Piloting and Navigations
by
Peter Hutchinson
The Poems
Moorings (The Inlet):
Underway Shore Leave Rocks and Shoals SignalsHermit Island
The View
Spring Evening: Shower
New Passage
In Place
The Moon Caller
Shipmate
Choice
A Navigation
On the Road to Inchon
Spring Harbor
Forsythia
Physick
Flyover: Canadian Geese
Chiaroscuro
The Resident
On the Marginal Utility of a Mouse
Mythful Thinking
Gamesmanship
Did You Ever Meet the Poet
Overlooking City and Ocean
Grackles
The Pattison Bronze
Orion
Hunting Song
Battle Cry
Last Train
Fall Contest
Scott's Tent
The Fog Horn
Red Poppies
Ragged Island
Ice in Spring
A Communication
When Waters Rush Forth
Cicadas
Stick
Love
Where You Are Now
Stone, Scissors, Paper
Audition
A Reckoning
Early Snow
Moorings (The Inlet)
They rise like ashes from these timeburnt rocks
flecks flying, upward swirling;
stirred by sudden gust of passage
into gales of furied passion,
charred embers from a long-cold hearth.
Fire out but time, still burning
smolders through eternal night.
These rocks await
a flash of summer lightning
to once more ignite their being, and rebirth.
They scream in rage at our intrusion,
cries taunting with imperious terror
to leave them be in haunted space.
Our bow wake breaks long vows of silence
with echoes of past time and place.
Days dead but still the air has noises,
tremors of the earth beneath
and whispers that I take for voices
sound out: is this the birth
of time, or time's release?
They settle grey as fog encroaching
shrouds descent to brood protecting:
there is no sky and no horizon
but this cold ledge of timeless time
that shudders as it lies.
We hear now but muffled cries
and waves against the rocks.
They watch us go, and again forget.
Yellow Delicious, Cortland, Jonathan, Mac and Spy:
trees older than their apple names to me,
stooped from the weight of generations.
I'm walking in the graveyard of an orchard,
crouching under greying bones
that brittle are still hard, from hardiness.
They must be good for something yet,
I think, with ax in mind: apple burns hot.
But maybe not. There's more than work
involved in making wood.
The fire heats three times, my father said:
once when the tree is felled
and once again when split and piled
inside the shed, before its flame dispels the cold.
I add one more to that which he allowed:
the stove stays hot with embers of days gone
but still remembered,
burning through the night and into morning.
There's hesitation then in firing
at the heart of these poor trees
that should be down but startle
as rough rows of tattered infantry
defending home and hill,
yet standing after all these wars,
holding ground as though
whatever cause remained, and mattered still.
These trees seem planted where they were
for some good reason:
to be handy to the house, perhaps,
or safe from cows and field.
Although they're in the way of view
from house to shore, one sees
the yield of what might be valued more:
bright silver of the sea outdone
by golden apples in the sun.
We are taken in by age and season:
those trees on which time cast its spell
yet wake again, are white with spring
and putting on green-buttoned shirts
by summer's end are wearing heavy ornament.
It is a stunted crop, though,
trees not strong enough for bearing
and stems too weak to hold and so
the ground is fed with mostly yellow windfalls,
blushing red at their imperfect selves,
bruised and open to the worms: they wouldn't sell.
Oh, for cider, maybe if you could get them to a mill,
or applesauce if still intact and on the tree.
Too many though are gnarled, too small, too hard;
they don't seem to have the juice in them.
So they fall and stay on ground beneath
trees half-hid themselves by brush and briar
and tall grass in back of cellar holes
and empty farms, like this one past.
I walk around the house, in back,
and cup my hand against reflection
on the glass of what was kitchen window,
peering in uneasily, not knowing what I'd do
should someone at the sink inside
pull curtains suddenly aside
and look out through shadows at me.
The trees though:
I walk among remains of orchard,
last of life that's left behind the dying of old farms.
The windfalls are there, half-eaten, cores:
What vandals here? The grass beneath
is matted where the deer have lain.
These branches still mean food,
and in the dawn and in the dusk
soft steps steal by in shapes that glide
from fringe of woods and sumac.
And in these final autumn afternoons
how many bask there in late sun to wonder,
if wonderment be in them,
where are the walkers on two legs?
For surely instinct still must warn
that where the apples grow go men
to take the fruit and steal the dawn,
and how the silence must dispel
whatever fears, and feed the hunger
overcoming all but ancient caution
in the coming and the going
to and from these trees.
