March 9: Poet of the Week, Darrell Bourque, "Putting William to Sleep"

It's ten o'clock at night.  Tomorrow, the temperature is supposed to climb to around fifty degrees.  In the morning, I'm expecting the city snowplows to come through early, probably sending 500 pounds of slush, ice, and snow into my driveway.  I love spring weather.  I hate spring cleanup.

The poet I've chosen as Poet of the Week is from Louisiana.  In fact, in the past, he's served as Louisiana Poet Laureate.  His name is Darrell Bourque, and I saw him give a reading around eleven years ago.

Saint Marty thinks he deserves to be more widely known.

Putting William to Sleep

by:  Darrell Bourque

for William Bourque Turley, bn. February 11, 1992

He puts his index finger and his middle finger together

when he loves you with his hands

or when he is touching meaning into things

he is bringing himself to for the first time.

The thumb and the other fingers fold

over the mysteries in his palm.

It is some kind of sacred gesture he has carried

into this new world where nothing has a name yet.

He is touching the thumbnail on my left hand

as I stand swinging him in the hammock

I have made for him of dark and arms,

of chest, of cricket sounds outside and smells

inside clothes and skin and room and house.

I sing to him of orchids in rain forests

and how they touch everything around them like that.

He could be that kind of orchid lover,

I sing to him.  I sing to him of loving

by brushing holiness against everything

he comes to and everything that comes to him.

He presses the skin on my shoulder near my neck

just barely and then his hand slides down.

His whole arm is loose and heavy, falling with him--

his benedictions now for some other darkness, some

other namelessness he might grow to imagine, loving

that it always waits for him in the dark, loving

that it always waits for him on the other side.

A really nice guy and great poet