You'll only arrive at this house through
the woods we grew with purpose
Those birches dance
in costumes curled & fringed
Lights wink between the two
still flirting with the handsome oak next door
While below graped canopy
four chairs collect deep shade
emptied now of long-awaited guests
Sensitive ferns beside smooth purple stones
focused on this visitation
Heavy, cool air, fuels the spreading greenness
embedded in every surface, as if footsteps
you might fit your sole into each morning
and trace, still sleepy, a path older than ants.
This I abjure:
rough young magicians with red hair
and freckles and the memories
of them which have dissolved me in tears.
Full fathom five
my father lies and my beloved
and my beloved and
the ones I thought, however briefly
beloved
and of their bones is coral made
and of my heart
is hope squeezed not quite dry.
Even as the leaves cover paths
and grasses parch, there is nothing
but expectation
of the island, the prospect
of the buoys tolling in the sea
the cloudless sky
the spells
for which no longer have I breath,
of the final nothing at all.
"Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet." ~ Bartholemus Anglicus
Even the bereft take advantage of a window's uncostly function -
But no transparent choice guarantees an apparent outcome.
Through crust & core, shovels hammer in hopes of riches and great escapes -
Those wounds never heal. When a women's mantle is disturbed - she'll leak her innermost secrets - so don't be too hasty.
Bide your time, taking away slowly spoonfuls of dirt.
If you leave your perceived Siberia in haste just to pop up in Antarctica,
You deserve a penguin's sour upbraiding. To not be kitted for the occasion -
Is to be vestigial, tuxless & fucked.
If it could be written in words, all of it - the clearing of the woods down the gorge wouldn't provide enough paper - but there are so many things worth writing:
The woven nest whose tendrils snake the rafters that fat-bottomed bee she bores the beams and rails
Sun and shadow mutate from mid-day dapples to six o'clock streaks and stripes Regularly, the blue-jays terrorize the robins, "Cheer, cheer!" A cardinal, to spite its weaker song fans the braver fire of its plumage against which the robin's pale orange blush is shamed.
Will there be a roast tonight? Will those broken cords be put to use - cut loose into a crackling moonlight sonata while we are still able to hear it and while the woods around are still audience?
Beech twigs at daybreak clears the palate - coffee pulls the shades open Spatters of separating forms evolve in God's country the oddly mittened sassafras, orange & ribboned mushrooms - the companions of coal. Animated wood smoke tests memory's rafters - recalls California or Maine? Suddenly, I am ten, with Betty on a stone beach.
Or that visit with Ben Franklin which yielded little, But called to mind: "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing." I have done so little of either lately, I reflect - I've missed you, my friend, and it's my fault, really.
What becomes of the world emptied of the wild and woolly? The incorrigible flirt of birds - their inexhaustible metallic twitters; What song accompanied Adam's expulsion from that first forest? The retreating and silenced hemlocks, their crushed needles evoke poisons and potions. The dimming of the lanterns, the wetting of the coals... What soft smell will be registered by our human exit?
I just finished reading Phillip Dick's "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" - this poem was referenced in the book - and it really spoke to me - sharing it here.
He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste. Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness.
