Nocturne

by Callista Buchen

I.
In a mason jug, new paint brushes
mix with older bristles, grape-stained
and rough with use. There,

the fragility of pole and skiff, of a man
in water gripping twig and fog. He pushes.

II.

Whole-body drag strokes shove
through the crowd of empty space
like chimneys,
like steeples,
like the path of pears tossed
from a canvas bridge. Each dip
into shade, each paddle against the roll
of blankness, fights to find the shore.

Waves reach over
and proper names cling
to the hull, to the frame, to what could be
surface. Push is breath, and breath
falls through, recovers, and falls again.

III.

When the rain hits hard enough
to leave a mark
and limestone becomes a spring,

the mountain will bear down,
hoist its moon to the sky's cheek,
and wash a valley in winged shadows.
Then, the dark slips in without music.

IV.

The water saturates the night in grays.
The water gives each paddle a sister.
The water fleshes pear-cliffs in half,

stem to rump, horizon straddled
by the exposed seeds we mistake
for pebbles, for handholds. You can't grab
the place where one meets the other,
where wholeness doesn't need a word.

V.

A wooden shoe will always float,
say the men playing cribbage
in the park. The silo from the Dutch
homestead has no roof.
The swing-set leans on its tethers
in lightning storms, when rain pushes.
A map shows where the barn should be.
But with rubber, you can't be sure.

VI.

A brush held against the paper
might sound like the rush of cards
shuffled against the palm,
or like the blue-green damp

against waves, their wide
mouths pliable under the rudder.
Only the moorhen flinches
when the game ends, goes again.

VII.

The feel of a wooden heel
pressed under your knuckles
sings, push, push—
which you will do, even as slivers
bridge your blood to air and point
the way north. Even cloaked in fog.

Section VI of this poem has appeared previously in the journal elimae.

Callista Buchen's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Formalist, The Pennsylvania Review, Gargoyle, Willow Review, and Bellevue Review. Her reviews have appeared in Mid-American Review and The Collagist.