that never had a lock.