Mary Ravlin Gould
SKIP-JUMPS
My mother moves toward silence now.
Short wobbly steps
like printemps stumps
of Red Wing clay remainders. So
I follow along now, too. Two lumps,
like those she spun once
on a wheel. Immense
maypole of Mendelssohn skip-jumps –
the way Rembrandt became his painting
(like seaweed-coated plank
of slick driftwood, anch-
ored in sand). Memory, fainting.
I used to topple to the ground
in school. An epileptic
pine, almost. A cryptic
minor character, utterly unfound –
unbound within some fictional expanse
of 19th-century steppe
sunburnt peace-pipe
smoky distances (autumnal trance).
We thread the needle in a mummer’s play.
Ariadne draws the skein –
Dante’s oriflamme ancien
Parisian labyrinth for Beatrice
Jessie Ophelia, remembering her father
Jackson Quick, the river-
pilot, sounding Mount Ever-
Rest (full fathom 5/29... 29...) – Mt. Purgatoire.
5.28.19
