Shannon

The river in spate. The planes going out and in,        and, in the blood, something alive like want    or homemade wine, or an eel trying to find        its way back home.

It’s all so black and white and flickering.        It’s all so sepia. All so pristine:    the green where we dropped coats to make goalposts,        the tent we pitched next to

the airport fence. We stand in line, help pick        the captains who pick teams, or we smoke    stolen cigarettes and speak of girls.        We perfect the fine art

of the slide tackle, or name the places        we’d like to put our hands. Nutmeg and head rush.    Fly goalie and smoke ring. It’s all so far        away from what’s to be:

a tear in the reel, a tear in the myelin        sheath that could mean, as well, lupus    or Lyme disease. And my cousin’s new illness        without a clear source,

like the eel Aristotle believed born        from a mud-nothing. From flecks of scale    and skin scraped off on rocks, Pliny countered.        From the gills of other fish,

or a blade of grass, dew-sodden in late May.        How pastoral, this longing for the past,    its brave stretch of fair days, river in spate        that enters ocean here,

rushing stolen shopping carts, scraps of cars,        the hungry mullet venturing upstream, bottom    feeders just like me. I take off my socks        and shoes. I dip my feet.

How the eyes widen in this dim blue light.        How the skin turns puce again in this pure cold.    And the mind, aching for its own Sargasso,        a disease of the muscle,

autoimmune. We drink dandelion wine        and hurl into the toilet bowl. We dream    of some Russian airhostess undressing in        the dark behind the eye.

No sign yet of what might soon transpire        as a stasis in the limbs, the tongue turned stone,    double vision, as memory has it most of the time.        The planes going out and in.

Something alive in my cousin’s blood. Quiet.        Determined. Not to be stalled by weir or waterfall.    Eel that will eat its own body almost whole        as it returns to source.