I can never have the field. I can never halve the
field, make a helix of my hands and hold the
halves
like pictures of the field—or fields—and affix one
feeling to the fields—or the infinite field—and stay
that way
I can walk down to the bog, the field
under-foliate-feet, in a bloodflow motion towards
the beating
of the bullfrogs’ black-lacteous tactile pool and
listen to the unilluminable below-surface stirring,
gravid ruckus of drooling purr and primordial bluebrown
blur. I can aggravate the grating godhood and glisten
of preening slime—its opaque, plumbeous,
tympanic slurps—an inside-outside alertness
bur-bur-bur-bur-
burrowing, harping with pings and plops
(lurches), and make the mossy froth go
berserk with silence,
then foofaraw when the bog in the field senses I am
nothing to fear. I can hear amphibious amour fou
pulsing
under a blue-green gasoline film, spongiform but
formless, boiling with blotched air-bubble let-go, life
fumping
the surface in slicks of upward rain and glossopalatine
pops and liquid crop circles. I can stop here and
listen
in time with the bobolink and make my bel
memento, my untremendous tremolo and
rinky-dink dictation.
In the fable, the animal smells fear and so does the
fool. I think to myself—in my skull’s skeletal
bell-shape—
I am both. I am both. I am both, and I can hold it
together.
Copyright © 2020 by Kristina Martino. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 28, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.