Taking the Waters
I’m nursed on mud
harvested from the clay beds of Abrest
and soaked in the springs of Vichy
until blue algae is like a cradle
in the golden bough.
The days are marked by rituals—
mineral water, steam, sugar cubes
wrapped in oiled paper
and the moon, pink as a braided onion
draped over the handlebars of a bicycle,
shapes the movement of animals.
The night stalkers ambush.
The scorpion turns blue.
I show up for breakfast
in my robe and shower shoes,
read the regional papers
eat a breakfast of root vegetables.
According to Napoleon, carrots are the obligatory vegetable
of the sick.
I learned this from Germaine, the water girl, in 1906.
She ladled prescribed beverages
from a wicker holder,
and like a suicide filled her pockets with stones
to keep count of how many tonics
the curistes consumed.
These days it is self-serve terroir.
There are vending machines
that sell plastic cups in the Hall des Sources
where we gather like school children
at a soda parlour apothecary
to sip from the Earth’s cauldron,
a healing hell-broth simmering under the flame
of Hecate’s torch.
Junction Pool
The story is the trout
With two heads swam through the water
And arrived at Junction Pool
The same time speculators were hooking
Fat parcels of land.
The trout told me
This on a day my lazy, softwood pole
Wove horsehair ringlets on the waters,
And I lie lightly on the minutes
Investing birds with half an eye.
The trout with two heads
Didn’t have two heads when it arrived
At the point where Fly Creek meets Oaks River,
But raised the second head like a crow’s nest
To watch for the darkness around both bends.
The trout told me
This on a day I was a small man
In the eye of a river, my lazy, softwood pole
Cast green to bronze and bronze to green—
The fish disinterested in everything but dreams.
Eastern Point, 1896-1914
It’s easy to forget
you were not an Englishman
but a midwesterner
summering on Cape Ann, in Gloucester
out on the bow of Eastern Point
in a cottage called The Downs.
You studied butterfly and spider specimens
on a broken microscope,
hunted for birds with your sister, Charlotte.
You built sandcastles
with a broken lobster pot,
and idled-away August afternoons
searching for starfish and horseshoe crabs
out on the breakwater
that protects the inner harbour
from the fury of the Atlantic
the fixed white light
and whistling buoy
marking Dog Bar Reef,
which extends shoreward
from the point like a siren call.
You read the wind
and feared death by water.
Years later
you crowned yourself the king of April,
which was cruel to the poets who came after.
But we’re at peace with you now.
We can sail past the Dry Salvages
a mile east off Avery’s Ledge
without fear of running aground,
without anxiety.
Still, your influence is strong.
And when the fog rolls in like a ghost song,
its ropy chords slipping through the mooring
and fir trees
we follow the scent of the beach rose home
forward
forward
forward.
Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He's the author of three chapbooks and a full-length collection, Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include Apocalypse Confidential, The Crank, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Spectra, the engine(idling, Horror Sleaze Trash, & others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.
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