Pablo's Questions for Susan

1

Si se termina el amarillo

con qué vamos a hacer el pan?

If yellow ends

what can we use for making bread?

Remember how she walked toward us

smiling? Both her hands,

her arms dancing us into her hug.

2

Cuántas abejas tiene el dia?

How many bees in a day?

To be or not to be — that

we don't choose. We are gleaned

by what is welcomed everywhere.

3

Pero por qué no se convence

el Jueves de ir después del Viernes?

But why can't Thursday

decide to come after Friday?

One year ago were that to have happened

she might have lived one more day

& learned what she needed to save her life.

4

Cómo logró su libertad

la bicicleta abandonada?

How did the abandoned bicycle

gain its freedom?

Not one but two bicycles —

hers & Blue's.

You don't think he's ridden since, do you?

5

Es verdad que en el hormiguero

los sueños son obligatorios?

Is it true in anthills

you must dream?

Anthills are where we gather

& work to remember —

all together we remember her by dreaming.

Susan, on the Anniversary of Her Leaving

what if she hasn’t left?

                                  why would she leave?

something she knows that we don’t?

she’s riding a pterodactyl

she’s wearing yellow robes

Look, she’s waving, smiling

what if she’s a hoopoe now?

that ridiculous crest

black-barred wings

bard

       barred

                  free

Barrier Breach

Live oysters & oyster shell ring

the barrier islands, dark & white oases

in 350,000 square miles of spartina

nourishing the marsh by photosynthesis.

Blue & stone crabs sidle, pelicans glide

then preen on dock posts & channel markers.

Laughing gulls reconnoiter barks & cries

of orange-billed skimmers & oystercatchers.

Every knobbed or lightning, pear or channeled

whelk — the liquid body housed in calcium

carbonate excreted from its mantle —

imperceptibly stalks an open clam,

intrudes its shell’s lip & radula — toothed

chitinous ribbon — tender flesh it chews.

Submerged Islands

(alkali olivine

Hawaiite basalt)

emerge

for geologic reasons

not tied

to nations or chiefs.

Eruption &

subsidence

are cycles humans

savor, suffer,

& ruthlessly mire

in legal briefs.

Into the Breach

The breach of good sense is not reading the sign

before swimming at Breach Inlet. The woman

sitting in the beach chair journaling runs to warn me —

Come back! Come back! I think, jellyfish

or possibly sharks. No, it's the current & a thousand

& forty dollar fine. Okay, next time I'll read first.

My goal today is swimming, Breach Inlet my first

extremely short dip. Sure enough, the huge sign

makes the danger perfectly clear. At least a thousand

places one could choose to swim, I'm the woman

who picks the wrong one. A lone jellyfish

half buried in sand, still inflated, tempts me

to flip it over, & then, What if it's alive & stings me?

Back in the car I head where I was headed first —

Isle of Palms County Park & hope no jellyfish

will have caused an official to post a sign

saying, No swimming here either. The woman

guarding the gate waves me on. So many thousand

times I'm grateful for my park pass — thousands,

well, hundreds of dollars I save, cause I'm me,

the chances-are-she's-outside-not-inside woman

who goes bicycling instead of shopping, not first

to the sale but first in the water, my tan a sign

of where I spend my hours. The latest jellyfish

pic shot from my phone reminds me of jellyfish

pics in long-lost albums, hundreds, thousands

of nature photos — that most are lost is a sign

that I'm past caring how you'll remember me.

I'm ready to lose anything I savored first.

Call me the world's least acquisitive woman.

At Kit's house this afternoon four women

learn blind contour drawing — not jellyfish

but hands, flowers, & whelks — today the first

lesson. We are to draw daily until thousands

of hours spent let Frances, Helen, Linda, & me

know that we can. Pencil drawings, unsigned.

Today's swim, today's drawings, first of a thousand

for a woman who wouldn't mind being a jellyfish.

Sea, if you're willing to take me, give me a sign.

To See

Early enough the path is mine to walk.

A green heron stands under the floating dock

ready for me to flush it. The wake

of the mallard paddling away

mirrors the heron’s flight

through air laden with moisture, salt, & quiet.

Later I watch the bent woman who walks

& never lifts her eyes to see

as if the path were penance.

Needled in duff at the base of a pine

a red medallion painted

with white letters has waited months

to be seen & taken. Muscadine

inches closer, conceals it.

Angels

it’s as if angels had collected

on the lawn

— Susan Ludvigson

A chorus of whoops — litter or flock? —

sounds the marsh at six am.

