I am a body schooling,
a ball of fish, flashing
and many, in these early days
of feeling, of love.

When I learned,
hours ago, of fish songs
that swell like birdsong
in the morning,

how they foghorn or buzz
for food, or mates
or space, I thought,
now aren’t I a humming thing?

Yes, you say,
a body of oceans
and marvelous.

And the sea anemone in me,
              growing on the wreckage
of an old ship—

              can they grow that way,
              I wonder, on an ending—

                          Still this bright and tentacled
anthozoan polyp,
              which reaches and filters
                                                            whatever it needs
                          from this strong current,
              and the current too that carries
                                                            the sea cucumbers,
              the rough mammals,
                          the life, both vertebrate
                                                            and invertebrate,
even the batfish,
                          the black jewfish,
              and the terapontid,

it all swells and breaks in me
like a chorus at dusk.

Every night, I go back to Mr. Jefferson’s place, searching still

his kitchens, behind staircases, in a patch of shade somewhere

beside his joinery & within his small ice house, till I get down

that pit, lined with straw, where Mr. Jefferson once stacked frozen slabs

of river water until summer. Then, visitors would come to him

to ask about a peculiar green star, or help him open up

his maps. They’d kneel together on the floor, among his books

lavish hunks of ice melting like the preserved tears

of some antique mammal who must have wept

to leave Ablemarle, just as I wept when I landed in Milan

for the first time, stone city where Mr. Jefferson began

to learn the science of ice houses, how you dig into the dark

flank of the land, how you seal the cavity. Leave open

just one small hatch through which I might lift, through gratings

Mr. Jefferson’s cold dressed victuals, his expensive butter & salads

the sealed jars sweating clear gems of condensation, white blood

appearing from warm air, as if air could break & slough, revealing

the curved arc of our shared Milan. There, I wore silver rings

on each thumb. I studied & spoke in fine houses 

of ice. I knew a kind of crying which sealed me to such realms

for good. Old magic weep, old throb-in-throat. How much

of my fondness for any place is water, stilled & bound

to darkness?

As a child I made things 
out of clay—a pig who

could not be eaten, a mule  
who refused to carry

anything other than a pig 
who could not be eaten.

They were companion 
pieces. They kept each

other company, and me. 
We kept each other’s

secrets: what flesh can 
do with clay, what clay

can do that flesh can’t. 
I was a small child who made

small decisions. I made big  
people angry. I made them

confused. I 
refuse, I refuse.