Fetch

Insistent slobber on a sad pink ball

Soaks against my leg

Where I sip coffee, writing alone 

At a café on such a day. 

I've worn a skirt to catch the breeze,

Which street dog slobber has smudged 

As the pink ball, dirt clinging, pleads.

I set aside my pencil and its perplexities,

 (Thoughts clinging)

And throw the ball.   

Incredulous, the dog hesitates a moment needed

To assimilate before wordless thanks turns,

Sounds of untrimmed nails scratching street—

Had they been metal, sparks would fly. 

I think of a dog with sparkler feet,

(remember phosphorescent fish at the Outer Banks,
4th of July, how they streaked).

Here is my friend come back again.

I reach to pet his head, but the flinch away
Is enough said. 

What the body would say before words,

Before stories intervene and the problematic leash

Impedes, 

I envy the street dog, simple and clear.

I stop minding the slobber

Down my clean skirt,

Catching the breeze. 

 

                                                                        12/8/2012

                                                         

White Pine

The telling drifts
like cities out of sequence,

a shoebox holding ticket stubs
stamped with date and time--
 

winter will be colder this year. 

 

You watch the drift of a bird

on windless days, knowing it waits

a shift of wind, a breeze like music
that anticipates then fades—

Befriending of flesh before it dies,

is there a name for that?  A constant? 
Trying not to change the words (although I could),
if they happened at all,

holding to what holds us:

a drift of music,

a box of ticket stubs,

confusing the finding with a loss.

 

                                                                                           11/25/2012

Marking Stone

The church grounds speak of care sustained

Through blue November raining gold

On grass below and roof above,

Settling silence indiscriminately

On cemetery stones weathered smooth,
 

Drawn in shallow carvings that one more winter,

Even the warm South, would wear away

The trace of centuries since the day
That raised the marking place.

Why do we speak the words again,

Kneel on cushions worn by kneeling

In remembrance like pencil lines rubbed thin

But still discerned, painted wood in how many layers

Of white on wood? 

Glass of churches should be clear

As these on such a day in blue November.

If only the roof were open

I could wait for the golden blanket to settle— 

I could be a marking stone,

Kneeling on cushions worn by kneeling,

Saying the words again,

Remembrance rising in prayers like incense 

Through falling leaves,

That we shall always remember, like smoke

Walking these grounds:
Trees ablaze over gray stones,

The organ and the song,

Clear glass and the cloudless sky. 

                                                                                                11/11/2012



Christ Church, 1843
Florence, South Carolina

Night Travel

I am faint accompaniment,

Weak signal on a Midwest highway

Where headlights push ahead,

The last farm well behind,

Darkness in the rear view
Waiting for the next city's glow.

We speak on traveling topics:

Satellite radio and CNN,

The luck of winning generals,

How they always have luck:

An opportune storm,

The nation scrambling for cover,

Holding to what is known;

Employment on the rise,

This bit of good news an aftertaste
Lingering on for Tuesday's vote.

Then further back to our Founding,

When the Fathers separated State and Soul,

Civility and divinity distinguished:

Let the governed be governed,

And the damned be damned,

How Christ rendered to Caesar what was his.

We have shifted to Troy and the stories of Homer,
Your voice flickering as the candle burns low--

I try for your meaning, with every third word,

Say good night as the signal dies—

You’re an hour out of Chicago now,

Feeling awake and will make it okay.
You'll listen to music or more of the news--

And I to sleep, remembering Monticello,

The great public man with his private room—

Wishing history could let him be held in the dark,

That she could have heard his voice when he was away—

Passing the time with traveling topics,

That he was safe, and glad she had stayed.

 

                                                                                                11/10/2012

Peace Haven





A house blessing
 for my friends,
married today!

A point of origin to measure distance,

Climb, outward journeys bend to home

Here and now, abstracting lines

From earth’s infinity.

Bags packed for travel,

Highways doing what they must,

Ceaselessly beneath us move

Outward and away, until the turning

When the circle has a start and finish,

Sparing us the treadmill life,

A point of origin to measure distance,

Climb, outward journeys bend to home.

 

 

 

October 27, 2012

 30N x 80W

 



 

                                 

     

 

 

                                                                         

Catawba Falls

Water from heights a danger to climb,

Cautioned against the climb

Especially today, cautious under the rain 

Of leaves fearing the fall,

Fluttering wings off butterflies

Dancing their last flight down— 

Falling in pairs,

Better lift that way---

Maybe this is why the waters weep, 

Crying a hole in the old

Stone wall serving no purpose now,

A wall that Nature didn’t make 

 

Yields a chasm

For water to finish its course,

Cheeks wet under floating leaves 

Golden leaf boats riding current speed,

Others red dark spots that vanish

Down the clear, cold stream. 

