Gonna Get You

The solstice grabs the gut and sucks it towards itself –
magnetic, stirring blood both to retreat to warmth
and seek a sensual abandon: danger thrills against
the safety of a hearth. I saw a solstice girl today –
no more than three – who, shrieking, ran away from
her pursuing mother who, with practiced cartoon-nasty
glee, repeated “gonna get you, gonna get you!”
Little Solstice Girl for moments seemed quite ravished
by the possibility – quite as she also squealed
and reeled just out of reach: excited by the breaching
feeling of a freedom just beyond the next perplexity:

Manhattan traffic – cabs and Jersey drivers and
an overheated laboratory of humanity that spiels
and keels right over every boundary: edging at the curb
of solstice-danger and then fleeing towards her mother,
balancing the urge to blow the whole show up against
the hunger for another touch – another reassurance
that the world would spin – the holster and the gun:
the solstice and the wonder of the violence and flux
it keeps just barely simmering – at bay. My mother’s
birthday: Christmas Eve – she would be ninety.
I’m the one who’s left. After listening to an amazing,

deft, sweet counter-tenor-blessed male choir – Chanticleer –
romantic word for Rooster – I boost a dark desire –
cultivate a cocked delicious animal perversity against them:
watch ESPN – and savor sweating, bleeding men
in combat – boxing, breeding lovely anarchy. A solstice
moment – bandying extremities: December’s indoor
warm amenities remind me of my mother’s gentle care
and yet I dare to taste her utter distance: faint and
enigmatic: unavailing hunches: unsusceptible to
punches – or to music – or to little children crying out.
There’s richness in this solstice, and there’s doubt.


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