new nativity

 

new nativity

                why couldn't we have seen

this old Nativity while we were at it?

--the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,

an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,

colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw,

and, lulled within, a family with pets,

--and looked and looked our infant sight away.

                                        Elizabeth Bishop

                                        2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance

I haven't gone a fraction of it on foot

or not since I first set out, empty

dish and innocent onto the barrens

beyond the chained up dog.  He offered

me the riddle I couldn't possibly solve

and so demanded my face

as payment.  I think the bowl was plastic

and blue. I think I didn't ask to go

outside and besides my mother was 

distracted.  The family fractures were

already set again and I was beginning

to learn how to tie my own shoes (though

when that finally came upon me is another

story.)  But that walk alone out to the dog

(didn't I have shoes?  it was June, so maybe

no, maybe it was enough going rough toed

and most of it was grass anyway.  And so.

I wasn't yet known enough or even afraid

of anything or if I was I was told, though only

with the back of a hand, to be brave, to

take it as it came so in all honesty the dog, new

enough to be almost unfamiliar, who lived

homeless under the birch tree in all sorts

of weather (ok, I take that back, I want to

imagine he lived in the abandoned Pontiac)

but later the only thing anyone will ever

tell me is that the windshield was perfect in

its frame and spiderwebbed after her accident,

maybe that was the beginning of the rest of her

serial drunk drives mostly going soused ditch to 

ditch but again it's that day I took completely

into then beneath my skin with every texture 

of his tongue and teeth and timbre of growl 

and claw and wet nose sniff 

and shit like little bombs...the sudden skidding

back and the lunge, how the chain went slack

like he was being beat and now I tell 

myself I had it all, every warning sign in those

hindlegs skidding in the hole he dug himself 

to keep cool in the unprecedented June we were

having, because didn't I hid too with my baby brother

under the bed while the downstairs was strewn

with crockery coming undone and bandanas 

hiding the cut above, just above her hairline?

And the truck or car tires spinning and the rocks

later on far into the grass to be flung by 

the mower...that day, the day the growling 

came to live inside of me and remain---

friend, every time I look at families, ones

that live in hay at Christmas time, with 

the single little boy and the two parents bent

in awe and all the lambs, the occasional ass

and heifer I don't have to ask: where is the dog?

the ugly dog who ate open my face and later

came to his own end after my father's days

in the hayfield, how he walked in, loaded,

and took the .30-30 and stroked the dog's 

head (I watched him from the window, I 

touched my gauzy cheek, the puffy way

the ooze of mercurochrome made me 

think I was going out hunting too) under

the tree and rested with him, cool barrel

between the two hemispheres of the little

brain (I'd play that game with my two fists: 

later: bring them together and imagine 

the speed of such a separation such an 

exhausted way to lie down at the end 

of a mouthful of brutal holy brotherhood.