Meditation

When I’m young — in my fifties

e.g. — I think of myself as water,

green & unconfined. I soak up

all I encounter — oxygen,

biology, heavy rain, languages,

clades, accounts of long gone

explorers — sponge & loggerhead,

custard apple, neighborhood

potluck. Must it proceed, age —

wear down the jagged sharps,

the pitched rapids, slippery rocks

zippered by flashing fish

to yellowed, scoured dunes?

Nocturne for the Night Workers of the South

by Joshua Poteat

Once, when I was young and loved every girl that breathed

              the same summer as I did, I worked as a night watchman

in the county asylum, a forgotten place, lost among

the kudzu, the long-leaf pines birthing cones the size

              of watermelons. It was the kind of place that, when it rained,

spotted-moth larva would tunnel from the wet plaster ceilings

and drink the patient’s ears. The county wanted it forgotten,

              their own kind gone bad, like in the Bible, where Christ

slaps rotting eggs from the yellow mouths of lepers.

Eat of this bread, he said, or something close, and the lepers

              scraped up the eggs and made a sandwich, and I imagine for

the first time, Christ shrugged. You are what you eat,

he should have said, if he had any truth left in him by then.

              I wasn’t allowed to talk to the patients, and usually,

they were all medicated by the time I hitched a ride

there, on the backs of flatbeds wedged between crates

              of sweet potatoes rotting under the moon.

When I found out that I wasn’t really a night watchman

but an owl catcher, and would have to incinerate any owl

              I caught, I stayed on anyway. I needed the work.

According to legend, seeing a Horned Owl during a meal

was supposed to mean, Don’t finish your stew.

              Barn owls seen more than mile or so from their perches

were wandering ghosts, or meant that ghosts

would soon force themselves into your dreams,

              a madness I could do without.

Sighting a Snowy Owl meant bones would ache

but without further consequence. They would simply ache

              for a while, then stop. I found this applied for all owls.

My whole body ached then. When I dressed for work

it was like dressing a wound. I couldn’t tell if it was the girls

              or the birds. I became good at it, though, despite the ache,

if that is even possible, chewing the stolen, orange meat

of potatoes to keep me awake, slumped in the attics

              with a canvas bag from the laundry room.

Christ also said, Any true work is done alone. This I believe.

The sweat of the insane is sweeter than ours:

              clover and bee’s wing and honeyed ham.

I could hear them breathing beneath me in their beds. Don’t ask how

it was to be so near that bleak sea of faces. It’s the faces, paint flaking off,

              dolls with blinking eyes, snow of paint in spilled urine.

Even their white breath, eight-petaled in the chill of their rooms,

was something I couldn’t name.

              Dogwood: no. Wild pea: perhaps . . . but no. Chamomile,

milk-weed: never. I never looked at them, the pink azalea of hair

between their legs, luminous with lice, not even down

              the blouses of the nurses when they bent to look in

at the big-headed owls. Now, I think I brought those birds

down through the wards, alive and flapping,

              so someone would stop me. No one ever gets tired of the moon.

No one ever said, Fuck the moon, let’s get it out of here.

We keep it around, we learn to like it.

              Habit is the devil’s glorious invention, like I heard war could be.

Easing a bayonet into a belly was the same as opening

a can of tomatoes by firelight if you did it enough.

              These were birds and I burned them and on rare days

I remember their heads, round and milky, baby’s breath,

their wings not really wings, finally, but damp bolts of silk,

              and the low sough of wind dragging their ashes into September’s arms.

I remember the story of General Lee on his deathbed

telling a sad friend to cheer up, that he had known

              but three happy hours during his whole existence.

Two of those as a child asleep in the boughs of a white oak,

the last in an asylum staring at a beautiful girl’s naked ribcage

              that had been woven into a basket by tuberculosis.

Night transcends what the proudest day can do, that’s for damn sure,

all silently,

              the indescribable night and stars,

far off and silently.