open water

I can't remember what it was
that I was trying to remember -
	just reunions, details around
rhythm in grass, the little stir

of summer feet bare and callused
echoing those instants of light
drawn in her hair, and she explained
	'just step in time with me' 

Impossible, the heel to toe
	then toe to heel and back
again, that daughters of the sun
danced in laughing patterns born

by counting beats, in course by fours;
Listen to it across the resort  -
	my father's old polkas from north
Deutschland, tuba supporting

another chorus of Betty Wolf
'weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin'
	and again I'm six, the girl expecting
everything and I can't begin	

to grasp her will to share this - motion
or kata of joy I cannot join
	Which random memory sums up
the distance of a few June			

rains - or that I still can't recall
completely my grandfather's face
	who'd play button-accordian
at Christmastime and gather us

together again in July. 
	And lately insomnia strikes
us against the dawn like flint 
and flaunts itself in our walking, rhythmless 

cigarette stems extending to air -
inverse roses held in unresolved fingers
	moving minus one through 
the ashen fresco of morning

haggard to the cafe, imparting 
impotent witness to sky of marble,
	flesh and funerals I didn't make - 
reason it out for me:	

the excuses, lies I tell myself:
	We're feeling older farther
apart alone and busy missing 
everyone regardless.  Remember			

wrestling Michael Gerving in my hometown,
	the exhaust-brown snow 
outside the blue squat 
of his single story house, ruddy Sioux 

face red from the cold,
	walking down to the Callaway 
general store, past Baker's Cafe 
(closed now, population down 

and dwindling for years) - it was the first grade;
	we had venison for supper
and we were up all night talking
under a poster of Daisy Duke

about stuff.  Like Adam and I at the wedding
	or anywhere, dilating on nothing 
in time to the revolutions 
in our heads, stories we know

by heart, mincing physics to tao		
mostly because we could - 
	the lot of us tangled together
on the Crane's bed and another bowl 

	watching each other: cascade into light 
as the night dragged on; dripping into static; 
for sides of us we'd finally understand. 

	The ceiling spun fustian
circles, the spackle asking
what begged excuses for things, caved 
into koans of bathos and sound

(my slack is better for want of nothing 
better in my pants, or really there?  
	Mu.  Nothing was funny, we laughed anyway) 

I don't know what's left of that.  Adam's gone: 
	he left us images, pictures taken while 
in Tabago - Argyll waterfall, five frames

high from the path and there, at the bottom
is Adam stretching arms up and out to sky
	under the mist, before getting sick,

dying in Trinidad from malaria,			
	mother arriving too late, family left
putting pieces together and college friends

from chicago driving eighteen hours straight
on amphetamines and coke to make Vermont
and the wake on short notice, arriving there

resembling Adam - unshowered, a little crazy,
	high.  We knew malaria from bio
and analyzed the human vector - female

ancepholes mosquitos introduce 
the parasite to blood stream in saliva
excreted during feeding; the parasite

travels to liver, attacks hepatocytes
	beginning tissue reproductive cycle
that lasts seven to twenty-eight days

for P. falciparum - the only fatal 
strain of four - the merozoites produced
attack red blood cells, attaching

to cell membrane, invaginate and through 
asexual division multiply;
	infected cells become irregular

plugging capillaries until they
undergo lysis, which then stimulates
Tumor Necrosis Factor - causing fever,

	nausea, damage to liver, renal failure 
and anemic symptoms that lead in half of all
untreated cases eventually to death,

ariel blood patterns that burst open
	flowering to gametocytes, residual  
grief and memory, resonance

of loon cries over open water; 
Listen to them across the lake 
calling into morning -
	my uncle Lee cooking pancakes

in his camper, brothers and I 
sitting on the red stained dock 
on Sunday mornings before mass
	small talk echoing fog

swirling over the lake surface
like smoke to air - Lee's pipe tobacco
booming out from nostrils behind 
	newspaper, legos

strewn on the floor where I would build
my figures beside his brown recliner
in the living room. I saw him last
	at home helping my father

pour the foundation for a new building
before I'd missed his wake,  
	talking through the pragmatics 
of construction squint-eyed laughing 

and commanding detail in a way 
that contrasts to these moebius forms
for childhood: humming a melody
	having forgotten rhythm

sings to memory, disjuncts
drawn from proteins winding apart
into the iris of ion channels 
	open to instants apart

from time - dielectrics of mind
and past where Adam is again
telling me to hold it in longer,
	this time until it hurts.


		josh buermann © 2000