Preemie

 

Jan Bailey

Dome of silvered sheen, wrestling from a red

Back pack pocked with salt, papoose of some

Prophetic do-gooder who lumbers with his load

Down the island hill toward the ferry at the dock,

 

Plopping his delivery, all Gerber-eyed and glistening

Among mail bags and stuff.  Of course, it squirms

And wriggles free and we, gasping at such abandoned

Beauty, scramble close to keep it from slipping

To the pitching deck, coaxing the pudgy body,

 

Tucking in the silken, tender flippers, then spilling it

Tumbleweed into a crate we find and line with cloth.

Sudden gushing into a half-dark plastic womb,

Sloshing above the sea as the captain steers us all,

Reluctant travelers, toward our own fledgling shores.

 

Finally the seal snuggles down and sleeps, though our

Fevered peeking rouses every time a tiny, wrenching

Bark.  And though it stinks of brine and shit, I lean

Close to coo some corny half-invented rhyme, worried

 

for its wellbeing, snatched from a bassinet of rocks

and the icy Maine waters it was born to. All night I grieve

the great cow mother returned and ready with milk,

her certain anguish, her calling, the huge body beating,

beating against the stark, dark ledges of the coast.

 

 Island Voices II: Poetry of Monhegan (Stone Island Press, 2014)

Song

 

Jan Bailey

What if the quivering rustle in the forest

rises not at random but

from the trees’ own perfect celebration.

 

What if the wild and wispy ferns, studded

with their futures, exclaim at a level

of perception that the trees absorb.

 

What if the browning leaves floating on

the little slag pool emit

tiny trills of dying and the water

 

buoying beneath bears them for

as long as it is able.  And what

of boulders, dense giants, and of the golden

 

 

lichen beading on their backs.  What lyrics

might they share in the half light.

Why should density preclude song,

 

why should slight.  And what of moss and weed,

of rain, both anthem and applause.

If dolphins croon the sea, then why not stars,

 

all that ringing, spinning gas the very

stars’ elation.  As for pebbles,

with how many psalms and incantations

 

do pebbles proclaim. Might the gulls

grasp, the terns, this jubilant joy

of stone.  Might the shell, the snail.

 

A Millennial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry,
(Ninety-Six Press, 2005)

Sunfish

 

Jan Bailey

Bulbous and bloated, the sunfish floated

Just below the surface of the water.

Gray and gnarled, a sloppy-looking fish

With a ghoulish gash, more like a wound

Curled into a grin as we backed the jib

And circled.  Every few minutes, the casual

Wave of a fin to gesture us Be Gone.

 

Three times we tacked as she drifted, aimless

And clearly in ecstasy with the cloudless

Day, the babbling gulls like suitors spinning

Taunts overhead.  I stretched, cocked my own face

To sun and knew myself blessed, to have witnessed

Here, in this bed of sea, such rapt and intimate

Pleasure.  I felt fully the voyeur

 

Panting through a keyhole at desire,

At a loose, confidant woman, plump

And satiated, lazing at her boudoir,

Tilting her face to the mirror,

A teasing smile, having lounged at length

In 0 salty bath, alone for a spell,

The light frenzied on her skin, her rouged

Cheeks, the wide, voluptuous mouth.

 

Kallliope (winner of the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize),
rpt. Midnight in the Guest Room (Leapfrog Press, 2004)

 

The garden

 

Jan Bailey

Seeming new to me now, or forgotten, this sorry rag

of skin – summer seared, field furrowed, speckled and pocked,

 

begging toward earth.  I have lived my life, sloughing off

like crust the future’s chilling condemnation.  But just

 

yesterday in the garden while pruning, dead-heading,

I thought my name rose from the musky soil as a jeweled

 

snake whipped beneath the wall.  I lay down, listening

hard to the last of the iris, the poppies, the peonies tumbling,

 

all that lovely pink reclaimed, placed my face close and read

my palm in the configurations of the petals browning.

 

And I knew again (or was it for the first time) my body bound

to all things:  mustard seed and field, blossom, even serpent,

 

even the forked tongue, perfectly cycling, perfectly

certain, and this knowing – both my bounty and my burden.