PALISADE I
It is Steve's hunt. He is
Out of character, brusque
With Walter. Son, father
Caught in the oldest contest
Harvesting flesh for food.
Each generation giving
Way to each in leading
The chase, reading the
Land, placing the stands
Driving deer flesh.
Four generations of Beck men
Conducting these blood
Rituals, on this their land,
By this mighty river
Have fleshed their family.
Steve drives the logan
Hear, hoof and snort,
See ear and eye, raise rifle
Watch the morning become
A flash of fleeing flesh
Afternoon, Walter reclaims
The hunt, stands Steve and me
Carves hands and face,
With logan point prickly ash,
Driving flesh to me, to Steve
Hear Steve's hit and
Tree tangled
Shoot and miss two
That were anterless, would have
Been illegal, wasted flesh.
Steve cuts quick, surgical, clean
Lifts lungs heart gut from
Hot flesh, ropes her for the drag.
We laugh and talk of the flesh
We drag, of the flesh we missed.
Later at home, in the garage
The women watching
A lesson from father and son
In choosing cutlery
In separating skin from flesh.
Thus father and son blood
Their latecoming in-law
In the way of the hunt,
The lay of the land,
The fleshy heart of the family.
Walking across the skywalk
I carry the words
To the warrrior waiting
The odds, the chances, the limits,
In this his life/death.
He lies waiting carving
To stop the dance of the crab
In his pancreas, his liver,
Cells running wild, driven by
Ha-ras gene expression.
We are just past the longest
Darkness of the year, unknowing,
Creeping toward an uncertain
Spring dance with Isis, mythic
Powerful, magical healer.
The words say one in
One hundred alive after
One year. "Hard read," I say.
He nods, tears, says "Yes."
But there is Isis.
The words are spun from
The web, from NCI and ACS,
From Isis about ISIS 2503,
Magic antisense inhibitor
Of Ha-ras gene expression.
We look to the earth mother,
Queen of the underworld
Calling on Isis to bring
Life out of death,
Light out of darkness.
Four of us ride,
Warrior and wife,
Sister and I,
South to Isis celebrated
Powerful, magical healer,
Gifted, able to cure
Mind, Body, spirit.
Divine Physician.
Riding into Spring,
We see the first greens.
Alder catkins north,
Mists of corn and wheat
On new turned,
Disked, seeded
Black earth south.
Spy wild turkeys at dawn,
Browsing boggy bottom
Roadside,
Peregrines on posts
Eagles in slow gliding gyres.
Basement breakfast at the Kaliher,
Then, underground
Into Mayo, temple to
Health, life, and death,
The underworld of Isis.
Elevate to an enormous lobby,
Purgatory of hairless
Happy
brave children,
Brave parents, brave
Wives, sisters, brothers
Friends and lovers.
Haven of hope.
Called into the
Sanctum Sanctorum
Holy of holies,
We watch our warrior,
Our brave one,
Down anti-nausea potions,
Clench fist to raise
Veins to channel
Isis' mystery
elxir,
Drop by drop
Inhibiting Ha Ras
Expression, hunting
Cells gone wild.
Battle commences
In the warrior's blood.
We watch,
Call on Isis,
Earth mother,
Queen of the underworld,
"Bring life out of death,
Light out of darkness."
We rode on water, on fire,
Reflected glory of a slow fall.
Leaving earth and dock to run
On calm sky water. Motor
Missing, but not quite dying.
We talked of fouled plugs,
Of risking a long row or walk,
And chanced it to ride the
Dappled day and fish
For a sense of being whole.
Catching nothing, talking little
Except about how good
It was to be on water in fall,
Throwing minnow tipped jigs
For the art of it all.
We caught some peace,
Some sense that it was
The living that mattered
Not our dances with
Radiation, chemo and the crab.
Dockside back to earth
I pulled him up, out of
The boat, off the water,
Out of the fire and the sky.
His legs wouldn't do it.
Then we struggled together,
Loading the boat, not strong
Enough together to do what
Each might have done alone
Before the dances macabre began.
Backing the trailer in again
Refloating the boat, guiding
Keels to rollers just right
Pulling our dying, plug fouled craft
Back to ride its bed right.
Brawn failing, we used cunning
Holding that moment of
Earth, air, water and fire
Against the dying of the light,
Against the coming of the dark.