VESSELS FOR THE LAPSE OF TIME (2) Poem by Jane Gibian

2. Helicoid


From the cracked bowl of the morning
rises a roaring sea in your left ear, the helical
pulse unfurling into time passages made

convoluted by fingers tracing a slow
orbit around a breast. Taking an old stethoscope
from the table you heard the loud whispery

edges of your heartbeat; listened for
the murmurous parts of that country
absorbed awkwardly inside, down

to the intricate whorls of your knuckles,
like distorted incense spirals. In this vessel
rests a memory of eating rice picked

three days earlier, smoothed grains
in the coarse capsule of a sack, so recently
bound in curved terraces of wet rice

stretching in tiers towards the horizon;
the taste of earthiness and pith sparking
tender florescence in the reverent

chamber of the mouth. With a word balanced
on the tongue comes simultaneously
its echo in another language, coiled

beneath, entwined with an older image;
the round edges of a biscuit tin decorated
with english birds: pheasants, demure

water fowl, a robin; and the helix of the present
winds more tightly; three inseparable baskets.