The Deer Trees
We never saw an awful lot of her:
She shied away from strangers and
sheltered by tomato vines
would from her garden turn her back
on passing cars and people,
hide head in bonnet as
she quickly fled to house if they approached,
and only shook her head
if any stopped to ask the way.
She worked within her kitchen fort,
with backyard garden her frontier.
She scatted cats from underfoot
and shoo'd her dogs, shouted at them
to stop their barking when their barks
were loud enough to task her ears.
For she was deaf, "deaf as a haddock"
she told me once, but old Charles said
it was because she didn't want to hear,
choosing silence over sounds
of foolishness around her table
(quarrelsome sons with tedious wives,
the dogs, and even him with old man's plaints,
his smithing done and anvil cold
and nothing much to do, or able.
He knew that, and didn't hold it against her.)
He once tried to get her a hearing aid,
and had a man from Portland come with samples.
She would have none of it; wouldn't see him,
and stayed in her room until he was gone.
Hannah Mereen could be got to talking
given time and right occasion
and if she knew you well enough
to know you didn't really care
that she was old and faded as her aprons,
that the house was older still and let go down,
its paint peeled off the clapboards,
rooms too dark,
no plumbing in it after all these years
because her menfolk didn't seem to care
or wouldn't spend the money when they had it.
So she lugged water all her life
and gave up telling them of pride and shame,
one not being much without the other,
and if they had one kind
(not to be looked down upon)
she had yet another: pride of what
they might have been had they looked up.
Her pride is in her father's family,
inked in her books of genealogy
which spelt out for the world forever
her ancestors and distant kin:
farmers, soldiers, statesmen
going back to Plimouth and the Revolution,
including Daniel Webster and the captains
of the schooners, clippers, privateers
that worked the coast and plied the oceans
to catch whatever salty prize.
This she showed if you seemed keen on it.
This she told you in a voice
of brittle flowers dried and pressed
between the pages
and smelling of lavender sachet.
She has gathered from this garden
and cooked for all the family since when
her sons, once grown,
decided not to test the world
but stayed at home and brought wives there
to do what they would and test her will instead.
She keeps the woodstove fire going during day
and keeps them fed.
She keeps a rosebud in a crystal vase
on top the oaken china cupboard where
family Bible, family albums have their place
among blue Delft and amber hobnail there
behind its curved and beveled glass.
The parlor is adrift upon an aging sea
of magazines and yellowed past, where
photographs and letters stowed compete
for deckspace in a roll-top cabin
with receipts and recipes penned by her
in black ink and Spencerian hand.
Her daybook's marked by berries, birds,
and once a bear. Were she at sea
it would have been a whale.
The highbacked rocker works its bow
toward bay of window where old Charles,
at anchor now waits out his tide,
attends the waveless inlet below untended fields.
An organ stands against one wall,
brought in from some expired parish
by the younger of her sons, now old as it
at fifty. For company, he plays on it, and
labors hard, as if to prove
chords can be plowed on barren ground.
He plants the sounds with tuneless seed
and working wind against the reeds his foot
is heavy as his hands against the stops.
He sings the hymns without much heed
to melody, and likes the loudness of his song.
Mindless of trampled notes he plods along,
plays out his talent until Charles
suddenly cries out for him to stop.
He sulks then from the room in anger
unknowing feelings hurt but then
returning moments later with the smile
of where he is, a boy in school
to show a chunk of garnet quartz:
"I found it by the quarry, see,"
and lays it gently on the mantle
of the fireplace, to stare at it in reverence
transfixed by some undecided dream.
The room is now becalmed,
fixed as island in its time gone by.
Hannah sits, hands moving as she rocks, and talks
against the metronome of ticking clock.
Charles stands away with hands behind his back
and gazes out upon the cove beyond.
Hermit Island
You will see the flowers grow
on fields unmown
where every morn
casts glistening nets
to catch the colors of the sun.
And you will watch the leaves fall down
on frosted ground
when all that's gone
lays bare the rocks
and shadows lengthen on the sand.
And you will hear the bay wind blow
through boughs that sing
a solemn tune
to brave the moan
of foghorn on the sound.
And you will feel the fire's glow
on heart alone
as embers burn
then flare again
igniting scraps of what has been.
And you will taste the salt of tears,
against the vinegar of years.
The View
My father saw a place he liked
down by the water.
