Habitation of Wonder. Abigail Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      doubles the body

      of the fish, turns it

      into a mirror of itself,

      the mirror being

      the water’s invitation

      to see a bright pool

      of scales where

      once there was a fish,

      a school of silver coins,

      a great, green-glass

      chandelier dangling

      in the flow, each cut-glass

      drop sewn like sequins

      to the wind, the wind being

      the way the water moves

      around the coins,

      the coins being another

      way to see the fish, the way

      it moves through

      water, through light

      the way it doubles, becomes

      a silver mirror, the mirror

      being the fish disappearing

      into a thousand versions of itself.

      Learning To Pray

      When I say I have passed the afternoon

      watching loosestrife lean against the wind

      at the edge of the lake, what I mean is

      I have stepped into prayer, not unlike Peter

      stepping out of the boat, and it has held me,

      as prayer does, like a child holds a penny,

      or ferns hold beads of dew. When slippage

      occurs, as it is want to do, and I begin to sink

      through unraveling molecules of faith like

      a dream sinks back into dark when dawn

      dissolves the net of sleep, I am caught by a

      quiet grip, an open palm, the way air catches

      a parachute or a June buttercup catches light,

      and there is in that catching a new kind of

      drowning, not unpleasant, though it surprises

      at first. It’s like losing yourself to an embrace

      in which the more you are lost, the more

      surely you are found; it’s like the flood of sun

      on the map of your skin, into your cells

      and the spaces between your cells, sewing

      you into its warmth, which, you realize,

      is singing. How often have I stood at the edge

      of the lake gazing, wholly unsure what it means

      to pray but willing to step out, willing to go

      down, slip through the watery blue particles

      precisely to be caught, recovered, salvaged

      again and again, to know once more that hand!

      Make Me Chalice

      Make me chalice, bowl of tears

      and wine. Mold me valley deep.

      Make curve this earth you wedge,

      pinch, lute, glaze, coil, shape.

      Oh make me open palm, vessel

      of praise and doubt, basin of

      dusk. Carve wide the lip, form

      broad the hull, O Lord of clay.

      Make room for rain; make room

      for song. And I will be the moon,

      which holds the sun and pours it

      forth. And I will be the well that

      Jacob built. Oh hollow me. Oh

      make me yours to fill, to lift,

      to bless, to spill. And I will be de-

      canted. Yes, and I will be refilled.

      Thalassic

      Haunt of salp and red-shelled crab—here lives the mouthless, sac-bodied

      tubeworm: white finger tentacled to vents and cold seeps, feeding

      on water and sulfur and dark. Kingdom of the lungless,

      the gill-raked, the swim-bladdered: the eel-like hagfish,

      scavenger of whale falls; the “snot-flower” bone-eater, feather-plumed

      burrower. Behold: the gulper, the swallower, all manner of loosejaw,

      the wide-gaped, blunt-snouted citizens of the deep— dragon-faced

      fangtooths hanging in the blackness, hinge-skulled viperfish

      barbel-luring hermit crabs. Consider also the bulb-eyed jewel squid,

      hovering umbrella under-studded with stars, and the silver-

      scaled eye-ring of the star-washed lanternfish, thin-finned, dazzle-tailed firefly

      of the brine. This is the province of the spike-eyed and light-averse,

      canyon-dwellers, night-dwellers, breathers of cold and salt. This is the empire

      of the armor-shelled and carapaced, the saw-tooth clawed, the tendril-danglers,

      the glowers, the snappers, the mute.

      M Is for Mary

      Hampton Bays, Long Island

      M СКАЧАТЬ