Ian U Lockaby

The Woods to this Song

 

I.

A little footed shoe       blue inside              the magnolia              brambled and spore
The entire bayou,          a foot soak         and all       the muddy minerals of Louisiana
between my four left toes             prayers mount the mosquitoes               before wavering
into fever before                the fever.           The entire bayou        squishing in my shoe—
magnolia babies                            shiny headed in the sunset              Japanese ferns climbing
slow emergency ladders      in upward picnic

I don’t know the woods to this song.

II.

No longer trying to return
‘mongst      th’ natural         (there is no, naturally)
that could breed something to save us
                  (mosquito leaves     won’t save you)
but to leave what you leave when you leave:

to smell the smoke           the black cherry bitterskeins                     sweetduff calm rot tarry
in the sun      only to forget               ten minutes of gasoline                   the mess of mustard
canola flowers                rapeseed yellowing you       whole way home.

Still, when the burn      embers out       in the dusk
I go plucking firefruits       in the ash         like we could live on it.

III.

That later           you realize the smoke                   is of a nearby backyard garbage fire—
only subtle-tarnish the effect:                   breaking your head off of rigged-right angles
the seven straightfaced lines       in every glance            (Here, a history of headless steeple—
here, so fresh the acephale)

to see yourself barely audible
in the mechanisms.

IV.

Polyester lace caught so many              magnolia stud              the whole fertile bayou
in my shoe                   by the time I reached            the forest edge,       my step broke
heavily with the weight              of a woods four trees abreast                everything round
in my canopied              head

the magnolia trees boom with the scent
of petroleum.