Squid, Frozen Toes, Tequila and Love

Read this poem in the March 2006 of Poetry magazine.  Every time I read the last lines of the poem, my heart clunks down a few steps into a place deeper than everyday. A place I’m not sure I could live. It would be constant openness. Too raw to be productive.

The poem also speaks to the tension between, yet potential compatibility of, science and emotion. And the poet, Katherine Larson, speaks with authority because she is a molecular biologist and field ecologist. !!! Knowing this somehow makes the poem complete for me.

Oh, and Aurvandil is a giant in Norse mythology who was carried in a basket across an ice river by Thor. The cold waters froze Aurvandil’s toe, so Thor broke it off and placed it in the night sky where it became a star. You might want to know this later. (I’m pulling this from a website called The Metal Archives. I had to look it up, cause I hadn’t a clue. And I have to credit the website, because I'm not yet far enough removed from my thesis.)

“Love at Thirty-two Degrees” by Katherine Larson

                          I

Today I dissected a squid,

the late acacia tossing its pollen

across the black of the lab bench.

In a few months the maples

will be bleeding. That was the thing:

there was no blood

only textures of gills creased like satin,

suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful

not to cut your finger, he says. But I’m thinking

of fingertips on my lover’s neck

last June. Amazing, hearts.

This brachial heart. After class,

I stole one from the formaldehyde

And watched it bloom in my bathroom sink

between cubes of ice.

                          II

Last night I threw my lab coat in the fire

and drove all night through the Arizona desert

with a thermos full of silver tequila.

It was the last of what we bought

on our way back from Guadalajara

- desert wind in the mouth, your mother’s

beat-up Honda, agaves

twisting up from the soil

like the limbs of cephalopods.

Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely

considering the cold, and the fact that you

weren’t there to warm me.

Suddenly drunk I was shouting that I wanted to see the stars

as my ancestors used to see them –

to see the godawful blue as Aurvandil’s frostbitten toe.

                           III

Then, there is the astronomer’s wife

ascending stairs to her bed.

The astronomer gazes out,

one eye at a time,

to a sky that expands

even as it falls apart

like a paper boat dissolving in bilge.

Furious, fuming stars.

When his migraine builds and

lodges its dark anchor behind

the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons

of his jacket, and walks

outside with a flashlight

to keep company with the barn owl

who stares back at him with eyes

that are no greater or less than

a spiral galaxy.

The snow outside

is white and quiet

as a woman’s slip

against cracked floorboards.

So he walks to the house

inflamed by moonlight, and slips

into the bed with his wife

her hair and arms all

in disarray

like a fish confused by waves.

                        IV

Science –

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,

every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.