USA

White Island, January 1840

COLD

Rime rings the rock:

ink freezes; wine congeals
to splintered stars;
on passing boats, men,

tied to the bows, lean
and strike the ice, jockeys
whipping their horses,

whack-whacking what
was once a wave
but clings now, builds,

and hauls boats down.
We are bound by ice.
Father heats a coin

on the stove, holds
it in his leather glove,
presses it against

the darkened glass,
and watches as heat
chases ice. Through

a penny-sized hole,
we peer at a round
and polished world

of hardening water.

1863 BODIES

Tom Thumb and his bride
(two feet, eight inches tall) stand

on the polished top of a grand
piano to greet their guests.

In Richmond, men riot
over bread.

Gettysburg's streets are black
with bundled bodies, prowling dogs.

In New York City, mobs attack
the Colored Orphan Asylum,

and, finding the orphans gone, kill
whomsoever they can.

In England, thirty thousand
die of scarlet fever.

In Ireland, once again,
potatoes rot.

And in Paris, a painting
of a naked woman, picnicking

with two clothed men,
can somehow shock.

Appledore Island, 26 August 1894

SPIRIT

Later they will say I died
like Goethe,
asking for light.
I did ask Minna to pull

the curtain so that light
would wake me,
but my last request
was a soft boiled egg,

which they will edit
out of the myth.
I want to tell them
to leave the egg in,

to let it sit there,
in its wooden cup—
at the center of a darkening
room, the gleam

of bone-white shell.

© All Copyright, Ann Boutelle.
five poems from Becoming Bone: Poems on the Life of Celia Thaxter
(University of Arkansas Press, 2005)
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. 

BENS

I see them in dreams, Ben More, Stobinian, Nevis, Schiehallion.
Bald and stern, no touch to soften or gentle, granite heaved

up and weathered down to what remains. Nothing more
Scottish than these—their inflexibility, their indifference.

They condemn pretension, and kill fools. Sleeping
monsters, these whales of hills have traveled

far and plan to go no farther. Cliffs, screes, ridges, flints,
ramparts, boulders, gullies. Such flanks, such haunches,

such wide breasts with nipples of cairns that point to heaven
as if a godlike child might reach down his lips and suck. Wind

wraps them in lamentation. Sun polishes their stubbornness.
Moon's silver calls to the silver of their calm. Rain lashes

and lashes them and they do not deign to notice. And children,
looking up, see another kind of parent, one that endures.

WORDS

When did I forget how to plowter, how
to be scunnert, how to look for foozle

under the bed? When, afraid of sounding
twee, did I stop saying wee? Who snatched

away douce and douchty? I lost my spurtle,
grew too proud to be wabbit, avoided any

kind of big stramash. Even when my Libra
soul pendulumed alarmingly, I didn't swither.

I quarreled with the Bens, sent the burns
into exile. Did they creep slowly off, little

gray mice looking for another home (no
sleekit rodents this side of the pond)?

How proper it all became, no screech
of pipes, no eightsome reels, no raucous

ceilidhs, no cailleachs with their thin white
hairs and whisperings, no burach spreading

out across the floor. Nuala sees her
language as a boat, a coracle to launch

in the bulrushes and send off to "some
Pharaoh's daughter." I saw mine as

something like a wart, a fart, a sneeze.
And, oh my lost darlings, I run after you

now, wrap treacherous arms round
you, dust you off, feed you kippers

from Loch Fyne and whisky from Islay,
then pin you on the page, as witness.

Annie Boutelle. "Bens" and "Word" in Nest of Thistles
© Copyright by Annie Boutelle.
Reprinted by permission of University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.