Brian McCabe

When I Go Out to Get Back to My Body

When I go out to get back
to my body

& walk beside the black water
tiny sounds

seem to rise & surface
as if with messages

a little slithering in leaves
like fine rain     driveway gravel 

or breezes through spruces
that rise & thin

up the mountain    above
each footstep   where trees creak

                                like docks on lakes
& my thinking becomes more

a listening into
& moving than anything

-

Now sounds of a shallow shore
fill space as if a hollow

insects tic & scrape in green leaves
One woodpecker cracks bark   quits

like axe strokes    a fissure
in the brain    lit

yet    there’s nothing to say
Here    where each instant

endures its emptiness
what holds momentarily

the world’s noticeably not
I stare at where the river branches

past rusted truss bridge beams
light  on the water    a swarm

Beyond one bee
                                                                              two jet lines hum in sky

                                                              How do I connect
what remains?

-

Up the bank    river’s rainless fog
disperses over water like dust

                beaten from a rug
where fisherman cast out lines

that make cicada sounds as they arch
backlit near cedars    light-needled

                This is my favorite time
to leave the house

when sun’s spickety
through branches & humidity hisses

                                overhead
So air seems to brim

                                                like this    the sound of everything repeating
as if silence ran out of silence

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Brian McCabe lives in New York City, where he teaches high school English and is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in petrichor, Tupelo Quarterly, Harbor Review, Broadkill Review, among others.