Ariel And Wodwo \ Cabin Fever

Alan:  There are times when I can’t resist turning on my elders and betters, Poets with a capital P.  And yet I do protest too much, methinks...

Ariel And Wodwo

I am, I should hope, a somewhat reasonable man;

somewhat advancing in years – not likely

to put my head into ovens, scissor

my angst into crows, fancies into foxes,

not likely to fashion my ladyfriends, passions,

neuroses into anything identifiable, metaphorical what-

soever.  In short, not a poet.  But then

I have you to thank for inflaming me

with what a poet is, how lives,

how dies, one thumb off and the other

grasping against smeared fingers

the bloody, blank, bird-feathered pen

with which it so busily waits

for the red core and thumping heart of it

to be smashed out on the page.

Nancy:  There’s always a day – maybe the sun comes out or the air softens – and suddenly the temptation surges to open a window and toss everything out, grab a broom and start over.

Cabin Fever

Rain, again.

Empty boots marching around the room to different drummers.

Socks, swimming.  Socks in repose.

Socks engaged in mating rituals.

Cats in preliminary poses for a series on the Furred Maja.

Techniques of Chinese Cooking.

Things to be filed.  A guide

to the formation and operation of small businesses.

Birds of the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.

Yesterday’s mail.  Yesterday’s lemon,

possibly good for one more cup of tea.

Tea, again.  Rataplan.  The socks swim on.

Helpless \ Indian Mary

Alan:  The mind wanders down strange roads, waiting, unable to act.

Helpless

No ghosts, no galleon,

no ribbon of moonlight,

just gray sky

and glazed, gray ruts

bending through tired snow

to where the trees press in.

No Tess, no redcoats,

thank god no shot in the night,

just you, sick,

asleep on the couch,

grocery store blooms

wilting at your head.

No highwayman,

no, no highwayman –

certainly no highwayman – 

no gallop, no clatter of hooves,

no dark, dangerous mission,

just me, sitting near you,

riding my thoughts,

wishing you well.

Nancy:  One story or many, more or less true.  And at least one woman had a photograph taken in a wonderful tall beaver hat, and her life was well known.

Indian Mary

Indian Mary floated down past the islands

on the ice;

she would’ve drowned.  They’re still telling,

“Pierre, he pulled off his boots,

dove...”  She went to live in the white town

then.  About Pierre, we don’t know

whether he drank, or was unkind;

they say he bought his Mary silver buttons

and a beaver hat, but the story is not about that

but about his dive,

and how he raced the sea ice for love.

Women wear stories like that.  I myself

can feel an invisible silver locket between my breasts,

filled with heroic love.  But last week,

when I crossed the ice, the tide was setting in,

and the floes were jostling under the pasture fence.

No chance there for the splendid gesture.

The plain truth of our life here in the winter

is that it is spare.  You have never given me

a silver locket engraved with forget-me-nots, but

for love you rise twice at night to feed the fire,

and first at dawn to put the kettle on.

I thought it worth the telling.

“Indian Mary” first appeared in Living on Salt and Stone (Stone Man Press, 1984).

Tracking Buddha \ Raven In Winter Feels Free

Alan:  Nancy put this one on the refrigerator – her highest honor.

Tracking Buddha

This morning was perfect

for tracking Buddha:

a little fresh fluff

on crust you could run on:

snow’s formlessness

holding the perfect forms

of the prints.

I found plenty of

squirrel tracks –

tracks of whitefooted mice –

voles – the lick of their tails –

a shrew’s starved scribble –

coyotes, hares –

fox’s purposeful meander –

but no Buddha.

Searching the field edge,

crossing the wide glare

to peer under apples,

spruces, I read the news

of porcupines – deer –

raccoons – even, by the marsh,

some geese.  No Buddha.

Then, on my neighbor’s land,

near the vanished farmhouse

and ramshackle barn,

I found where a grouse

had stepped out

from the woods,

stitched its careful, straight seam –

put its wings down, once –

and flew, what, five yards?, six?,

surely just a single beat,

to land in a sliding skid

of two long parallel

furrows.

I imagine that bird

waking after a bitter night

to peer from cover into sun –

step forth – look around

cautiously and, 

knowing it is alone,

execute a moment

of perfect impromptu

silliness

before walking on,

wings at sides

as if in silent

meditation

into the far trees.

