XVIII.i

 

To straddle the chair such that slack
is drawn, an elbow or knee of rope
wrinkling shin, throat, hipbone, chairback;

 

then to thrash, tip over, beat the air
like a boy beset by bees in the pines
of Appleton, as if a sting and flare

 

of swarming thorns unwound between
black trees, a fierce dark rigging
he'd flailed down. Like sunlight, not seen

 

but sharply felt. Yet now, to feel
less and less sure that anything
of ropes in all of that was real;

 

the savagery of bees descends like truth:
he'd been set upon by a kind of song
which linked the many rooms of this earth

 

by finding such sweetness in each one.

 

(Seated Rope Escape, Boston, January 1906)

 

From Anatomy of Keys by Steven Price. Copyright © 2006 by Steven Price. Reprinted by permission of Steven Price and Brick Books.