It wasn't much, and nearly dead,
the barn on such sad legs
that weight of cow would bring it down.
The house not much better off,
its chimney nodding toward the ground
and windows without eyes
stared sightless at the sea.
My father though had to see more:
what they looked out upon
and walked the hill on which it slouched,
stood by a slack-jawed mouth of door
and tasted then the view.
Freed from its spell the place awoke:
fields stretched tawny arms to shore;
the tree line opened its embrace
and from my father's alchemy of work
the inlet shined with silver in the sun.
Dull earth sprang forth in greenery
that turned to treasure in the fall
and there were golden apples on the trees.
My mother, not to be outdone,
planted rainbows by the wall
and window prisms let them in
as kitchen table centerpiece.
House breathed again,
no longer trembling in the wind
but warm, gave warmth
and like some stray not asking much
brought in to share, in taking
responded to their touch.
My father would, whatever doing,
at times look up as though he knew
that life and love are in the making,
worth taking in the view.
My father died, and though
my mother stayed there for a while
she only saw the ebbing of the tide,
sumac groping toward her door,
fields growing smaller by the day,
untilled garden turned to hay.
Poplars stretching toward the sky
now held the cove, and took away its smile
and when the water lost its spark
so did my mother's eyes.
She felt the woods reach closer while
shoreline tightened at her glance
and listened to the sigh of pines
until one day she said
"There's no more view,"
and took her things up to my aunt's
and stayed there until she died.
Spring Evening: Shower
Though we be overcast by moonless sky
of clouded night, I say tomorrow
will be bright again, for you and I
may walk together still to follow
paths of sunlit afternoon.
I go now, under obscured heavens
that threat of dismal days: the rain is real
but as I taste its first chill droplet, even
look up and see a solitary star and feel
neither cold nor yet alone.
(For E. C.)
New Passage
In all the unhorizoned darkness of the sea at night
I looked before the prow:
stars and a moon of summer's fullness cast
a flickering, splashing, trailing image of their light
caught fast on whitecaps as seaweed on a rising tide,
and as each wave threw high its crested arm
to offer brilliance one brief ride,
I from my fleeting craft had gaze still lingering upon
those waves already darkened, already past.
In all the vivid brightness of this sea by day
I scanned our course: following, our surfsprung winding wake
was turbulent from surging whorls thrown up and hurled away
and as some leeward islands jutted from the haze ahead
clear-focused as we passed,
their quicksought view was all too soon quite dead;
they lay behind, and though I might have wished to see far more
their face was gone, it was too late.
In this untempered search for course's end
too many charts have erred; there yet are routes to learn.
The myriad ports of promise to wild imagination lend
excited aura of new lands found, but even as they do,
I sense this is no solitary, only way, nor mine alone:
this self-starred half-feared journey is not new.
Others too have sought and sighted those far-looming shores;
others yet may founder in these swells, or I return.
In Place
I saw a star fall to the sea
In briefest burst the sum of things
For in the source from which it springs
We share the same immensity:
Heaven for it and earth for me
Yet though it fall I still aspire
To feel the burst, and be the fire!
The Moon Caller
Where are you, moon
This dark and windy night begun?
Where is your light
That holds the light of the sun,
That knows no warmth
But cool reflection,
Hiding heat and glare of day
With kinder light
That shows the way
While softening world's complexion?
Shipmate
I saw a bird far out to sea:
A land bird where none such should be
Its wings the brown of earth, too small
To skirt the waves if it should fall.
Not as the albatross whose sweeping span
Tip-touches waves with fate's elan;
Nor as the petrels' flickering flight
Against the seaspray white on white.
This bird, here so far from shore:
Did it think us part of land, before?
It has nested on our spar;
It is here because we are.
And if it braves to with us roam
I think we owe it passage home.
Choice
If I must be lost
Let it be at night
There's too much confusion
In plenty of light.
If I am to be found
It must be by day
Else what the value
In my choice of way?
A Navigation
The stars it takes to find our way:
Named and numbered, chronicled for us
In relation to each other.
We know how they stand, by time and place
As lights transfixed in outer space
Transferred as points upon earth's face.
And knowing this, let me look up:
I'll tell you where we are.
It was not always so: the stars
Were there, of course, high-hung and seen
By some of more than whimsical dream
And even without knowledge of the light
There seemed some pattern in the night
So trusting pattern in their fright
They moved their souls as well as ships
To seek out worlds of mind.
We try so hard to find our way:
So blindly race and far off-course
To override the storms of being.
