I Am, You Are

For Anita

At first you thought it was a cow,
dying, horribly, in great pain—
but then you distinguish
the donkey, picture his great teeth, his ears
laid back with effort, spindly legs splayed
to better hold. You like to think
he makes that double earful of noise,
loud as he can, because he can, because he wants
to see how loud and long he can play
it out through the valley, drown out the known
and named beauty of the cardinal and the wren,
louder than that whippoorwill
at 5 AM or the rattling rumble of a train
coming through—he keeps going—
his belly working like a bellows,
his throat scratching—he lets it rip
through spring in these low mountains
with their green and green and more green
turning up and up like volume everyday—
and you remember there was some long argument
over a word in the last sentence of Plath’s Bell Jar—
did she write brag of my heart or bray?
And then you think of stubborn hearts
or one, at least, doing its own work
in the world of insistence and upkeep—
brag works here—the beats
steady and insisting: you’re here, here, still here.
But listen to that damn donkey
lean into that crude crack of sound,
his very own pitch and tonation—
like he’s trying to learn the limits—
the width and depth and size,
of what he’s been given—the noise
he’s supposed to make.
This full belly bray like a prayer
over this landscape, this holler:
I am I am I am.