A Communion of Water and Blood
Selected Poems
by
Bernard Fancher
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by Bernard Fancher
All rights reserved
This ebook is licensed for distribution by Smashwords, and its contents may not otherwise be reproduced or disseminated without the author’s permission.
***
Table of Contents
Words were First Tangible Things
The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
Imagining the Future without You
Walking Barefoot Through Dandelions
***
I stand again over the surface on a narrow board walk,
Waiting as then for something hidden
To rise from within the still body of water below.
The rod moves, pinioned by my hand, lifting the plumb line,
My thumb stopping the action, bringing the bobber along in one drawn motion
In concert with the torpedo-shaped dropper, the whole shebang swinging out
Languidly, pulling the dangling worm helplessly to a place
Beyond the leading lead weight’s plopping reentry.
(Mid-flight, the bobber attempts to exert undue influence
Commensurate with its dimension, throwing everything slightly off kilter,
But I concentrate on the initial tug and release,
Imagining the free flight of the worm, absent all the intervening complications.)
In memory, a half dozen small trout
Remain caught in the clasped grip of the stringer
Whose outsized, brutish hooks pierce the delicate membranes
Of their mouths, continuing an indignity which I feel more intensely now
Than I did at their dying. I pull them free, dripping, from the dock side
And hold them aloft, again fluttering, until they lie pressed together,
Perfectly motionless at last in mid-air.
A few yellow jackets conspire, hovering nearby,
First nervously exploring the scent, before more boldly intruding
Upon the proceedings as I place the point of a blade
In the ventral orifice of the first fish’s belly; slitting it open,
Spilling entrails that look so much like engulfed worms,
I think, even then, in my childlike way,
There must be some tangible link between form and function.
(I simply reason the guts are like worms, and that’s all I consider—
Except now as I write.)
All one afternoon playing Authors, sitting cramped in a camper
Waiting out a mid-day thunderstorm,
I ask slyly for books held already in my hand.
At night I walk, dreaming through the back woods,
Discovering and removing a boulder from under which
An unplugged wellspring flows, clear and free.
(I dream, as then, now of a time and place no words can subsequently go,
Sitting inside a boat, afraid to move, loathe to make any noise
That would surely broadcast down through the bottom,
Hesitating even to react when a sunfish bites and transmits
Its life presence up to me from the scary, mysterious depth.)
Finally, next morning, when the weather relents,
The lake lies stretched thin as smoke, devoid of all motion—
Except at the surface, pin-pricked with sprinkles,
Dumb hatchery trout rise en mass, begging to be caught.
Afterwards, I lie on my belly, slicing the water, cleaning my knife,
Feeling the line between heaven and what lies below
Holding my wrist firm in its watery grip.
***
Interlude
With a finger, I write my name upon the pliant water.
My eyes follow two swallowtails flapping a kind of semaphore
as they dart and flash between sky and grass.
I watch until they disappear, and go from my back door
to watch again at dusk while the moon draws near.
It braves the dark and reflects upon the water
just as I do, and so we pair and do the same for some nights after,
each time our rendezvous progressing later on
until, eventually, the moon shows not at all above the horizon.
In turn, I gaze instead on fireflies that dot and dash against the dark,
not exactly flashing Morris code, but signaling nonetheless.
Mornings, I walk upon the dew and leave a trail
that dissolves like mist beneath the gaining, then lessening sun.
Afternoons, the slug and snail dare not embark,
nor earthworms under threat of pain, or even worse duress;
their slimy leavings suggest prudence more than cowardice.
By summer’s end the weather comes undone as dark clouds intrude;
the changing interlude can be read writ large and small
to scale upon both mackerel sky and bulging gall.
Far afield, a buck tail waves a flag of false surrender;
a Granny Smith apple drops, and then another;
crickets chirr, and hoppers whir, then close their wings altogether,
and whir again when I walk nearer. An inconsolable cooing dove
presages silence as surely as the falling springtime diminuendo
of the fluttering twilit timber-doodle. If not love,
the word made flesh or cloud or grass means just the same as,
or maybe less than, the broken line of geese I watch pointedly go.