No easy route nor safe foretold
No instruments, nor charts; men rode
As horsemen under heaven, but being bold
Does not suffice, and being brave
Is good, but not enough.
Stars go: they die as suns, are gone
With all their systems long before
Their light diminished in the dark.
So with the Star, the object of its rays
Lost to the hopeless of uncharted days?
Yet! Still guides, embodiment of ways
Of finding way, and having found,
The light remains; we are not lost.
On the Road to Inchon
I crossed an ocean, many miles
To see what I could see, and do, and be.
I met a couple strolling
On a wide and oat-paved road
In robes of milled and polished rice
And faces brown as apple seeds.
Old they are and old they look
As wrinkled as two walnut shells
But his rice beard flows wise in age
Beneath a pipe of bamboo reed.
And she, head bowed by all her burden
Keeps his pace by barley shrines
Amid the wild pea foliage
Backed by the greys of millet hills
And over all, a ground-corn yellow sky.
Spring Harbor
The water's a sailor on shore leave:
eyes flashing in anticipation
before the first line's over,
already dancing at the gangway
in a set of new blues,
white hat cocky as a seaman's grin,
and there is laughter on the waves.
A ship grows in the bay: from nothingness
a puff of cloud to mark the weather
over some small atoll; now nears and glides
around the point, becomes an isle
of great and graceful trees.
Its geography takes shape on closing in to shore,
looming large and sudden as steel continent.
The window pane's an ocean for a fly
that crawls in lethargy against
the greenglass crest. It feels
the surface warmth and for brief span
would be a swimmer, dive through the wave
and emerge however wet
into the light filled world.
Forsythia
Brave yellow!
Against the drear of winter's end
When every rock is mausoleum
And every tree a rack of dirty bones
While heart cries out for hope to send
A sign among these barren stones,
Bursts bright!
Sun suddenly explodes to throw
Great rafts of light and laughter
On boughs that dance with life foreseen,
Each flaming branch a torch to show
Gold trumpets heralding the time of green.
Physick
Buds
that strive for greenness
yearn for fullness
swell to the dose of sun and shower
in a pregnancy of Spring.
Trees
whose roots too old to wander
take in the juices of the ground
coursing a tonic of sugar syrup
through the tired blood of limbs.
We
bodies cold from Winter's longness
warm to the rub of first soft breezes
stretch to touch the healer sun
and smile at the efficacy
of vitamin C and honey.
Flyover: Canadian Geese
Overhead,
suddenly up from the morning ground fog
higher and prouder than
the riot of crows shrilling below
about rights to corn,
I sight this cool and silent sail
against the pale of waveless day
only by the glint of sun
on sixty pair of wings
forged into one,
bright boomerang hurled forward
into the outback of November sky.
Then off,
flung north against the grain of seasons,
the vee to sight become
a sunflashed silver ribbon loosed
from autumn's wreath.
I hear a single sharp and reedy note
from one bright horn and then
flight flashes west, veers south again,
the single-minded arc reminding why
though thrown from sky to sky
it will when winter's done return
above these same old fields
to reach its Arctic sun.
Overhead
suddenly up from
the morning ground fog
higher and prouder than
the riot of crows shrilling below
about rights
to corn.
I sight this cool and silent sail
against the pale of waveless day
only by
the glint of sun on sixty pair of wings
forged into one,
bright boomerang
hurled forward
into the outback of
November sky.
Then off,
flung north
against the grain
of seasons,
the vee to
sight become
a sunflashed
silver ribbon loosed
from autumn's wreath.
I hear a single
sharp and reedy note
from one bright horn and then
flight flashes
west,
veers south again,
the single-minded
arc reminding why
though thrown
from sky to sky
it will when winter's done return
above these same old fields
to reach its
Arctic
sun.
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro
clear and dark
overwhelms
as Winter's art:
the white of snow
against the bark
of naked elms;
the face of dwellings
touched by night
with stark reflections
cast by light,
a wintry spell
to free the sight
of dark's restrictions.
To share the frame
of night and day:
does this deny
the shades of grey
that gloom proclaims
as Winter's way
in yonder sky?
The Resident
Time, spurious, scurries a rodent rat
across a vacant lot
out of the bright and
into the night dark corners
hiding in the refuse of the day.
Catch him in a trap? Hardly,
too swift and wise for that.
