Luke Marinac

Anticlea’s Repose

We went to the lake,
last sunbathers, with sleek-nosed
paddleboards.

I found a goose
hiding from its nest

where the waves ran the sand groove
of a little island.

Anticlea went out, farther than any of us
and lay on her back.

There was a wine-red color
in the shallows,

gulls, broad
on their gold-film wings;

her fingers, enjoying a collarbone-close, quiet,
unfurling of charred sinews from bone—

My father spades a root in the garden,
though it is old and stiff,

a liquefaction on his belly, hung loose
like a catch of twinkling shads.

He never gave me the nation of these trees— the Ash,
brain-like, and American

or Holly, so resenting
childrens’ toes—except

perhaps, the Aspen; this he gave to me,
its knotted footways

and waxy leaves—
a golden copse,

a quiver-wake
in the mountain air; coins lopping off

crescent sun— indolent light,
of less worth— with the eclipse of each plunging turn

to the bottom of streams vacant and feline
in the heavy-tongued shade.

Your hair never quite
achieves that ponytail

but slipping nervous fingers,
like a reluctant shadow that wanders off,

it can become goldenrod
and get lost in the sun.

There is every morning to account for,
none of which belong to us.

Nights when sunrise is the brand
on condensate napkin rings

or the tally of gelid stairs. More often,
it drowns in starry peals of red
little birds.

You were born where the elephant seals round,
beautiful and cuckold,

whorl their throats, and mistake some ill-parked
Chevy Nova for a suitor,

‘til lip-split and kneeling, it murmurs: I
am the guilty one.