Astral

Astral Tracy K. Smith (bio) It begins with a finger on the switch, Eyes open in the dark until I see—what Do I see? That empty scrap and scrabble Etched in static above the bed. But isn't it something? A baby's thigh, A carriage? A half-scallop with a lady in it? The heart slows. A procession through snow. All that bad tv, weak signals. But I follow. What collides? What is this real thing That happens only at night? * * * My husband is far off and thinks of me In the past tense. I wept. I was. You Lean into the curve your wife makes sleeping. She is in Buenos Aires, always Buenos Aires When she sleeps, your heft a bundle she must carry From café to café. A child or a bag of pastries. Her jewelry glints in daylight. What if My foot presses down onto the white blanket Of moonlight patching your sheet? Where am I that I am here? In the mountains of Wyoming A trout looks up through the roof Water makes. Feathers, fur, a fine Thread of invisible chord skirt The surface, and the trout's mind Makes the sign for fly. Who knows How this is done? Whether the trout Sees the flit, the flicker on water And recalls the brief satisfaction Of air, the knot of legs, Wings that collapse? And so [End Page 894] It leaps with its whole body. Inveterate. And your biceps Tighten, don't they? For a moment You become the fish—pure muscle, Desire tethered to desire. A stone Skipped across this same river. You tug back, sink the hook. When my husband sleeps, He makes the shirred murmur Of sea and shore at night. He is racing toward a gold Disc that sits at the distance Like an enormous yolk. It drops Quickly, and the water glows hot. There is barely time, he knows. When my husband brushes His knuckles against her thigh, The woman beside him smiles. Let's try again tomorrow, she says. They laugh. They loll on the sand. Tiny waves nip at their feet. Sirens wail and blare in Buenos Aires Where your wife has caused a man's Heart to sputter & choke, her fingers Are that delicate. Is it her you feel Now, when I touch the lids of your Sleeping eyes? Your face is empty, As if there really is a soul that roams the planet at night. Yours must be heavy. Why else would you look Now like a vacant doll, like you might rise At the slightest effort, the faintest breeze? And distant. Farther than the river, Than the trout now, which has left The river forever, unless there is a river It remembers and traces with the memory Of its own slick shape, terse weight. Maybe desire is nothing but memory, And we dream only what has already been. Your wife falls in love with a dark man Who leads her from ballroom to ballroom. Their love is a slow tango. They dance Without pause, knowing that one day [End Page 895] A bell will wake them, that she'll weep, And he'll recede into the traffic of Buenos Aires, Waving with his one raised arm Like a figurine in an aquarium. My husband Kicks at the sand and traces the shape Of the woman beside him. A silhouette Against the night sky. So many stars. Her long hair moves like a curtain In the breeze. Soon, she tells him, All the sand will be rearranged. I rest with my ear on your chest, listening For the racket your boots will make When you make your way back. Tracy K. Smith Tracy K. Smith is author of The Body's Question, a collection of poems. Her poems have also appeared in numerous periodicals, including Gulf Coast, PN Review, Harvard Advocate, and Callaloo. She teaches at Princeton University. Copyright © 2005 Charles H. Rowell

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