Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Dawn Wind Unlocks the River Sky

F R E D C H A P P E L L Dawn Wind Unlocks the River Sky Early half-light, dawnwind driving The trees. Wind ravels the scribble of vague clouds, Fingers the Primavera glass curtain at sill-corner and bellies It forward, here is my galleon-sail, I can voyage where I whither; And do not. I push more deeply my face, Love, to your breast. Your small breathing harbors me. Bedroom curls and uncurls with breath. Just as the curtain curling, uncurling, is free to voyage in arabesque, Not leaving its true place. The small breathing of earth In our window delivers me the houses and trees, souls aswoon in wind, Spirits drifting on the dawnwind like sleep-smoke, bonfire Smoke. First sun in the glass curtain dyes it with fire, It is a fire in air, It is a fanfare of pure spirit, prelude, aubade. Do I now Desire you harshly? No, it is the false desire of fresh morning, my body seeks limit Merely, curb and margin, wind-plunged. It is a half-bitter floating in this sea of spirit, This sea of music, Passacaglia to every ocean, I am swimming your skin Of touchless fire and earth-salt. Wind drives me forward like The spider’s doily, anchored at corner and corner and corner to the The 1970s ❚ 53 Domestic shapes: black hairbrush like a sea urchin, cologne bottle, Hairpins and comb, deodorant can, The mirror like a burning window. (Bedroom fills now With the duet—Rossini—of blue jay and stinksparrow.) How the world was formed: Wind huddled together from every quarter the dead men in it, Wistful spirits in a gang chained lamenting to the elements, Elements carried from the Four Quarters by the old East Wind, By Auster, and Zephyr, And by rapacious snaketailed Boreas. Suffering of spirit, suffering of elements, In one mass. My birthday, Year Thirty-Five, May 28, 1971, Is tumbling the dawn awkwardly as a broken boxkite, slenderest of twines Holds it to me, it is Anybody’s Birthday, the whole world is born again In the morning flush of loosed wind-spirit, exhalation Of fire-seed and gusty waters and of every dirt, Birthday sails on streams Of atoms, freshening now the breeze in the Solomons and by Greenland, Brilliantly invading the spicy Virgins. Fire coming apart now to wind, earth Divides to rivers, the world of waking shoves me bodyward. How may I retrieve my spirit where it twirls In the glasswalled caves of wind? Speech of morning, Dawnwind driving the trees sunward, it is Your breath, love, caught back pulsing in your throat where you swim In the spirit sea, where the inspiration of your bright hair 54 ❚ The 1970s Flows on the pillow, your bright hair a river Of fire in early sunlight. The pillowslip blood-warm With breath, the little flame of blood kindles the bedroom. I rock now out of the air, out Of the pure music of absence. In the companioned bed I retake my body, May 28, 1971. Time time time To rise. Put your pants on, Birthday Boy, the trees are Wide awake. The shining net of dream plunges to earth, Earth rises out of air to greet my flesh. The 1970s ❚ 55 ...