Stairs of Sand
Earnest Endeavor
Jacob
Stairs of Sand
Tonight I’ll write of the time you made stairs for me
Of hardened sand.
They went out over the ocean in an arc.
We didn’t stop to count
The footprints, just
Sensed the giddy going-up
And up
The currents swirled below
Amid barnacled rocks.
You lifted me over them
Like a new bride.
And every time we seemed to come to the end
You had more sand in your bucket and you packed
One more mile of stairs
Until the air got thin, the sun hot
(We had no wings to melt)
Out and out these stairs stretch
And there is no end of ocean.
What will you do
When you run out of sand?
Earnest Endeavor
I cannot lay a decent fire.
Perhaps my hands balk
At building a foundation
To burn down.
I strike match after match
Making ash leaves of last week’s tragedies
Massacres and floods
Fly up the flue
But still the wood won’t catch.
I gather words like tinder in the cold kitchen
While the house fills up with futile smoke
I sit at the table
And wait for lightning.
Jacob
Everything I loved I sent across the river.
Since then I have been sitting on the damp earth
My feet still wet from stony water.
I have no fire this night,
There is no moon
And in my chest I am moonless and cold.
When I look up, I do not know
How long the man has been standing there.
The rhythm of the frogs’ song is unbroken,
The scent of jasmine in the air just as before.
His cloak is worn,
His left sandal strap is broken.
“You,” I say.
He does not answer.
I stand.
The bile rises in my throat.
“I called,” I say,
“I sent messengers,
I lit signal fires ‘til the smoke stung my eyes
And choked me.”
He waits.
He is silent.
“Speak!” I cry. “Why won’t you speak?”
A cloud shifts and stars light his face.
My chest is a deep well and he can see the bottom.
With a shout, I leap on him.
He falls hard against the earth
As I pound against the rock wall of his chest.
He smells of moss and rain and sweat.
I try to pin his wrists.
We roll
One over another
Entwined.
I’m swallowing dust,
Sobbing out
“You left —
Me —
Alone —
You —
Never —
Heard —
Seven years, and seven years and seven still again —
I wasn’t hairy enough to go home,
No,
Didn’t smell right,
Didn’t —
Why don’t you speak!”
I take his face in my hands,
Twist it towards me
And from his dry lips,
A moan.
“Enough?” I lean my weight into him,
Press hard against a rib
And his eyes fill with red pain.
He sets a finger on my hip
And shudders.
The shaking quakes through me, through the earth.
I am wrenched apart, thrown down once more
And gasping
I clutch him tighter.
“Don’t go,” I beg as dawn bursts across his face,
“Bless me.”
“Say your name,”
He speaks.
“I am the grasping one,
The liar,
The stumbler of sure-footed men.”
“No.”
“Yes!” I cry.
“I am he —
The pale one,
The thinker.
I’ve brought no goat skins here,
Will you deny me?”
He breathes.
His gaze holds me to the earth.
“You have grasped,” he says
You have held fast.
Your name is Struggle.”
I hold him fiercely then.
“And what is yours?” I whisper,
“What is yours?”
“Why,” he answers.
“My name is Why.”
And so he blesses me
With a question.
I ford the river
With an ache in my hip.