Reading more portent in a cloud-filled pond of bluegill, I feel distress
at first, but then a moment later mostly Southern Comfort, which makes me quiver
as a sudden downpour inscribes the mirroring surface with a quick Braille splatter.
Closing my eyes, I detect the cold against my spine, and more intensely shiver,
comprehending meaning in rain becoming ponded water.
Deeper delving chills my brain as well, so I choose to merely skim the surface
with my toes, contemplating worlds, not words, below;
I only know at last everything is as is and must suffice,
and rain will sometimes fall, yet yield no rainbow—
dissolving indistinguishably into all the lines I etched last winter
skating upon the impenetrable ice.
***
On Wiscoy Creek
1
Carrying rods
and reels, we clamored down a long
incline, detouring
black muck
and skunk cabbages rolled like green
cigars.
A Mayfly hatch
flurried
above this mirroring pool,
while my brother cast
a shadow across the blue
night sky.
Now alone, I lay my leader
down, denting
a sickle moon.
2
Upstream,
a submerged log
purls water into a bubbling squall.
A shiner silvers through crystal
calm,
then sounds, fading
like a falling star.
I wait, frightened by the deepening
dark.
3
In stillness
broken
by my brother’s ratcheting
retrieve, I caught an eerie emptiness
that has lured me back
for more.
***
River Twin
On the east bridge tonight
I watch a great blue heron
standing shin-deep in stillness,
its neck an elongated S
reflecting on water.
For a moment
I think to try its patience,
consider testing the water with my own two feet
as if to find in all of time that one perfect millisecond
poised between strike and detection.
Instead, I choose to ride on,
leaving the heron locked into its own staring image,
outlasting my fickle desire to engage
or remain still.
***
How to Write a Poem
Start somewhere.
Better yet, don’t.
Not at first, anyway.
Just look at something,
observe closely, pause and think;
maybe take a nap.
Enjoy life.
Ride a bike.
Walk the dog.
Scratch the cat.
Feel the paws wrap around your hand;
let a single claw grip your paltry skin.
Smell a rose, taste a petal.
Drink a cup of rain.
Form a theory of everything
or of nothing at all.
Stay entirely in the moment,
disassociate.
Concentrate on one thing
or another.
Don’t text and drive.
Read the classics, read the papers,
read the tea leaves.
Know that looking up Eurydice
will send you to Orpheus,
which will also send you to Hell
if you have any imagination at all, which
may or may not be helpful
(depending on what line you wish to pursue.)
Develop a semi-coherent world
view, but understand
that doesn’t mean all that much either.
Memorialize an impulse,
cast the ephemeral
in stone. (Casting the stone, count
how many times it skips upon the water.)
Don’t be a slave to literalism.
Say what you mean, approximately.
Play with syntax, rhyme, length of line.
Let the elements surprise.
Partake of delight, give
as good as you get.
Seek grace, as well forgiveness.
Dance a daily dance; occasionally pirouette.
Allow yourself to express
more or less than you intend.
Embrace what is true, good,
recognizable. More to the point, realize
sometimes it’s simply enough
to watch the sun set
while having a drink with a friend.
***
Long Shadows Farm
A pause in a winter’s labor of replanting posts
revealed the muted turbulence of two dozen geese
swaying in as if on strings, ailerons canted,
passing at barely treetop height directly overhead
with webbed feet landing gear extended, reaching to touch
down on the frozen pond.
Their barking immediately diminished to breathing then.
My breathing, becoming once more part of an intricate pulse,
diminished then too, yielding
to the percussive attack of a pileated woodpecker
in the wood beyond the stone fence.
Forty odd horses gazed from the fields
off and on all that winter while I worked.
This soggy spring morning I gaze from my window
and remember I made only friends, even of the shy deer
and turtles that shuffled across the long dirt drive.
Someday I may find my way back
but for now that world remains as I remember,
though the geese may be long gone, maybe the horses too.
***
One Morning
On the way to work this morning
I kicked one leg up after the other
over a rusted wire fence
that defined the difference between farm
and wild field
and immediately crouched in the tall wet grass,
creeping close to the still pond below
until the mallard drake I knew was there
knew I was there too
and bolted airward, leaving
undulations on the water to mark its place.