His paw prints overlap
the dust of empty rooms
that brooms sweep out but not away
and when dawn comes and people stay
he shies, not fearful but avoiding sight
looking up with flinty eyes
to size me up in his own light
and all I see is fleeting shade:
quicksilver cloaked in dirty grey
(which seems to say) So here am I
and who's afraid? It's you
will finally go, give up your place
and I remain to hold the space.
You can only chase or look upon
the where I've been to where I've gone
and only try to shut me out.
On the Marginal Utility of a Mouse
At my expense, you say
he's in my house if not my way
and if he can will make me pay
in cereal, salt, whatever else may
be about, on counters lay
or cupboards keep as if to play
me out; his dirts betray
a lack of thanks, but that's okay:
it is a cold and rainy day; and
his small comfort does not weigh
much in my cost or mild dismay.
Therefore, as my guest, he'll stay.
Mythful Thinking
I never thought that I would ever see
A centaur, or a unicorn, or faun
Nor did I ever think them real to be,
Or walk the land through which they run.
But if I for once, could say my fate
I wonder which I'd emulate:
The man half-horse, the horse with horn
Or else the cloven-footed faun?
I'd want you ride astride the beast I am,
And share the magic of my horn;
Play you my song on pipes of Pan
And wake you at the break of dawn.
I'd chase you through a field of stars,
Stand quiet in some glade apart,
Gambol far from flocks and into night,
And with you lie in warm delight.
I never thought that I could ever be
A unicorn, or centaur, or a faun
But if my self in one of them you see
That is the real, and only myth is gone.
Gamesmanship
(For Marianne Moore)
An idea is like a baseball:
Without much intrinsic value unless
Thrown out, connection sought
Occasionally hit, sometimes caught
And at least capable of making
Someone somewhere somehow move
For some specific purpose
In sport if nothing else.
Did You Ever Meet the Poet
I met the man in greatness,
At apogee, when his face wore fame
And too much drink, as well as name
Like old and battered luggage
Well-stickered with the seals of universities.
I never saw him any way but old
His visage that of walnut shell
Or leather boot, as if to tell
Of riding hard the beast of words
Beneath a yellowing white mane.
What does it really mean, I asked
Of his most often quoted poem,
Worldly wise in terms of home.
Fools ask that a thousand times, he smiled;
It means what it will, whatever you find in it.
Overlooking City and Ocean
From this high place in quiet night
Look down upon these billion stars:
Such lights belie the nebulae
In darkness that is universe.
Here is the sea turmultous
Waves so light full as to be alive.
Random motion: does this ocean
Know where it would go?
In this infinity of space
How fine the line that must divide
Horizon far from distant star
Man's tides and water's edge!
Grackles
Grackles land where I have mown
And beak the lawnstuff for its gleanings.
One hundred, two! on my half-acre
There's not enough of what they're taking.
In moments done, the birds have flown
To scavenge mites as I do meanings:
For this one time I am their maker
Where I have mown and done no raking.
The Pattison Bronze
(Provenance: Signed, From a Yard Sale in Maine)
The man who sold it to me says
The metal in it's worth more
than what you're paying.
A looker-on laughs then and adds,
It looks to be a boat prop
hit upon a real hard rock.
It does look that, but maybe more.
It's the more I'm trying to make out
of crushed and twisted metal shape
cowled like a monk on one foot standing
with some sense self-hidden in his robes.
Turning as to hoist some weight on high,
with shoulders bent and arms upstretched
to raise a mass of weight so balanced
from one knee that it becomes
an offering in kind, of supplication:
Take this as is, for I can heft
no more on your behalf
but what I am it is, is yours.
That is what tells me then, to take it,
for what it's worth to see
in it whatever it would be
and me to feel and hold.
Orion
Old Orion stalks across the sky
westward, girded with his belt
of bright steel points: some missing,
some corroded in the death of stars;
cold glint of what remains unrusted knife at hilt
half-drawn to ward off wolves of mind
and bears of eons past.
Wasted man still stalking in the wild,
his club is heavy, held yet but not so high:
his shoulders heave beneath the hurt of wounds
still festering and as an unspent arrow wears
the burden of not knowing why
Diana struck him down.
She was fair, but he was game.
The lion cloak is ragged now,
hide rent by thorns and torn
where body pierced by inadvertent arrow.
The leather boots are weatherworn
and if a grommet shines it is because
a rawhide thong has broke
and bared the metal circulet.
Call that a hound at heel?
