Gallagher - Is, is not: poems

Poems Graywolf Press Copyright 2019 by Tess Gallagher The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks. Published by Graywolf Press 250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401 All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org Published in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-55597-841-9 Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-888-4 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 First Graywolf Printing, 2019 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958155 Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter Cover art: Josie Gray, Blue Eyelid Lifting for Josie Gray and for Raymond Carver

Staring down from the bridge at the moon broken up in the river, who could know, without looking up, it stands whole above its shattered self. i Am I real? Do I exist? And will I really die? OSIP MANDELSTAM all day, coming away like an ordinary person who might have been at a till.

Thinking as I dug into earth of my mother who, when my youngest brother died, was taken in by beauty, not as consolation but because she found him there as she made the garden. Each day she tended it he kept a little more of her. If ever I doubt the power of the dead, I walk her garden in May, rhododendrons so red, so white their clustered goblets spill translucent tongues of light at the rim of the sea. And it is ordinary to be so accompanied, so fused to the silence of all that, as it eludes me, as I am taken in. Surely my reappearance must wear the borrowed abundance she gave me that morning I was born.

coming back in an incidental way, claiming to be the most beautiful moment of my life : braiding her waist-length white hair by the Pacific at La Push.

Hand over hand, the three-way crossings of apportioned strands, and quiet, her head braced against my gentle pull as she gazes out. Both in our sea-minds. And quiet. Quiet. for Georgia Morris Bond, my mother

We had our heads down baiting hooksthree wild salmon already turned back that morning for the in-season hatchery silvers now out there somewhere counting their luckwhen under our small boat the sea gave a roll like a giant turning over in sleep, lifting us high so I thought an ocean liner or freighter had slipped up on us, the sudden heft of its bow-wave, our matchstick toss to depth wed taken for granted in order to venture there at all. But when I looked up expecting collision, the quash of water from their blowholes pushed to air in unison, a pair of gray whales not two hundred yards away: Look up! I shouted so you didnt miss the fear-banishing of their passage that made nothing of us.

Not even death could touch any mind of us. It was all beauty and mystery, the kind that picks you up effortlessly and darts through you for just those moments you arent even there. Held that way and their tons-weight bodies plunged silently under again, I turned for proof to you, but the clarity was passing through as a swell under us again and the sky of the sea set us down like a toy. And thats the way it was, and it wasnt any other wayjust looking at each other, helpless one thought and huge with power the next. We baited up, dropped our herring into slack water two ghosts fishing for anything but whales. for my brother Tom

a notion not out of place where bears hunch under apple trees at night like rocking chairs with volition.

Shes lonely, your dog, and the young coyote waits for her at the edge of the forest. Not sinister that tongue laughing wildness when she dashes forward to feign attack, then glances away. If your dog chases too far, what then? Joining wilder kin to rove at borders suddenly treacherous? What does dusk have to do with their marauding? Some ancient tincture of permission allows the edge of night to blend where wild and tame exchange fur in one naked, human mindmy thinking toward them to grant wilderness its emissary. Coyote, whose very appearance takes whisper to its highest pitchthen breaks the play-form of invitation to withdraw, shedding with a guiltless, backward look, this unbidden fringe-workto rejoin her serial moons, her black on black of night, our freshened immensity.

The chilla is the fox Charles Darwin killed by walking up and hitting it on the head with a hammer while it was intently watching the activity of the Beagle s crew. Notoriously unwary of humans, It doesnt know to hide from hunters.

In effect, it steps off the ladder of evolution where ability to hold territory supersedes ability to adapt to environmental changes. The women huddle in the Mens in the Turkish airport. Gun shots ring out, then massive explosions. Escaping down a stairwell, the talisman of a womans scarf, then a smeared footprint where blood outleaped its borders.