What Is Underneath
A guest reader for my daughter’s kindergarten class,
I feel like an adult riding a tricycle,
I sit myself down on a miniature chair.
I read I Know What’s Under
about a boy who wants to know
what’s under his bed
under the floor, under the kitchen,
under the basement, and under that too.
This was the Tuesday after the Saturday
when the Tomahawk missile struck
the other elementary school.
The whole earth is under everyone’s bed.
Afterwards, I look it up and find that
beneath my bed
there’s an ocean.
Antipodal.
The word for
what is under my feet.
A patient tells me, when she was a girl,
living in Tehran,
she placed a bowl of goldfish on the table
for the new year.
The goldfish;
the color of citrus,
saffron fire
wisp of fin
belly and eye.
A globe of water; a dew drop.
What is more tender than a girl with a bowl of fish?
I am sure you can think of so many things
And that is why we are fracturing.
That is why we are breaking.
The weight of bombs: 2000,
5,000 pounds.
A goldfish, half an ounce.
Have you seen the tiles?
I can’t stop thinking about the tiles.
The mosques, the palaces, the shrines.
Cobalt domes and arches
enamel of fish scales and sky.
Heaven and womb.
A cave.
The inside of a geode.
The vault of throat.
The patience of one single tile,
painted and fired.
A thousand tiles, arranged,
are everything that makes
humanity dignified.
There is nothing a bomb can do
That an artist cannot.
Underneath my ribs, there must be
A goldfish bowl
A hope for a tender thing,
As bright as a coin.
As cold as fresh water.
- Danielle Speakman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, MA. She is a graduate of Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her enduring interest is in Jungian depth psychology, and she seeks to hold a therapeutic space where existential and spiritual questions are welcome. She views writing as a form of activism, love, empathy, and attention—essential to all that she does. She believes each of us has a part to play in the particular cosmos of our time. In these moments of helplessness, uncertainty, and war, poetry has become her way of reaching toward others, almost like passing someone a love note. She has been especially deepened by her doctoral work interviewing street children in Lima, Peru, which has continued to connect her to Latin America. She also practices and teaches yoga, which she believes keeps her honest, rooted in her body, and resistant to the pull of abstractions.
- Email: drdspeakman@gmail.com
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