The cur that follows
lopes along at something less than godly gait;
halts on its haunch to resolutely rake
at some celestial flea
and then unconcernedly
lifts a leg against the nearest nebula.
O circumference, O vastitude
of weariness and wandering,
step faltering and faceless in the night!
A lesser stride might have been spared
the love of gods and their remorse
condemning him to heavenly confinement,
followed always by their jealous sting.
To know the immensity of furrows
crossing heaven wide his brow
would be to be but overwhelmed
by ardors of the journey and the hunt.
Best we not see too close the cratered flesh,
the field of stubbled jaw by meteors razed,
or gullied cuts of drought around
the parched and broken mouth.
Nor look into what is left
of eyes so sunk before the sun
pits deep as shafts to the depths of universe
lit only by reflected ocean.
It is no longer chase, nor flight,
that makes him move but
only want of distance from Artemis' moon
until the cave of day looms eastward
with Apollo and the dawn.
Hunting Song
I never caught the fun of boyhood games,
The thrill of rushing breath
That youth's eager action wields;
Nor felt the burst of wild things
In crossing open fields.
Would I could catch again
The boundlessness of then!
I never sought the sport of business aims,
The might of trampling prowess
That success' hunter seeks,
Nor heard the gasps of wild things
Caught in swollen creeks.
Would I should never see
Them founder so near me!
Last Train
I stood beside the evening track, alack
Too late for night, too early for the day;
And there was never any turning back, alack
Nor did I think to go another way.
The station platform's underground, around
Which neither horns nor evening breezes blow;
And waiting, I could hear no other sound around,
Nor could I see a single other soul.
Down the buried aisle of night, light
Faded into abyss and untwinkling stars;
And naught for heaven meant their sight, light
Shed on dismal tracks for only dismal cars.
I harked to the distant roar, even before
The gleam appeared where hope had nearly died;
And if ever I had wanted more before,
Enough forever would be granted by this ride!
I thrilled to the gust its coming wrought, caught
Up in the sparking thunder drawing nigh;
And then the eager shout my joy brought caught
In my throat and changed to anguished cry
As the darkened train kept going,
And empty, passed me by.
Fall Contest
Night, winning more light
From each passing day;
Shares less than equal, almost always
But not always do we cheer the winner:
Unkind race of doubtful prize
Unfair advantage, or perhaps
The very fact of contest
And encroaching cold.
Is this then such event
Within a seasonal dismay?
The odds are now too much:
We stand to lose,
Sad not for loser but only for the leaves,
Light lost with greenery.
Remember only of now barren scene:
It is not always so,
And not in time of Spring.
Scott's Tent
What were his thoughts on that never-ending day
That left him there and in that barren place
Wasting, wanting, having found no other way
To wait the final end to an already-finished race?
The end did come: their fated courage was complete
In passing through white purgatory into icy hell,
He still could rise to state their triumph in defeat:
"Had we but lived, I should have had a tale to tell!"
Could they who opened Pharaoh's tomb
Feel greater awe than must have he
Who found that tent and in its frozen gloom
The face of harsher immortality?
The Fog Horn
Close the door softly, she said
And touched a small finger to her lips.
Close the door softly, as she climbed into bed:
The fog horn is sleeping
And not crying now.
Why was it crying, I asked
And looked out into the sea-bound night.
Why was it crying? As I thought of things past:
It's alone in the darkness
And no one to talk to.
Red Poppies
(For Georgia O'Keefe)
What right have you, with all your powers
to make us smaller than your flowers?
And paler too; our jaded eyes
would take them in, but they
so fiercely color our demise
we are washed out, become their prey.
And if the stuff of your red blooms
were by mischance to be so close
we might as well forget what looms
for we are long dead of overdose.
God help us all should you in scorn
see beauty in a crown of thorns.
Ragged Island
(For Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Ragged is as ragged does,
she'd wont to say,
and leave it to the rest of us
to work our way around her tattered world,
worried less about rough edges
of this mild wilderness,
frayed hemline of meek woods and weed
that droops to tide and harbors mussel seed,
than those great slabs of shale
felled loose from moorings
that should have held til doomsday but
for some fit of petulance almighty
hitting gut of bedrock already bent
and broke in birthing pain.
Wondering what it meant,
and when again.