Nancy:  The raven’s a bird of infinite fascination, acrobatic, versatile and clever.

Raven In Winter Feels Free

Listen to that high flown rhetoric!

Raven’s preaching, running for election,

riding his invisible bike on an invisible wire,

punning, coining aphorisms, assuming

a supervisory position,

and delivering himself of various pithy

(and unsolicited) bits of advice.

In the winter, Raven’s positively garrulous.

We’re astonished.  Wouldn’t you be astonished

to see your quiet neighbor take his calloused hands

out of his pocket and launch into The Devil’s Trill

on a harmonica?  Why, it’s like watching the parson

do the hula on a beach in Hawaii –

still in his three piece suit.

No doubt about it, winter can be long

and hard, but summer folks miss a lot:

winter’s a good time

to get to know the neighbors.

“Raven In Winter Feels Free” first appeared in Blueline magazine.

Beautiful \ Nightcoach

Alan:  My French was always exécrable.  I’m happy enough to muddle along in English, knowing it has a way of sopping up other languages’ gravy.

Beautiful

The most beautiful words in English,

my father declared, one supper,

to his family whose minds opened

like the mouths of baby birds,

were – according to a Frenchman

he said he’d met through work

(oh, exotic arbiter!) – “cellar door.”

So under-appreciated an object

to roll so golden off the tongue!

Handcuffed by first-year French, still

I could hear the resonance, for one

whose “that, of gold” was “cela, d’or.”

Later, I found the record label l’Oiseau-Lyre,

the lyrebird, and judged

the stranger had the better of us there.

Still later, meeting in school Yeats’

jeweled automaton, Stevens’ gold-feathered bird,

I felt the music we all seek

comes not from cages or ideal palms

but from the quibble of rusty hinges

and the half-felt must of air

reaching from cool and freshly opened ground.

Nancy:  I loved trains.  I loved the motion, the sound, the world passing, the imaginary lives I lived vicariously, the history and stories I played out as the landscape flowed past, my imaginary other selves.

Nightcoach

Kettaklak, kettaklak

thousands of miles asleep with my head on the rough upholstery

and awake

kettaklak

writing my name in the coaldust on the windowsills

a railroad man’s daughter

in the backyards of a thousand small towns

watching their milkmen

their empty night streets

kettaklak, click, kettaklak

beating them to their own dawns, and

sleeping again

to the roll, the long whistle

kettaklak, lullaby, kettaklak

it gets in the blood

of a railroad man’s child

“Night Coach” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

To One Dying In Hospital \ Mortalities And Entanglements

Alan:  We were told he had fallen on the ice and wouldn’t recover.  All that his family asked was that our makeshift Sangha ease his passage from this life with well wishing and loving kindness.

To One Dying In Hospital

The trees

draw their light

from the top,

as if a blind

withdraws slowly,

upside down.

Geese

huddle in the thread

of the stream

that winds across the low-tide

marsh; grow nervous

but do not lift.

I have been asked

to hold you in my thoughts,

though we have never met,

so I do.

The sun,

just visible beyond the ridge

makes brightest

the single small cloud,

not moving

in an otherwise

blue sky.

Nancy:  At a conference on whale populations, I overheard this remark: “Death is the least known aspect of the life of whales.”  Except for those washed ashore or impaled on a ship’s prow, what do we know?

Mortalities And Entanglements

Black.

Rising out of the black,

the whales slowly take on form; they become

distinct and whole, finely shaped, various,

individuated; they come to meet us at

blue.

Wide.  Blue is wide.

We come to know one another in a wide

blue way.

Musicians play Villa-Lobos,

and the whales show their appreciation of cellos and flutes

with slow rolls.

Poets write and recite poems.  Scientists

fill their family albums with snapshots of whales.

Word goes out: the whales have come back

from Patagonia with a new song.

We all get copies.

We stand in the water,

hip deep, watching them die.

Death is over the edge of blue.

Is this all we have to show for it?

Bones?  From bones we learn about bones,

but we want to be taught requiems.

I want to ask the whales,

how can I know, when a poem sounds,

whether it has gone to feed

or die?  We want to know more,

we want to know why.

When the whales go, they take the answers

with them, over the edge,

sinking blue,

deep blue, indigo,

indistinct,

black.

“Mortalities And Entanglements” first appeared in East of the Light (Stone Man Press & Slow Dancer Press, 1984).