Little Things and Big Things

Here's another one that has the elusive quality I've come to call in my own snooty way "evocative specificity," being able to be both detailed and larger than life. It's about a hemodialysis machine, I think, which removes, filters and recirculates blood back into the system. But it's also about the things which leave us and come back. It may just be my religious predilections, but I think there's also some Communion here, and maybe hints of the Sea of Galilee.


However you read it, though, it has certain details which are essential to the poem's life: Farm Pond, a hammock, a specific day in a specific month. But by incorporating the repetition of the lines, building and reusing elements to make something larger, Rhodes is also emulating the ostensible subject of the poem, removing and replacing and recombining small pieces to keep the larger system moving. 


Good stuff, and it's all brought to you courtesy of the Internets: if you use iGoogle to set up news feeds and the like, there's a widget you can add from Poetry Daily which gives a brief, usually readable and often worthy poem every day. That's where this came from, so don't say the web is only for spam, Facebook and porn. Which it also is for.

Come to Me, His Blood

Martha Rhodes

Come to me, his blood, 

so I may cup you, 

be reservoir and ladle, both—

clean, store, and stir.

Then serve you back to him.
Come to me, his blood, ill, 

so I may warm, sieve, and funnel 

you back to him; his cheeks ruddy 

again, his head in my lap.

The wind is up! and sails our boat
across Farm Pond, our friends 

on shore waving us to picnic time—

a hammock-nap, a swim—

all four of us, all well.

Not dozens of summers ago,
but now, this final Sunday in July, 

come to me his blood, don't rush 

onto a lawn or street, don't seep—

but if you do leave him, if spilt, 

you who cannot slow or thicken,
redirect yourself—you must—come to me 

and I will bring you back to him.