Ice in Spring
Yes,
it is fragile, brittle, easily broken:
not
like porcelain hearts or crystal promises
but
with a warning crack that splits asunder
under
the ice of skating ponds in Spring
which,
gradually eroded by the longer light of day
is
hurt yet still held together by the night
now
cannot stand the narrowing range of freeze and thaw
and
finally once too often struck too hard
by
fever chill of currents running cold
beneath
the scalded surface of its thin shell
it
suddenly makes the awful ripping noise
of
being torn apart, forever.
A Communication
Do not judge my caring
by length of conversation:
Telephone cannot transmit
Love's tempo any more than my
hot wish be carried by a star.
Wires make poor heartstrings:
They cannot hold my yearning
nor carry eager pulse,
Throbs lost in static space
unfeeling and unfelt,
Endearments lost to distance, and
the words you hear at best
be only echoes of things unsaid
because I cannot match the speed of sound.
Would that the heat that powers heaven
could serve the current between us
not near so far, to melt the night
and with slight shock pass on the pinch
of difficult delight
that comes with wanting, waiting
for such time and place
when love can listen with a look,
and touch give voice to nearness found.
When Waters Rush Forth
When waters rush forth from your springs of heart
My heart goes dry for I know not their source.
Not wise enough to trace the stream to start
I feel the awful drought of love's changed course,
And from alarm would have you hold them back, but know
That though a dam might some small watershed avoid
It would to bursting fill and in the overflow
Love's buildings be by flood destroyed.
Thus powerless am I to stop these sudden rains
Or find the wells from which ponds feed
For as the anguished spirit must have drains
Emotions reaching surface must be freed
And should these waters never find a way to flow
Heartland would barren be and love would go.
Cicadas
The summer we got married,
we didn't know it then but
certain larva molted from the ground
and winged took to air and trees,
filling all the world around with
sudden throb of universe,
increasing and unceasing hum
in earth's machinery, here
pulsing like some power line
of heaven's generation.
We didn't know it then
but the rhythm is in years.
Frog ponds pale beside
this heated whine of chirping lust,
the working of legs bowed
against hot bodies, mindless
desire amplified by numbers.
They do not sing of love or dreams
but of more simple destiny
as by all-consuming passion seized
they take their hunger to the trees
and then take flight to mate and die.
Witness the devastation of the leaves.
Having done, they leave their seed
in all the broken branches, a hatch
of eggs that growing, stirring
drop to ground, grubs burrowing
into the quiet roots of trees, feeding
on the stuff of life's decay.
Earth has its uses: they are not blind
to circumstance and motion, but in
its mold the meaning of their days
is theirs alone. They feel the tremors
overhead, and find what daylight loses.
What we call dormant is not that
but only form becoming: time taken
with so many things that seasons pass
marked not by buds but fallen leaves
that each year hide first flowering of spring
as if too vulnerable for sight,
until at last the crocus shows.
The life of cicadas is less foreseen:
it is some seventeen years later when
what so slow to be comes suddenly to light
emerging then with gossamer wings
just like our eldest daughter.
Hear cicadas, then, and wonder now
for what it's worth: just how could
the seventeen have passed so soon,
so silently against the din of days
scarcely seen and hidden in plain sight.
But we are in a place less north
where we can hear yet once again
their pulsing rhythms in the night
even as they smash against
the windshield and the door in taking flight,
and now we know what they are all about,
don't we?
Stick
Bareboned, bereft of bark
and other coverings of flesh
Knot knuckles white and
bleached as broken bones
When whole and honeyhued, a limb
that's lean outstretched and taut
All angularity, by currents wrought
bent purposeful as carved cane
Stripped down and shorn, not worn but
smooth of sands and time, tides taken,
Caught, to wrestle and return
beached, as it were, until the next
Wave washes, reaching up to ride
astride and rushing from the surf
Dries in the sun to mark the shore,
stranded as a driftwood log, its motion
Stopped until took up and held,
admired for whatever beauty, nothing more
but thought about, stops puzzling and,
reflecting light from vast bright ocean
Scratches in the sand
I love you, and draws a heart.
Lines for a Valentine
Love is not a toy or game;
is not for play and has no rules
no matter what they say
and only fools will try to frame
it into blocks of time or place
or make it sport, some kind of race
to run and win or lose.
We choose our lovers not by chance
and even less for charm or pretty face
but pick our partners for the dance
when hearing in each other's arms
the song we want but cannot name
and feel the longing for embrace.
Where You Are Now
You must know that I was once where you are now
And once again would be, but tell me why?
For while there is no question as to how
(We can only do so much before we die)
That wish remains which afternoon will ask
For one more early morning in the sun
As if we had to take ourselves to task
For all the sights not seen and roads not run.
