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?