                                                                            October, 2012

Old Tivoli

    "We live in the flicker--"
                              --Joseph Conrad

              

 

Gold proscenium frames the old stage restored.

Softly the strings seek, exhort, something there

Seeks what is not there, sounds of the mind

Original once, imprecise, heard prior to

Or in the making, music not content

To fade upon thought but spared destruction

Through the young conductor weaving meager forms,

Learning boldness while dark seats listen empty

To the last rehearsal for opening night, 

Seated ghosts early haunting

What fades in the flickering.

Sounds resolve to silence but changed,

Rescued from rain when the building fell to hard times,

Silent films between the wars darkened,

Lost or flashed beyond the stage

Much louder then, and still the footsteps

Rustling silken gowns, elegant arms

Hold elegant arms in formal black

When you climb balcony stairs in the dark,

Find your way blind to the glow

Of something like Time announcing the Grand Lobby

Disembarking carriages, not cars from the street

And here at last are people I know, can see

Like me fleshless past the flickering touch

I wouldn’t have missed, gone now,

Sounds falling only as Thought 

To compose for others to rehearse the fading

Original once, imprecise, heard prior to

Or in the making, more affinity with ghosts

Housed in this shell, thin protection salvaged

At the last hour after civically condemned—

Momentary reprieve for the stage and lights,

Couples in the foyer, he shaking rain from umbrellas,

Elderly on furlough for the evening

From flowered rooms and droning screens,

The boy who plays violin on days he’s unhappy,

Furiously plays happy for the night

And clean, brightly the music cleans— 

An aging theater in the grand style spared destruction,

Music rising on the last rehearsal,

The lighted stage shows empty seats.

I stand among the balcony ghosts,

Music not content to fade upon thought, 

Original once but held

By notes heard prior to or in the making,

Rehearsing to the empty seats

Eager to be filled on opening night.    

                                                     

                                                         Chattanooga

Carnival Birds

Ping pong balls and beckoning fishbowls

Would win you a budgie at the county fair.

I wanted the blue with the striped white head,

The piece of sky plucked with a cloud on top. 

 

My wrinkled dollar bought four white balls

That bounced hollow pocks off thick glass rims

Holding goldfish swimming brainless and bored.

My father seized on the daughter’s dream,  

Determined, surprising the intensity of his hands

Reaching for dollars, launching out balls

That landed no better than mine.

The mocking “pocks” of the balls taunted him on 

Past the point when other dads left.

I would have a bird that night, I knew,

Proud and embarrassed and curious all the same,

To see how this odd kind of love would result 

In a winged creature I would keep in a cage.

I would teach him to speak, beyond words to repeat,

Join full conversations and learn his bird thoughts. 

His black eyes would pierce through all the bad days

And we’d play with bells and mirrors and slides,

Bird ladders to climb with sweet seeds at the top.  

He would have millet, beak sharpeners, more

The moment my father’s white aim would splash

In a bowl, the fish shocked out of its circular path,

And I with a bird to bring home at last. 

I studied the books with scholarly care,

Was warned of the molting and mites and spots on the feet,

But the poor bird died as birds always do

While I was at mass like a very good girl, 

Despite the day’s fasting, confession, and prayers—

It must have been the box of Nesbitt’s wafers

I’d opened and pinched a cookie or two,

To account for the death of the bird that I knew. 

I stripped my Sunday dress while he was cold in his cage,

Tasting my first moment of justified rage.

I dug under my window, where the dogs usually lay,

And dropped in a matchbox to bury the day. 

My father left shortly thereafter,

With my knowledge that cookies

Had caused the disaster. 

                                                                                                              (1967) 2012

 

                                                                 

Summer Boy

 The boy of the swimming pool

With shocking dark hair

So dark it always shined as if wet 

 

Like a bit of night

Rising in the pool,

Pale arms and penetrating eyes 

 

Behind glasses taking in

From where you seemed to stand apart,

In the elementary classroom 

 

Where you sat apart,

Penetrating eyes I hoped would see

Yet not, that I was not a girl to be seen, 

 

Not truly, not perceived—

Truth being awkward then,

And you of all were likely to see 

 

I feigned the girl

Stepping through the forms

Expected, children of our age— 

 

Now everyone’s so young here.

You are so young here,

The boy I hold of you, 

 

Never my summer boy—

I wasn’t deserving of summer boys,

Only kept the forms expected, 

 

Girls of my age who couldn’t stay,

In homes we couldn’t speak of

And you of all were likely to see— 

 

I don’t recall if it stormed that day,

But thickets of blackberries

Lined the fields 

 

Down the lane

I raced my bicycle home,

Knowing I wouldn’t be back— 

 

The water too clean,

Your hair shining of night,

Truth being awkward then. 

 

                                                                     

Bonnyview Elementary School
Mr. Davis' 6th Grade Class
Redding, CA, 1973