The Salmon (Nov. 2004)

Man cannot make it; on the contrary,
it is always the a priori element in
his moods, reactions, impulses,
and whatever else is spontaneous
in psychic life. It is something
that lives in itself, that makes us live.

-- Carl Jung on anima

I build and launch
these boats of ink
on paper, but you bid
me sail the next sea
toward the next isle
where, you whisper,
you await the motions
of my keel and kiss
and clench. Before
I even set this pen
to write you swirl
up from the blue
of my morning-
making brain, arising
and arousing from
a line of text I’ve
read somewhere
that sights a passage
once more here,
sufficient ache and
shore enough to
try here once again
to bed you here
at last. Something that
I read sights you
in between the lines
& then leaps in
after you with me
sailing fast behind.
That something
is a bit of soul
I was born with
which tore out from
you, as son from
womb and moon
from sea; a narrow
acre of ocean bloom
which leaps and
widens to every sound
and seem of you
and begs to hurl
that music back.
Of course I know
you don’t walk
any island I will
ever shore, and yet
no shore will
do that doesn’t fold
and crash a more
actualler you.
You lace and wiggle
just out of sight
to make
a leaping salmon
out of me, my heart’s
fins coursing
full against the
flow beyond every
noun or verb
I’ve ever found,
wild to taste what
I can’t know on lips
that smile widest
in their welcome
when fully vanishing.
I come to guess
at a physics of
the heart where you
are sine and wave at
once, deepest here and
furthest beyond, salmon
dancing high and
down-pouring Salome,
Ultima Thule and my
wife upstairs.
You’re none of them but
all their strange sweet
majesties in one tide.
Such perplex dapplement
ensures me years of
boating thus to you,
a guarantee of wave
and wash in
salt perplexity.
May all these motions
round the breasts
I found in you
and be homeward most
between the vast
so moist and bluest
I to Thou.