Kathleen Winter
Portrait of a Lady
The sea is a glittering negative, like a Henry James sentence, of the sky.
There’s an economy of understanding: intelligent, presumptuous,
sometimes we spend a fortune in injury to buy enlightenment,
Isabel Archer’s mistake even more painful on the second reading.
Yet we drive to be unblinded, shorn like monks, or athletes pretending
to be humble. Who could be humble with souls so quick and willful.
Dazzling is for James a perilous word—
beware of dazzlers in summer’s pacific afternoon,
sand blanketed with bodies, teens with boards
like giants’ tongues. Every last wave surges in muddy, heavy with gift.
Under the surface great whites watch as oceans fill up with plastic.
More plastic soon than fish, if seers are genuine.
Isabel held to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past.
The shark’s body is pure, is perfect, says a scientist.
What hazard to assume this
or any animal could rule the land or sea.
Blue finite lady, who could mistake you for an instrument, possession or lifeless thing to be commanded.
Without humility can we imagine any ending less than tragic?
the knife
what on earth, what the hell
were you doing
holding the widest knife from the kitchen drawer
that tired morning
you and he were fighting before we drove
wherever we were driving
just holding the knife, not cooking
alone in the room
with the globe light off, holding
the knife
with the blade pointed up when
I walked in
not hearing your breathing, not expecting
to find you there
standing till you opened the drawer
put it in
then went back to the living room, sank
in the wingchair
you’d stared at it too: you weren’t sure