Syrinx, riverside
BY JAMES MCKENNA
What I passed through to get here:
switchgrass, bulrush, cattail: brutality
of the brush: my brushing past &
how I got here at all: I thought
it was a haunting: a god this wild
could be god only of what lies
within his reach: & I fled: aware
the cost of such reluctance: sylvan
graveyard as much a mirror as
river’s surface: how it slips past
where I stood once: unremembering
my ankles cut into the current: wind
& morning everywhere: the tall stalks:
a danger of them: I did not beg:
but something like it: perhaps prayer: only
sisters of the river listening: I would join
them: something like joining them: his hand
in my hair: the sudden wheat: that I could take:
but it was my blood: cooling: how it turned
to water: glass running through each vein
carrying my own unbecoming: I
could not scream: his hand wrapped
around my throat: to find no throat at all:
no: but the reed I was:
I screamed for my body: I screamed
for him to let go: & still
the only sound that escaped me:
a low whistle: the pitch of wind:
& he heard this, & he called it song, the way a child mistakes
his mother’s cries for laughter, the unknowing they share,
& the child thinks this song is for him, it is,
& again: the song is his: this instrument: his:
when he cut away
at my body, I did not scream:
I suffered his desire. He fashioned me
to panpipe & this is called origin…
But listen: to originate means to come
into being & I have:
he thinks he casts music into the air
when it is my curse:
men, gods alike dance
to my breath: they go to sleep
warm in their memory of me: they
think it is the wind outside
that stirs them awake:
they walk to the river & find
not a girl, no:
but all of her blood.
after Brigit Pegeen Kelly