Not dog, not fox, not goose or crane

— what can they be but angels,

the start of a parade. Yellow-crowned

herons stalk mudflats, a wren

rhapsodizes. Bread heels

crumbled across the deck, bloated

with yesterday’s downpours,

draw no takers larger than flies.

Fingers of land along the creek remain

unbuilt, places wild, still wooded

for lack of title, countless families

from generations back who knew

Mount Pleasant as Hobcaw & Shipyard,

slaves whose rooted kin retain

these lands where angels thrive

& sing, untaxed & unattended.

Bulls Island

Sun so bright & hot

my face under my borrowed

cap feels like it’s burning,

the glare so intense

I can’t see the photos

I take. An algaed pool

ringed with Nymphae —

cupped & flattened glossy

green leaves, green

stalks bearing lemon-

yellow buds, one

opens to a many-petaled

water lily, dozens of

buds ripe to blossom.

Tall water grass

rises whitish yellow

out of the pool, rises

to green clumps, the clumps

a grassy sea backed

by ragged palms backed

by deciduous trees, the trees

crowned with beneficent

blue, a puffed cloud

or two, clouds that float

in the dark blue water.

No breeze, air & water

still except for the haze

of dragonflies, most

slate blue, some emerald —

pulse & glide. Unless

I wave my arms wildly

mosquitoes engulf me

like whiskery growths

at elbows & wrists, whispers

at temples & ears. Home

I haven’t a single bite,

I’m simply their taste & see —

not delicious. On either

side of the pond Typha

range. I learn these Latin

names from Bartram. Emily

stops at common, says

bobolink rather than

Dolichonyx oryzivorous —

rice-devouring long claw,

South Carolina ricebird

perched atop a nearly

headless palm. I think it

boat-tail until my sharper

lens discovers white

rump & shoulders, yellow

cap. Across the dike

its mate, a yellow breast

I take to be meadowlark

until I talk to the captain.

That’s bobolink, he says.

Seed

Two squirrels climb a single trunk

an inch between them, change

direction, climb farther, he onto her,

she shimmies beyond his fervor,

this single surge in a forager’s day,

sex indistinguishable from hunger,

from urge to fight or flee, both cling

to bark as dragonflies cling to air,

as dandelion flowers launch, each

inverted umbrella trailing one seed.

Elevator

She tells you to count to ten

& step into an elevator &

watch the needle spin from ten

down to one, to B for Basement

(or would it be C for cellar or minus

one) & all that time the horse

is shifting from side to side, pawing

at the floor, pushing its long

nose into your neck, slopping

rubbery lips onto your skin

slabs of horse saliva in your hair.

Vast relief — the elevator doors

open into a dim gray space.

This horse is going to step out

& leave you alone, & if it doesn’t

you will climb into the coal bin &

pull down the lid. The doors

are open, & the horse takes your left

ear between its teeth & holds it —

you can’t see it but you know blood

is running down your neck, down

your shirt, & any moment the horse

is going to bite your ear clean off.

Without turning your head

you raise your right fist & punch

the horse’s nose as hard as you can

& at the same time you scream

Let go! & the horse’s mouth opens,

his head rises up, & he neighs back

hey hey hey hey hey — decrescendo

of hot horse breath, & counting steps —

there will be ten — you sprint

from the elevator toward your room,

you anticipate the blue bowl, the window

you will open, dragon you will pat —

your dragon after all, is tame —

& when you look back down the dim hall

where the elevator doors have closed

you hear the clank as the elevator

begins to rise, & you see, staring

out through the barred window

the horse — the horse is still inside.

Why Do We Need Names?

for children or bees?

Proper names, a particular

Hymenoptera. Let’s not have

common names either.

Forget nouns.

Instead we’ll go with verbs —

ruminate, prevaricate, exacerbate.

Instead of presence

we will be every kind of dance —

emanate, syncopate, evaporate.

In order to make sentences of verbs

all we know is how to scat —

hm-m-m hurries down to the

hm-m-m to buy some hm-m-m.

Alongside the hm-m-m the

hm-m-ms shine. They resonate.

La-la-la she calibrates

   the da-da-da

so as to speculate

       ba-da-da-doom

indeed to participate

uppa-uppa-uppa

ka-zoom.

She’s about to liquidate

whatever you might anticipate doing

all this warm

mm-mm hey-oh

shoup shoup shoup

doo-wah doo-wah

     shih-h-h

kaboom.