Kathryn Kirkpatrick - Three Poems from her book Unaccountable Westher

We're singing the praises of POET OF THE MONT,  Kathryn Kirkpatrick here above The Frost Line in this her birth month These three poems are from her book Unaccountable Weather, Press 53 2011.

From Unaccountable Weather (Press 53, 2011)

First published in Calyx

The Garden of Lost Breasts

At first they are lonely,

severed from the capable chest.

Without feet, without bodies to carry them,

they arrive on the backs of herons,

in the pouches of possums.

Because they have often fed others,

the animals refuse to eat them,

will not leave them in labs

on pathology slides.

Instead they bring them here

like racehorses put out to pasture.

Having done the work

of nurture and beauty, nothing

more is required of these breasts—

coffee or golden, ivory or pink,

they have all forgiven someone.

Now they lounge under willows

or sun themselves by the lake.

And here among so many others,

they soon forget the lover’s tongue,

the low-cut gown, the matching breast.

From Unaccountable Weather (Press 53, 2011)

First published in The South Carolina Review

Chemotherapy

Up from the massage table

I catch sight of myself

in the unavoidable mirror.

Afternoon light doesn’t blink.

Basic bald head. Bare pudendum.

Soft pile of belly and hips.

Once mirrors drew me like friends,

broke my gloomy moods

with a smile, eyes brighter

than I’d remembered. Now I’m sacra

to myself, a neutral suggestion,

transpersonal form. Stripped

to Neolithic goddess, I’m all

that’s behind all that will ever be,

prima mater, prima material,

impersonal as rain, kneaded

to dozens of shapes, except

that my chest is  scarred

which is what you’d expect

of a goddess in this 21^st century.

From Unaccountable Weather (Press 53, 2011)

First published in Shenandoah

After the Cave Paintings

Why do I stand unmoved,

jaded as a tabloid, refusing

astonishment, not down on

my knees, but sober as stone—

surely 19^th-century spelunkers,

pranksters, or WWII resistance

fighters passing hours in the belly

of the mountain made these

bison, these bearded horses.

But carbon dating brings me

to my senses. Whatever I can’t take

in—1,500 generations, 32,000 years—

here’s human memory on the horns

of an ibex, our ancestors making it up

from scratch.

                       Is it all too near

to where I’ve been?  Birth & Death.

Back and forth across that stuttering

line, illness a long darkness with only

a lantern and my love’s strong

arm, the uneven, the unearthly

underfoot.

                  Stalactites make their own

sense of water and limestone

as I’m to make something wholly new

from the dripstone of another life.

Just as well we’re not as firmly

anchored as we think.

In the thinned air, the wavering light,

easier to find that other self,

that knows as the animal

knows, as the bears in these caves

once knew, the first scratches on stone

their marks, beyond light, standing

upright on the old riverbed, so that

daughters of Adam, sons of Eve,

took up what the bears laid down,

dark claw on limestone, and drew.