***
Pretty, Met Only Briefly
At the register
for a motionless moment
she sees her hand leave
the ten dollar bill under
the clamping roller
before the tray fully retracts
and quietly, as if reflecting again
on the moment, she says, No,
it wasn’t sleep
but a late evening ride
over snow
with her grandfather steering
through unseen barbed wire
that wrinkled the skin
of her cheek.
I imagine she remembers
removing her face,
adding to skin
torn with cold
cream dabbed with a hanky,
hoping to heal
the scar in her sleep.
But no world of wonder
ameliorates or reverses
this transformation.
The wire whips, catches,
lightly kisses her cheek
again and again
in her dreams,
just as the man
standing still at the counter
replays the fantasy—
touching her,
wanting to kiss what is hurting
and remake it all
better.
***
Portage
Catching an eye on the water’s gilt edge,
I imagine the hidden cataract just beyond
the entrance of Letchworth State Park,
where the beginning gorge compels the train to cross
a high trestle, and the river to drop
straight into a cold boiling caldron.
I see myself projected anew, swept over a ledge
of unrelenting water, forever—
a deluge to submerge one under a tumult of dead dross
if you let it. But this day, transiting Portageville Bridge,
I refuse to let it. I am untroubled to remember
two boys on a lark coming to a graceless stop;
briefly closing my eyes, I make believe again to see
them aborting their precocious raft ride
at Whiskey Bridge a mile upriver, clasping to upended
tree roots rather than be swept farther down current.
Reconnoitering the waters below, I cross,
vainly whispering, invoking your name; I ought
now confess: recurring delusion allows me to think
salvation derives from exiting the recycling torrent
passing beneath this moving car
and bridge surface; I feel less dread now than before,
but still seek to put that memory aside,
preferring to swap perilous thought
for an infinitely more pleasant rendezvous with drink
at the Genesee Falls bar.
Eyes closed to danger, you paddle so determinedly;
the coming precipice doesn’t deter you at all.
While I grope airily, ineffectually, for shore
in a futile attempt to pull myself from the dream,
you concentrate all the more fixedly
ahead, closing faster with each stroke upon the fall.
Leaving the river these many years later,
I hear my voice still rebounding off steel and concrete
overhead as the canoe pinions upon a rock and we teeter.
We breathe no word in the roaring interlude
that a listener might construe as indiscrete.
It is all we can do to balance terror and obsequious
nature, knowing we must enter the stream
to escape the pitiless brown god attempting to drown us.
***
Six Mallards
They now stay instead of flying off at our approach
each time we walk along the narrow road above the pond.
In the short time of our tentative mutual acquaintance
they’ve grown accustomed to our routine,
simply easing to the middle of the pool anymore as we pass.
Even so, they still loudly object as we near. I hear the concern,
or maybe it’s mere annoyance, voiced in the gargled quacks
of the drakes as they move to mid-pond, paddling in place
while the hens loiter relatively sedately at the sedge edge of our seeing
or follow at some discrete distance along.
Chance points, Beau paces—each conducting his own investigation
of the fiery sumac, both eventually plunging together in and out.
But their antics change nothing. The ducks remain, neither entirely placated
nor entirely nonplussed.
Coming up the drive, we skirt the edge of a brown field
abutting the broad river valley. An enlarging swath of dull goldenrod
shares the untilled land with dried milkweeds
whose exploded seedpods spill white fluff like snow.
Soon enough, the pond will freeze. Standing at a window
looking out on the pond, I watch the unconcerned mallards, wondering
what will become of them then.
***
The Sky is Green
Beyond the field, trees—
beyond the trees, sky—
meanwhile a deer
(most likely a buck)
escapes thrashing into a ravine
as the deaf dogs forge ahead.
So I listen for them,
pausing to consider the setting
before following a dark sump
towards the spring, angling right
with the dogs at the journey’s far end
as the aquamarine sky
becomes night
through a fringe of bare trees.
***
Afterlife
I lift the door of the nest box
to see fluffy quadruplets
lying on a cupped bed
of dry grass.
