Poetry |

“It’s Eerie” and “My Fatalities”

It’s Eerie

 

 

how the mountain falls away

while stepping closer.

It’s like love talking to itself

about abandoning her lovers

on a receding riverbank.

 

But when we try to reach the water,

we only step back through the forest,

its brown and littered path past

the champagne cabin

with its long well-warmed sheets.

 

Again, I hear that stream humming up

against those dark, cool hours called wedding night.

The river folds farther and farther away,

though its descent

is soft as an old kitchen cloth.

 

There is plenty of having to say I’m sorry

that never gets said, despite

a rumpled letter, or two

quavering late night calls.

Then decades of nothing at all.

 

Down south, a man with a bad back

is an accomplished painter and father.

And while I slipped out

a series of apologies over the years

I have not been nodded to or forgiven,

 

wasn’t let off into the freedom of nevermind.

For all I know the wedding-night cabin

still stands, winterized

and with an above-ground pool. For all I know

those sheets are floor rags now

 

and the curtains with their rosy green apples

recycled at the Salvation Army

and there’s a lake for kayaking with its own

receding shoreline toughening itself, enduring,

turning its lined face directly towards drought.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

My Fatalities

 

 

Remember the story of the cow

who jumped over the moon

and returned with a star stuck to her horn?

She couldn’t stop dancing, couldn’t

slow herself — she and all her friends

fell exhausted until fiction saved them.

 

*

 

Grey bird on a grey road. I thought the bird would fly.

By now, crows have eaten it down.

 

And the bug on her back in my sink,

was she dead before the water came?

In August, small flies twirl along the kitchen floor.

 

*

 

The tiny Angora kid was bleating, bleating —

unable to nurse. I held her hard,

very hard until her own breath ended.

 

How do I send it back?

 

*

 

Poor Elsa the lurching, wing-broken black swan.

Something twisted

as I leaned to lift her out of the garden pond.

 

The lame, one-eyed chick, or Smokey

my rescued fledgling jay who broke his neck

in the rabbit cage

because he heard music in the far trees which he tried to reach.

 

*

 

Unsung insects and mice, roaches

in Baltimore, and what if someone died

and it could be traced to me, drunkenly

lifting a pint of mild at The Sloop, St. Ives?

 

*

 

But there is no whole story.

How many dogs have I decided for?

What about that downed, tattered doe

the boy from Australia taught me how to shoot ?

 

*

 

I live under a dark lid, was sent to school

with a new coat each winter,

never had to hunt my own food.

 

But I’m not ready to fly into the woods where the singing is,

not ready to be struck

by an intentional star. May the damages forgive me …

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.