Speculation

Speculation

Chainsaw three minutes

hours later in rain

smell of resin.

                   W. S. Merwin

                   “In the Red Mountains”

If kelp.  If bait.  If boat.

If fiberglass repair.  If swing-sets.  If hours swinging.

If barefoot if new

shoes if a mother if her

mother.  If Hemmingway

If Harper Lee.  If Robert

Frost’s “Home

Burial.  (If his Elliot)  If fever

cooled if unabandoned.

If Listen-

ing.  If sex

waited for you.  If you

wanted it to.  If roast

beef if Sunday love if Jesus if Muhammad If Moses If Buddha If Krishna

If a woman.  If her two hands

if her mouth her throat if before

you were born if the un

aborted one if brother/sister if

aunt or uncle or.  If father.  If it worked.

If hanging yourself.  If blisters from

the rope if they didn’t heal if they did

if you lived if you died

If it wasn’t her in the road if the snow

if the phone if the way

if work if cigarette if fishing if thick

ice if unbroken plans

if lists.  If it was

It wasn’t. 

Eight Years On

Eight Years On

Shutting your eyes from the spectacle you
Saw not darkness but
Nothing

On which doors were opening

                                        W. S. Merwin
                                        "Pieces For Other Lives"

There’s that gap, a secrecy so vast

it's a breach we stand at the edge of

watching, waiting

while our children and mothers

turn away from us

and into it and the space

where the quiet is roused out of God’s loneliness.

This is the cleaving I still feel

today, the way your hand gripped

my hair, a tallis

of consecrated cloth.  

And when it started to tear

the sound was inaudible as a pall

on your urn that whole night

of sitting.

I'd watched you and watched you

as they wheeled you down

the corridor toward I didn’t know where— 

I didn’t know then

if I’d ever see you again—

And the cloth of us

it was curtain

the holy of holies

rent in two.

And in the space between the two pieces

a scream silent as a tulip bulb

in November

Raking

Raking

who reads into distances reads

beyond us, our sleeping children…

                                    Seamus Heaney

                                    “Travel”

Bent like carpenter’s squares

The whole field was stripped, unzipped

One rake pull at a time: swish/tip

Swish/tip the whole morning swish/

Tip through and through.

He’d owned the field and set me

To work at the string, row on row

Around and over stones.  I’m as

Bog-caught as moss.  So it’s elbow

At the knee and it looks all the same blue

In the pail until my two handed carry straightened

Me.  That five gallon bucket slumbered

Every ten steps or so and the winnowing

Machine so so far away and wouldn’t my toe

Knock against that stone and almost,

Almost tumble into the rug of small

Sticks and leaves.  But listen:

Recovery is sometimes as modest as shifting

The weight of the load from one shoulder

To the other.  And because my reach was

Short

The bucket dragged and scuffed

The August-hot leaves, yellows and faint

Greens.  It was routine: fill it, pick it up

And walk aways and put it down and do it all

Heading toward the rows of stacked

Wooden boxes factory stamped.

I’d be paid three dollars

A box.  It was hot.  It was a course of tugged

Twine, tin pie plates tink- tinking on their staves

To shock the crows away.  It was crushed

Cans and sweat in my eyes and men mostly going

Up their row slick as butter, going and going.  I’d pass

My father and my sisters with this bucket.  And

We’d talk, me and this spilling pail: Let’s rest

You and me.  Let’s take it here to sit, let’s… and we

Did.   Head through knees I’d see the thirty six

Teeth of the rake still filled

With leaves, with little sticks, some long blonde

Grass  scrape at my ankle.  I’d see the whole

Field from up there, almost a bowl

Filled with the day’s haul of the small sweet blue

World.   Rakers, it’s a short season.  The winnowing

Machine is low on gas.  At last I pick it all

Up and walk all the way without stopping

This time, without one more sway, without one more

Glance at the crows up top cawing at the sun

Going down.  And without saying a word but

My own name to the man who tips my bucket

Into the mouth of that machine. I watch it all:

The berries falling down, like sky in a box.  The heat

Of the belts and swelter, the choke of exhaust

Coughing out the reign of the field with her leaves

All spring, through the bloom, through the browse

Of bees early on, through summer to now

When it all comes down to packing it

All away.  All that chaff.  All that not needed green

Beneath, green that tomorrow will be a memory, and still

All that blue, blue, all that blue ready, bulging

With sweet fruit, oh yes, ready.

Visiting Hours

Visiting Hours

Now, high overhead, tiny figures

begin to rappel down the rare

filaments of imagination, along fibers

of the optic nerve and down

into the hippocampus,

into the landscape of days.