I wonder though, at time returning
If given chance I'd take another route
Or whether this is but my yearning
For more of life and more: to know what life's about;
Still distant lands to travel, tales untold
Yet different wines to taste, and loves to hold.
(For F. D. Jr.)
Stone, Scissors, Paper
You are rock and rigid
and I am paper with not much on it,
I fear the scissors,
not knowing what, or who they are.
You are hard and smooth, veins
imbedded and forever on your polished surface.
Since I am paper, I can trace them on my person.
I fear the scissors: they may cut you out.
You are unmalleable, unyielding and
would hold me down with substance.
Stone, paper, scissors:
The weight I can endure, but not the pinning down.
So I cover you, instead: paper, stone, scissors.
Hide you from whatever, even from myself.
Conceal what's written on my back
At least until the next wind blows.
Scissors, paper, stone.
I see their glint approaching
and feel the sharpness of their cut.
There's neither blood nor hurt
but I am no longer whole.
Stone, scissors, paper.
You were suppose to break the scissors.
Audition
(For Martin Williams)
You said that each rendition is never quite the same
Because of how we listened then and may hear now.
I'm careful thus in giving love a name
And cautious more than ever making vow.
That being said, I let myself recall
What made the difference in our lives:
The annotations large and small
That during each performance we revised;
New orchestrations that composed
Sounds more meaningful to mind than ear
And in a way more musical than prose
Make feeling for each other clear.
The memories are not of song or tune
But how we heard the afternoon.
A Reckoning
What shall I choose for record of my days
that when, days done, chronology might tell
not only time bought in so many ways
but that, in reckoning, I spent it well?
How many voyages must the sailor make
if sailing be for something else than sport
to warrant more than seagulls in his wake
when he returns from each much-trafficked port?
Comes there in time a need for wanderer's account
of distance done to day in any realm
to prove the course and more: in some amount
to fill the empty hold of wayward helm.
Be I the vessel, afloat and fully found?
Then mind the master, already outward bound.
Early Snow
I have been deceived:
low-hung Sirius bet its golden coin
against a tired northern sun
and now the streaks in yonder sky
are painted cold enough to shiver
what remaining leaves off all
those pretty trees that followers
of foliage drove here to see
only a moon ago.
Leaf watchers all have headed south
and hoppers burrowed home.
That is not quite true:
there were warnings when
the green of apples flashed to red
on a tree that took to holiday
too soon, so dense in ornament
that cat's paw of September breeze
would knock some to the ground.
Windfalls disappeared
as if by nightly invitation:
witness bite marks of the deer
and sight, by fusillade of falling stars
of bounty held in bandit claws,
my raccoon robbers' take less stolen
than the hours of declining day.
Things changed:
a sudden slash of Arctic air
struck at my tree and tattered canopy
we took for granted through October,
made ragged the umbrella roof
that was so proof a month ago
that dog and birds and I alike
could pause beneath it in a pour
and not get wet.
Chipmunks have pouched whatever seeds
and acorns, yes, have all been squirreled away.
November was to be the naked month:
undressing flower stalks and stripping
branches bare as bones of Halloween,
earth given time enough and cold
to freeze the sagging pumpkin grin
and harden up its gravel shell
against the bite of winter's teeth.
Despite the truce of leaves unfallen,
I should have heard the hunger in the wind.
The final warning should have been
when fireflies put out their lights, and in
alarm of wings against a windowpane, and then
the regiment of ladybugs that suddenly
one shining afternoon of autumn sun
descended on an outside door to seek
encampment in, on ceiling corners of the ell.
Birds left their posts and took retreat.
They knew, and all too well.
Too late, or early, as you will:
the seasons suddenly collide,
and on a day turned leaden with their weight
the skies collapse, clouds fall apart
at first as feathers from deserted nests
but then erupting with a pall of ash
hurled down and breaking through
unguarded gates of night
made bright as broken mirror glass:
stars trampled into ice.
Morning becomes electric, charged with cold
sharp as daggers hanging from the eaves.
There is no sun and no horizon,
only buried light, a drifting haze
of battle rising from terrain now bounded
by dim effigies of self: so still of
even sighs that life itself seems gone
until I breathe and make it show. My tree
is white with sudden age, betrayed
in splintered limbs now shorn,
the last of fallen apples telling wounds
as blood spots on new snow.
Early Snow