An indigo line from extruded navel to pubis,
a narrow neat bruise or a compass line tattoo.
Beneath it, abdominal muscles asunder, uncleaved
like cheeks of a gravid peach. Above it, livid
straie of a sun-dried gourd-skin, verandahed
by mooning breasts bearing tracery of river deltas.
Stigmata of female crucifixion, sacrificing time
and spontaneity under the aegis of oestrogen,
women wear them variously — proud, afraid,
dumb-struck. In hospital catacombs we absorb
a kabala coded in chromosomes, a whispered initiation.
We dismiss it as so much clishmaclaver
until we step in the river, slipping
on slime, losing our footing, centre of gravity
gone. There is danger in the river of blood,
the moment from placenta to brain,
the tunnel of light. We fear the karma
of lost brothers or sisters. We are terrified
by our heresy. We are ecstatic apostles.
We have faith in the creed
of love and other women.

We knew it as thrumming beat and ribtickle rhyme,
not as howling town wrapping steel river, hungry town
of whiskied blood and tackleboys, a place to ditch
your turpitude, canvas-sway across the ribcage
of the world to begin again in underbelly.
You were not the first — a path worn like centuried stone
by forebears dragging linkirons. You were not alone —
blood-thick brothers propping craven hearts. Here,
you tinkered and tailored and swilled, then pocketed coin
not your own, having sloughed a past but stowed your self.
Lucky for us, your blarneyed nights bartered your loss of luck
for a son, who came shimmying fast from his mother’s
muddied skirts to earthen floor, a missed catch,
a blue-eyed lad with bow legs, a mouth to match,
and a tongue beleaguered by wisdom. They say the blow
levered spirits from the star-canopy of his skull,
who whispered worldly thoughts in rhyme and song.
He was mocked, and hailed, as the chosen are,
but he was a love-learned boy whose aphrodisiac
innocence honeyed his way into scented sheets
and delivered me a grandfather. Oh, the miss
and hittery of it, the snatchery of love, with its tattle-tale
offspring who grow into men. Life, my grandfather
used to say, is a bubble in a bath. Crying’s no good,
you’ve gotta laugh.