Asleep they seem
entranced by osmosis,
acquiring through dreams
lofty knowledge
of green fields and high summer.
Still dead to the world a day later
they fledge, tumbling to earth
in a tuck on quelled wings.
***
Waiting in an Open Doorway
Near the summery finale of a week
in which the fall equinox passed, I sit and listen
to the altering state of things. Already
the wind is changing position; the temperature drops;
a sudden gust and leaves cascade off the aspen
onto my head, glancing through to skitter
scratchily on the faux-tile floor of the kitchen.
A pair of engaged damsel flies buzz
arched and entangled, coupled at the octagonal
screen at the gable in a dance of discovery, finding
no fabled way out. I too wish to return
where I have not skinny-dipped once all summer.
Before the big drop-off I should walk
in my paint-splattered cut-offs to dabble perhaps
more than just ten toes in the water, closing my eyes
to the dogs splashing forth in the shallows.
***
Persevering
Am I to be disconsolate forevermore?
It’s not difficult inhabiting that frame
of reference. It suits me. I mourn
the very scar of the earth fast disappearing
beneath the new grass covering your grave.
I feel sad in the afternoon, encountering silence.
Sighing, my lungs exhale only unutterable words,
until I remember our football team, now winning.
It is that time of year. The leaves are constantly turning—
some red, some yellow. The air is so clear and warm
these first few perfect fall days. I accept it
as a kind of responsibility, to enjoy them all
in your memory. Should I add, as well,
the cat misses you too?
***
Words were First Tangible Things
Had I not already possessed the idea of the fox
perhaps I would not have been able to see it,
for my glasses lie on the cherry hall table
alongside the old Underwood typewriter
that sits prominently in place only
to remind me there once was a time
when words were first tangible things.
But now it must be the idea was there even before
the recognition of what I saw, because—and this
is the main thing—I saw the fox
for the thing it was (is that accurate?
“thing” “it was”?) and not just some amorphous
unidentifiable blob, which is what my eyes detected,
not seeing at first—my default setting—anything at all
clearly.
Oh reader, dear reader, believe me
when I say the world of the mind and the world
of the world are one and the same,
and yet not. Philosophy pretends
to know what this means. Let’s just say
I’ve learned what life is: the personal
exploration into the duality of things.
All I know is what I know and see, and what I see
is a fox through my window, standing aloof on the snow.
I see my reflection in the glass just as well,
but that means not as much, somehow.
I only wish to retrieve my glasses so as not to miss out
on viewing something essential and tangible or, in other words,
real. The strange thing is the fox has no idea
I am here. It walks to the spent burn pile down below
the old hickory
and paws in the crusty snow, concerned only with its own hunger
I guess, and not at all with its being caught out
being, however imperfectly, observed.
***
Upon My Invitation
Reason can only follow paths
that the imagination has first broken.
—Richard Rorty, Poetry Vol. 191, No. 2
I don’t think Poetry
should be full of weighty words
making us think deep thoughts
blunting our ability to feel.
No, rather, I think poetry
should be a conduit by which to reveal
the world around us, in us,
even somewhere beyond us
—where reason and imagination
comprise two sides of what’s real.
If that is true
and even God Himself said only the one Word
or simply “Let there be light”
or stopped at “It is good” after making everything
we know, what makes us think
any of us could convey things any better
by being less circumspect, more ponderous, or wordy?
***
Looking Through Glass, Darkly
The cat flicks
and curls her tail, which
like the halting arm
of an erratic metronome
divides the seconds
between desire and intention
as she sits at the window
watching a world of oblivious finches
beyond her possession.
***
October 19, 2009
Leaves
in yellow light
fall tipping
one way
and another
on still Autumn
air.
I think
and dream leaves,
limbs exposed,
stripped bare
as the trees
holding my breath
in the yard,
discerning
neither they
nor I
are quite quiet,
yet.
***
Work in Progress
I feel your fingers caressing,
smoothing, searching for a way
in. At least that is how it feels
at the penetrable surface
you reveal me to be.
I yearn to suggest
all the beautiful forms
residing within,
but there are too many choices
and possibilities confound
you and me.
