The Sound of Women
/Jack Gilbert mentions elephants from time to time but I cannot tell if he knows about the importance of the matriarchs. As Mom would say though, he “sure as shit” knows about beasts bent on grace. Essays, poems, tomes for the living. The deeper seas of wording the ineffable will never not be interesting or life-giving to me.
I wake from sleep with a rainless mouth, giggling at how unsexy snoring is. New snowfall, like a light blue blanket, is visible in the dark. This morning is reading eponymous almanacs and wondering about place, perspective, and depth. Sometimes looking down is equivalent to tipping the chin to heaven. There is a difference between the ideas of land and country.
Love sits with me on the warm side of the window, watching dawn whisper secrets to a withdrawing night. This morning I am alone but not lonely. Pines hold and see my secrets; they know my name. Gilbert asks: what is the sound of women?
What is the word for
that still thing I have hunted inside them
for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy,
the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still
in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper
down where a woman's heart is holding its breath,
where something very far away in that body
is becoming something we don't have a name fore.
Yeah, maybe Jack has at least walked a mile with the matriarch.
Who walks with me; who waits. Who prays on behalf of my soul. All I know is that the matriarch goes before me — surefooted and alive in wisdom.