Divine Property: Kavo Song by Tim Gavin

Kavo is the word for cave in Haitian Creole,
though it feels more like a cough when said,
the k catching in my throat like a chipped stone,
a small pause flattening out on my tongue
before the v shivers and almost breaks into a curse—
vulture or vein or vulgar—
but instead falls short,
collapsing and making room
for the long, open vowel
circling itself—caught mid-yawn.

I have a cave all my own,
sprawling into its damp mouth,
lying belly-down
on a heap of straw, my cheek pressed
against the cool stone
I light a fire no bigger than a fist,
close enough to feel it
warm the rim of my ribs,
but far enough that I won’t
wake up to my bed of straw
red with flames.
And there in the dark—
fooled by the power of the spirit—
I hear the slow dripping of water,
the slow, old throat clearing
through stone and sediment,
the same water that might have trickled
down a miner’s back or flowed from a side.

And outside, I see a field with hoarfrost,
the blades of grass catching the sun
like glass nails, and the dogs, the skinny ones,
the ones with their ribs showing through their filthy fur,
they nose the frozen earth for scraps
the way I once searched
for God’s face in a pile of stones—
none of them right, none of them him.
And Kavo, with its sharp, sharp beginning,
the k striking through the throat,
and its open-ended ending,
like a mouth ready to sing.