Eventually, though, you must decide,
as is your task and privilege,
to determine first
the one thing, then the next,
and so be the arbiter of my being.
I feel your fingernail tapping
like a wood chisel, testing, testing,
and my body clenches tight while I wait—
wait for you to release me
from this unformed existence,
and bestow on us both the crux
of the divined.
***
Prescription for Living
—after a poem by Anna Akhmatova
I will teach myself to live simply,
to rise with the sun and walk in the dew,
and toil happily with hoe and rake
in the back garden under a benevolent sky.
I will go to the fields and cool woods and stream
to pick black caps and red raspberries
at my leisure—returning sated, fingers stained purple,
to drink water from the rusting hand pump
in the shaded front yard.
I may stop and listen to the whispering bluebird
perched on a high bough, and feel my heart settle
as I close my eyes, perhaps waking
only when the cat stops to lick my drooping hand
with her dry raspy tongue.
Looking about again, watching bunnies leap
one another in a low-slanting light,
I shall know all is sufficient for God’s purpose.
May I always remember and never forget
this world is truly a wonderful place,
mine to enjoy.
***
The Fall
An apple is a tempting fruit,
Its skin reflects the light;
But minds once sound were deaf and dumb
When innocent mouths did bite.
Or if it were a green and gritty pear
As much the pair did gain in loss.
It set their teeth on edge no less
To taste its pithy dross.
***
The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
By the time Adam returned, the Serpent
had already proved to Eve’s satisfaction
that God had not spoken the truth—and so seduced her
by touching, coiling about, and finally mouthing
the forbidden fruit, without any apparent dire result.
“See?” He triumphantly assured her. “You surely will not die.
Rather, you will become as God Himself, full of knowledge.”
And so eager to believe, she bit and knew too.
Later, in turn offering the same revelation, she related
the tale and stood naked before Adam as proof.
“See? I am that I was,” she exclaimed. Intrigued
and yet innocent, immersed obliviously in good, he still hesitated
before taking the proffer of her hand, knowing
in his limited way (if God was still to be trusted)
Eve’s disobedience condemned them to separation
even were he to refuse. And so, Adam accepted the gift,
choosing death in the Garden over life eternal, alone.
***
Shiva
Not five minutes ago
while mowing the lawn
I thought about writing this poem to you.
It has now gotten too dark to see
so I stand alone in the cool grass
eating a peach beneath a quiet poplar tree.
The morning breeze may shake its leaves
or maybe the rain in the night
should it come.
Who can know?
It could even shake should the earth tremor
somehow.
I eat the peach as I think of you.
I bite at the skin, the flesh gushes.
Do you know, across the world, what I am thinking?
I wonder, Shiva, if you will destroy me
or if I will destroy you
or if the world will destroy the both of us, together.
Who can tell? It is sth beyond knowing.
Perhaps I should concern myself only
with devouring this peach, so soft, juicy, and sweet.
***
Half awake
I stood at the sander
dreaming of you
dreaming a poem
half-composed in my mind.
Fourteen years later
everything still resides in the aether.
A red doe
splashes in shallow pond water
with her two spotted fawns.
I wish you could see.
***
Regret
I stand at the top of the hill
in silence surrounded by woods
and deep snow.
You wanted only this—
to feel the calm
before descent
and a semblance of control
over an unbroken trail.
Instead, I taught you to herringbone;
forced to climb beyond your capability,
you had no choice but to sideslip
and laugh, falling
all the way down.
I think of that day now
standing here all alone,
wishing I could bring you along.
***
Before Valentine’s Day
Through binoculars, I spy on bluebirds
just beginning to titterpatter
in the feathery tips of dead goldenrod weeds.
Sunshine combines with the ubiquitous snow.
Behind me,
orange coal decays like a radionucleoid
making steam of a stewpot of H2O.
The cat lies curled
into a circle of its own contentment
on the red tile hearth under the stove.
Above the couch, a man shooting rail
stands balanced on a flatboat, gun raised,
poised for the imminent explosion
that never comes.
How would it be to be
forever waiting at the cusp of realization?
