My body, when did you amble down
from the levee, begin to wade
with no bead head midgefly or green glitter jig
to flick, quick winglet, at the end of translucent line
nor noontime college bake party
along the weed-slumped banks
nor the tiretube, tame-water floating.
Nor encounter with same vivid weekday man
previously unknown to you, and unknown still.
Stepped down to you, into the water with you,
parted you, transfigured you said leave me alone
said punish me I am an unrepentant boy.
You are not that body now.
Wherever you were headed was not this stream.
Your asscheeks sag. Your abdomen distends.
Nothing has a tight hold on your guts.
Guts spill at times when they’re not tucked away.
Winded, white-haired body. Splotchy skin.
A face uneven as a river jag
and asperous as the mullein’s flannel leaves.
My undesirable body, you’re all I have to fiddle with.
The fiddle’s wood has cracked but it still plays.
The music, rival falls into the eddy, into brisk cascade
and latterly to rest on strand exhausted.
You are the form of my exhaustion as you break.
Tenderness in the testes, tenderness of mind.
I have come to admire you in the water.
You are the yellow crown of some narcissus afterward:
the fizzled salvo. The burst of yolk
that has begun to dry on the stoneware plate.
The mess. A young Picasso’s stab at fingerpaints
hung and fading on his mom’s refrigerator door.
But not without a certain coruscating charm.
You are run-off from the melting foothills,
with your specks of gold. Mostly pyrite,
though that captivates as well.
We need those flecks to break the river’s surface,
its decided syntax. I need you to come down
from the sunflowered shore. Unexpected oxbow.
Unexpected age. You are an engineering failure.
I’m your systemic glitch.
Here, where the shallows pool up into habitus,
I behold the imperfection of you, my mass,
my faulted body. Despite the plunging falls
with you, I swim.