Sample Poems by Joanne Rocky Delaplaine

---

My Analyst's Coat

Your black coat hangs
on a wooden rack
in the waiting room.

For want of wrapping
myself in it, I lift
its sleeve to my cheek,

see your father
shiver, leaving Russia.
This coat holds

the whole long length
of you, smells of
pipe smoke, potting soil,

pine. From its
thick fur and satin
lining, a voice:

It's always night,
there's blood on the
forest floor, but come.

---

Gravid

Let this girl swim inside my cave.
Let nails, let eyes, let heart,
let lungs let teeth. I'll cull her cries,
I'll knit her wings, I'll call her Eve.
I'll bargain, sell my soul, not ask
again. Let these hips be home,
her ship. Feel her nest in me.
I watch my breasts, my belly stretch.
She kicks, she knocks, she bucks,
she butts, she bulls. I rock, I sway,
I tell her, Take your time. I close
my eyes, I slow to hear her breathe.
Grow, olive seed. And if I die,
O-You-Who-Choose? I will be her earth.

---

Horseshoe Crab

This creature -- ancient, sturdy, ten-eyes,
swims up Broadkill Beach on Delaware Bay
to spawn at full-moon evening tide.

She rests mid-beach, her egg-laying done,
leaving a long trail of footprints behind.
And what tracks -- in Sherman-tank cross-hatch

she curliques, making five lower-case 'e's --
my fifth-grader writes cursive like that --
then plows into sand to keep her book gills wet.

It's the twenty-first of May. She waits for high tide
to sweep her to the shoal where she'll stay until
new-moon, then spawn another 20,000 eggs.
On her war-mask are sixteen hitchhikers, scuds,
barnacles, anemone, castle worms, sponges, shrimp,
mussels stitched tight with byssal threads.

I know a teacher, artist, mother, friend. Women drift,
float moon-drawn, to her coast. Does she choose
to carry them? Does the crab feed or feed on the sponge?

The quarrels that endure are with the self. She (and Yeats)
taught me that. Great -- the debt we feel to those who see
our knots. Greater yet, the work of self-unknotting.
This umbilical pull is both call and response.
When it goes well, between us warm-bloodeds,
we feed each other, our stitches hold, nothing's owed.

I'm watching the blue mussel now, admiring her beard.
She doesn't budge. I've never seen a barnacle jump
ship, but I know that horseshoe crabs molt.

She's nine feet from the surf. It's almost noon. I pick
her up, gently, by the sides of her shell -- it's what we do --
mothers carry -- and walk her down to water's edge.

---

Sycamore Island, Late July

Swimming the Potomac River
I'm halfway to Virginia, following
my brother, who makes it to the far shore.

He's in my sight, that's enough. I stop,
turn on my back, see a blue sky,
the mottled white bark of the sycamores.

The river buoys me like my father did
when he taught me to float. One hand
on my back, the other cupping my head

until I've transferred my trust. Now,
the slightest current runs downstream,
the surface waves ripple up. All my life

I've been racing my brother, hoping
to beat him, or at least keep pace,
but I'm listening to a quieter voice.

Over fifty summers the Potomac's never
been this calm. Today it warms my skin.
The nearest clouds roll east to west,

more distant ones drift north to south.
A red-tailed hawk soars. Rapt, lifted,
my wings are spread, I'm current-held.