Diva

The very veery this heart thumps for,

she seems a mere heartbeat away,

a buoy bobbing in a bay

on whose shores I sit tongue-tied

to the sound of a fishing boat

tonguing the soft-sand shore-lap.

It’s March. And if I reel it in,

it is real. So to step in,

to swivel dingy oarlocks and plod

out nearer the buoy seems

the very act of throating a bird

as one might stroke a chicken neck

to pacify. Isadora

Duncan knows, or knew, all

too well this feather fingering

of Fate, both divas. Stay with me.

I am moving quite fast, sculling

by the buoy before I know it

is the very emblem of the veery

I would like each small chatty bird

in this narrative to be.

Stay with me, croons the buoy

Bette Midlerian as I scull by

thwartwise. Thickets rise

out of the shore muck starboard,

my skull now heavy with chirping.

Stay with me, and I’d like to

slip out and slide to the spout

end of that buoy throatwise

and risen to song. This is weird,

I tell myself, by which I mean

the Anglo-Saxon kind, which kills

the very veery my heart adores.

Heart, if you have the heart,

help me swing the dinghy round.

Or dive down, bottom-dweller, and throat

this minnowed moat crosswise.

Nevermind the albatross.

Divide the drink for the wan and dewless.

“Diva” first appeared in Hotel Amerika, 3.2, (2005).