by Meg Smith

Glastonbury, England, March 2015

I reached through
the rain, the mist,
the school children,
paper airplanes —
the babel of the bus,
to just one want.
What were the hungers.
Where stood the bones.
Surely, they laughed.
Surely they walked back
as though to move
time itself.
Wouldn’t every widow.
Wouldn’t every lost cat.
Every oak leaf,
every begging,
outstretched hand
at King’s Cross.
I do not have the luxury
of circles.
I only move forward,
dark or near dark,
sun or sun.

by Mike Pacey

Dec. 16, 1850: My feet are much nearer to foreign or inanimate matter or nature than my hands; they are more brute, they are more like the earth they tread on, they are more clod–like and lumpish, and I scarcely animate them.

Sept. 2, 1851: Not till after several months does an infant find its hands, and it may be seen looking at them in astonishment, holding them up to the light; and so also it finds its toes.  How many faculties there are which we have never found!  Some men, methinks, have found only their hands and feet.

Our hands are to our feet
as strong hand is to weak.

My left hand’s me, bears the meaning
of all I do: picking up a glass of water,
buttoning my shirt, tying
a knot in my tie — each daily task
requiring a little English —
my left’s the one that speaks.
My right hand’s dumb —
never knows what my left’s doing.
When I write, try to explain myself,
who I am; my left forms every letter.

It’s the other way round for most —
your right’s good, dexterous —
your left but a mitt, meat; handcuffs you.
There’s more you in the right;
left means sinister in Latin,
denotes feeble, worthless in Anglo -Saxon.
Makes left-handed compliments.
All thumbs.  We touch the dead with our left,
In Islam, it’s the hand that wipes your butt.
People masturbate with their “other” hand,
because it feels like someone else
performs the chore.
But compared to either hand,
our feet, our other extremities,
are just blocks of wood.
Think of the fingers, the names
we’ve bestowed on each.
Forefinger, aka index, pointer, or toucher;
long finger, or middle;
then goldfinger, ring -finger.  And pinky,
“little man.”  But toes lie in a row,
like root -vegetables, anonymous
blunt stubs;
mud’s pals, go wee wee wee
all the way home, namelessly.

Ashamed of our feet, we conceal them
in socks and shoes.  Everyone feels
their feet have some freakish, ugly attribute:
a vestige of web, bunions, fallen arches
(my second toe’s longer than my big).
Only in the bath do we deign
to look at them — hands’ rude country cousins.
Our brains map our hands as great nations,
our feet, tiny principalities.

Long fingers: sign of genius;
long toes: “monkey-feet.”
Footnotes.  Peons, pedestrian.
But they know the Earth, its surface,
so perfectly.
This question Thoreau asks himself
repeatedly:
Why do we shun our home so?

by Mike Pacey

Jan 7, 1857: I can remember when very young I used to have a dream night after night, over and over, which might have been named Rough and Smooth.  All existence, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, all event symbolized in this way.  I seemed to be lying and tossing, on a horrible, rough surface, which must soon, put an end to my existence, though even in the dream I knew it to be the symbol merely of my misery; then suddenly, I was lying on a delicious smooth surface, as of a summer sea, of gossamer or down or softest plush, and life such a luxury to live.  My waking experience always is such an alternate Rough and Smooth.  In other words it is Insanity and Sanity.

In childhood, again and again, I too had this dream.
Even recently, suffering a fever — half asleep, half awake —
it returned . . . I’m lying face-up on the ocean
flat and polished as a sheet of glass.  All is still, silent.
Slowly, two ripples set off from opposite shores.
Inexorably, they meet with a crash,
and subside.  Peace returns . . .
Then two bigger waves approach each other, collide.
Larger and larger whitecaps slam together.
In minutes, my brain’s engulfed in a roiling sea:
twisted mass of choppy water.  The surface agitated;
my own agitation heightens, inescapable.
Flung about in bed — sheets drenched, heavy.

Visual and auditory cues recur
but the overwhelming essence is tactile:
where once the sea inside’s soft, even,
now all’s sharp and jagged.  For years, I kept
this nightmare to myself; then one night,
sensing imminence — mom tucking me in —
I told her about this battle in my head. ! ! !
Two armies, face to face, tensed for combat.
She stroked my forehead, tried to calm me
by saying war’s terrible, everyone’s afraid of war.
Often I wanted to share it with others,
write it out, but was afraid.
Then I read Thoreau’s Journal;
no longer alone on this brittle, inconstant ocean.

by Mike Pacey

Nov. 18, 1851: Deacon Brown told me today of a tall, raw–boned fellow by the name of Hosmer who . . . held up a little perch in sport above his face, to show what he had got. At that moment the perch wiggled and dropped right down his throat foremost, nearly suffocated him . . .

June 3, 1856: Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight . . . He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.  Think of going to bed for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set, scales dissolving in your throat!  What dreams!
What waking thoughts!

A fish out-of-water tale — lodged
halfway down one man’s gullet —
fourteen days and nights
of thin broth, gilled breath;
defecating scales and fish-bones.
Perched in the thick
of your throat — hooked, a catch:
reel him in! — that tickle in your craw . . .
a fin?  Eyes staring open, unable
to sleep, speak.  Parched.
All day in the bath-tub, mouth ajar,
trying to coax it out with lures, worms.
Oddly drawn to small ponds.
Fitful dreams: drowning in muddy water,
fish surfacing, working your mouth
by pulling strings.

Become one — poached;
scaly skin, fishy thoughts —
asking, Will this never pass?
Knowing from now on
you’re forever Perch.