                                    Brian Turner

                                    “From the West” : MY LIFE

                                    AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Hospital hallways are veins are sharp upper

cuts left right swing shut with the hush that hush

you know that hush that pad against the boot

against the shock on the chin the shock

of the dead nestled finally in their head

in the cavity left behind dry as any aged tree

rot dry as tongues long without water long

without words.  Walking them is really crawling

them even though two feet and not two knees

hit the maintenance police linoleum a wax

mirror a cloud a mirror a cloud those thousands

of feet/knees and its God on call and that shock

on the lip when the first concussion bomb

detonates and look:  who’s lifted with that initial

wave lifted the way water lifts when what’s plunged

into it remembers it has air the whole way down—

and maybe there’s no bottom at all no bottom

but those currents of atmosphere we never can

consider not being from that depth, not at least

until we’re riding them and pushing them and making

love to them after a long time of not making love

after a long time of simple naught, of those nerves

jazzed hall ways and nights and knights with their sponge

swords swabbing the walls that concussion man

I felt it in my feet I felt that mother fucker all the way

and it’s a pretty thing a real pretty thing like scalp

skin on the charcoal mountain meaning snow meaning

the iv drip’s pulled meaning in the days to come

the hospital  (listen, it’s doable) is row on harrowed row

slow and a stone bench and some thrown

water and you can visit any time day or night rain

or shine and nothing I mean nothing will ever crush you

like this bomb this pin-pull again.

Oh If Caution Were Soft. And It's Naught But Whisper,,,,

Oh If Caution Were Soft.  And It's Naught But Whisper,,,,

                          ...the rain
is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
upon the glass and listen for reply 

               "What My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why"
                Edna St. Vincent Millay

Consider the small incen-

diaries laid against the frame

of the heart, along the bone

cage wired with nerve

and muscle and tense

suspension.  Consider

the instinctively mixed

mortar fastening it all

and the precision of

every pause and ever after

detonating.  And those

limbless are carried off.

Those dead are buried.

Those shocked beyond.

Those rocking unnerved…

Don’t you want to touch

the undergrowth where once

she laid her feet so near

the touch-pin the case itself

sweats from the wait?

Don’t you want to diffuse

with the talent of a Casanova

every wire every fiber

and love her back to her-

self?  Don’t you want

to bridge the fissure

with your tongue, rappel

into that fissure-deep

crevasse to a solid fault-

bottom, where great plates

groan and ripple up

their purr?  And the cor-

dite of it, even years later,

on your lips?

full moon in four days

full moon in four days

for Jose

you sent the rain

            into the tide

                        of wind you sent it

                                    into the rake-

                                                furrows pulling

                                                            back the sea.

They were old

            friends

                        the rain

                                    and

                                                the

                                                            sea

Thunder and flash

            are passionate

                        gatherings, a canopy

                                    of cordite and crack

                                                as though who’s going

                                                            to war has returned

to break the host

            of mass

                        in two: you

                                    high in

                                                the sky

                                                            saturated with the

                                                                                    persuasive rain, a train

of cloud rolling

            roiling derailing

                        far enough up

                                    the tracks that

                                                ocean and rain

                                                            salt and plain

                                                                        comingle

until time

            and heat pull

                        them up from

                                    their watery bed

                                                and change them

                                                            completely, the way

                                                                        the war trampled living

who still

            look in the mirror

                        after the battle

                                    knowing it’s not

                                                them returning

                                                            but something

                                                                        else entirely

because of the rain

            and that salt

                        that brine

                                    of road and sky

                                                and foam skeining

                                                                        together

palms wide

            open hello after all

                        this strange time

                                    friends, always now

                                                            friends.

Litter

Litter              

                        Passion is work

            that retrieves us,

lost stitches.  It makes a pattern of us

it fastens us

to sturdier stuff

no doubt.

                        Jorie Grahm

                        “I Watched a Snake”

Litter we let lie litter we tear

and crumble and throw

madly away tight rumple of

a ball or toss nonchalant and all

the care of the mistake is hidden

in one of those folds, it’s spit

without spitting it’s not

the work alone we grind our jaw

on but those hands sweeping

like a broom that buckle us

from behind the ambush we swear

like all the profoundly addicted

we swear we knew we did we knew

shit the disguise was so like

that partridge in the trees we’d walk

right by whistling barrels eye ball-

to-eye ball- shells tight as hibernating

snails breach open safe as sky

and after long after the plastic frown

like that mouth the hull tip stepped on

brass head like any brass

going green already after it’s ejected

before it hits the moss

before even it’s clutter telling the whole

world the trajectory

and not one single flat fuck give a dam

the blood’s already down the left

side of the crag where the bird spooked

and flew shock boom flew

and the trigger is natural after the breach

is slipped to its lip it’s natural

it all fires after that and just as natural

I suppose after what’s hit goes down

and bleeds and sometimes moans

and if the hunter cares he’ll dangle off

that crag and grope a minute and hope

and hope the bird although furiously dying

is waiting and there’s little wind