Self-Portrait as the Gesture Between Them

                                                                 1

The gesture like a fruit torn from a limb, torn swiftly.

                                                                 2

The whole bough bending then springing back as if from sudden sight.

                                                                 3

The rip in the fabric where the action begins, the opening of the narrow passage.

                                                                 4

The passage along the arc of denouement once the plot has begun, like a limb,
the buds in it cinched and numbered,
outside the true story really, outside of improvisation,
moving along day by day into the sweet appointment.

                                                                 5

But what else could they have done, these two, sick of beginning,
revolving in place like a thing seen,
dumb, blind, rooted in the eye that’s watching,
ridden and ridden by that slowest of glances the passage of time
staring and staring until their entrails show.

                                                                 6

Every now and then a quick rain for no reason,

                                                                 7

a wind moving round all sides, a wind shaking the points of view out
like the last bits of rain....

                                                                 8

So it was to have freedom she did it but like a secret thought.
A thought of him the light couldn’t touch.
The light beating against it, the light flaying her thought of him,
trying to break it.
Like a fruit that grows but only in the invisible.
The whole world of the given beating against this garden
where he walks slowly in the hands of freedom
noiselessly beating his steps against the soil.

                                                                 9

But a secret grows, a secret wants to be given away.
For a long time it swells and stains its bearer with beauty. 
It is what we see swelling forth making the shape we know a thing by.
The things inside, a critique of the given.

                                                                 10

So that she turned the thought of him in her narrow mind,
turned him slowly in the shallows, like a thin bird she’d found,
turned him in this place which was her own, as if to plant him but never
                                                                                           letting go,
keeping the thought of him keen and simple in a kind of winter,
keeping him in this shadowlessness in which he needn’t breathe,
him turning to touch her as a thing turns towards its thief,
owned but not seizable, resembling, resembling....

                                                                 11

Meanwhile the heights of things were true. Meanwhile the distance of 
the fields was true. Meanwhile the fretting of the light against the backs 
                                                                                                   of them 
as they walked through the fields naming things, true, 
the touch of the light along the backs of their bodies...

                                                                 12

as the apple builds inside the limb, as rain builds
in the atmosphere, as the lateness accumulates until it finally
is,
as the meaning of the story builds,

                                                                 13

scribbling at the edges of her body until it must be told, be

                                                                 14

taken from her, this freedom,

                                                                 15

so that she had to turn and touch him to give it away

                                                                 16

to have him pick it from her as the answer takes the question

                                                                 17

that he should read in her the rigid inscription

                                                                 18

in a scintillant fold the fabric of the daylight bending

                                                                 19

where the form is complete where the thing must be torn off

                                                                 20

momentarily angelic, the instant writhing into a shape,

                                                                 21

the two wedded, the readiness and the instant,

                                                                 22

the extra bit that shifts the scales the other way now in his hand,
the gift that changes the balance,

                                                                 23

the balance that cannot be broken owned by the air until he touches,

                                                                 24

the balance like an apple held up into the sunlight

                                                                 25

then taken down, the air changing by its passage, the feeling of being capable,

                                                                 26

of being not quite right for the place, not quite the thing that’s needed,

                                                                 27

the feeling of being a digression not the link in the argument, 
a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,

                                                                 28

and liking that error, a feeling of being capable because an error,

                                                                 29

of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set

                                                                 30

stripped of position stripped of true function

                                                                 31

and loving that error, loving that filial form, that break from perfection

                                                                 32

where the complex mechanism fails, where the stranger appears in the clearing,

                                                                 33

out of nowhere and uncalled for, out of nowhere to share the day. 

—Jorie Graham