Poetry by Jan Dove

Mojave Mother

My mother's scaling bones
are the roosting place of ravens
in the livid sky.
My mother covers the bruised sky.
My mother is the roosting place
of black winged mares.
She is the craggy access to the night.
My mother is the place of night truth foaling.

My mother is a bird shrill bone pipe,
A desert siren,
a stone bell.
My mother is a jazz singer
of igneous honky-tonk fame.
My mother stomps her foot on the frozen desert.
Air snaps.
River dances to her beat.

My mother's face is in the hard rock,
the holy one of petrous hair.
Santana blasted,
my mother is the nun
wailing for her children,
and she will not be comforted.
My mother murmurs in the creosote,
she savages with light.

My mother grunts Joshua into tree.
Hairy, toothstump witch,
she watches me over coffee
checks me through the cream.
My mother sees herself.
My mother reads the paper.
My mother sees herself
I am fullest most of my mother.
I am pregnant of my mother.

Hairless horse skin.
My mother is judgeless
She cures her skins on barbed wire fences,
stretches them with wind.
Newspaper.
Horseskin paper.
My mother dries it in the wind.
My mother gave me fifteen dollars
for leather gloves
to warm my hands against her fearsome breath.

A Walk on Marken

Shall I say that I have run to rust
or to the russet sails of the IJsselmeer?
the red sails of the IJsselmeer
shivering beyond the edge of theology,
the black sails of the IJsselmeer
straining taut against the knowledge of ropes
that bloody the seaman's hands.

I walked on Marken's dike today.
The wind cut my face
While grass fell before the farmer's scythe.
The footprints of ancient monks
hidden in the stones
gathered,
blurred,
then rested in a thousand broken shells.

A cloud of swans!
One followed me along a canal, demanding bread.
"He will bite", said a Vrauw in the doorway.
"Fretful since he his lady lost".

Shall I say that I have run to rust
or to the black sails on the IJsselmeer?
Between the knowing and the telling
perhaps
one self instant of forgiveness.