(I mean as I am now.)
Tell me you don’t know,
or tell me you do.
I will confess as much… back to you.
***
Enchantment
A cool wind
preceding dark sky
wafts clouds
of pollen like yellow smoke
over recoiling spruce trees.
My Maya (dear
child of Mongols on a high steppe plane)
steers an imaginary pony
so happily undeterred by incipient rain
I pause to wonder—which of us,
what of our relative experience,
is supposedly deficient?
***
Easy Way Out
A crow
slides over a spruce
and rows behind the barn
on a breeze.
Mid-night
dissonance strums
through a line
picked up through the headboard
at the west gable end
of all dreams.
I escape,
beckoning, making the crow
caw and turn—
plucking me up
out of body.
***
Type
—In the beginning was the Word…
Potentially any line
composes an epiphany.
I remember my father saying
“He’s going to be a writer,”
joy creating a bond
based on the simple desire
to produce, if not justify,
a phrase.
He saw in my pursuit
the succession of generations:
exchanging script for print.
I saw lines composed
clinking atop the linotype, standing close
to an ingot dissolving in purgatory.
I watched; I wondered.
Disoriented by their wayward direction,
I puzzled
at the meaning of cold hardened slugs
aligned into galleys of proof
set fast against a changeable world.
All these years later
I seek still to feel the imprint of malleable lead
formed into letters, pressed onto paper,
before consignment to the oblivion of hell
where neither word nor flesh prevail.
I chase my father’s words;
I choose my own,
drawing from a poisoned well.
***
Imagining the Future without You
It’s not hard to think
those hands, those feet, those bland
blue eyes you gave me
lie contained in transcendental dust
beneath this gray engraved stone bearing your name.
I stand here now before you
with my own hands contained in creased
pants, the flesh of my feet clad
in shined wingtips, eyeing this place you chose
for us to be together.
I feel a lack of substance, a failure of essence
in the cool breeze touching my cheek,
and I surrender, closing my eyes, taking in a full
measure of breath, holding it
out of a sheer, willful desire to do so.
I, whom am still able to breathe in the moment,
pause to consider a time still to come
and a time already gone forever.
I remember you
sitting in a curled white and gray photo
taken the year before I came along, your legs
tucked obliquely to one side beneath a pleated dress
pressed flat on the late summer’s grass;
you are not yet showing and so neither am I,
yet here I am making an appearance before you,
imaging you as you were, realizing
after all these years
I still have no flowers to give you.
***
Inertia
There is something still
to be revealed
years after the dog
lifted its eyes to the treetops—
ten thousand blackbirds raised
a ruckus,
clattering and clacking
before rising as one,
like sudden rainfall.
The trees now quiescent, the dog dead,
fall advances.
Crickets incessantly chirr in tall grass.
I stay, waiting,
to see what might happen.
***
Sacagawea
For the first time
she could not have been happier
had The Way revealed itself
as the way back
to all the days relinquished forever.
Here again were dolomite bluffs
high as clouds above a sheer shroud of mist,
the bend in the river still cool where her heels
dragged against the rude insistence
of the Hidatsa warrior who took her,
a girl barely twelve.
Now a woman, sixteen, she encounters
the place anew, proceeding as then out in front
running, crying,
light leaping from her bare feet breaking
the water, transporting her across
an interval of years to greet
a Lemhi girl and lost companion who escaped,
for all one could see, untouched by capture.
The magnitude of recognition finally
compels the brother Cameahwait, now chief,
to descend from his horse and embrace her,
enacting a reunion deemed afterwards
too implausible for movies.
She never complained, not once, despite bearing a child,
bearing all hardship, even hunger,
becoming eventually reduced to sucking the bitterroot
after consenting to continue with the white discoverers
and that half-husband, Charbonneau,
and the black man, York, through the mountains.
Though desiring to winter in a better place,
she accepted a contrary vote, vociferously objecting only
to say it would be a hard thing
should she not be permitted—after all—to go with the others
to see the great water, to partake of the monstrous fish
waiting to be butchered on a peaceable shore.
***
Plaint
The swallows have already gone;
seems early this year.
Though these mornings bring fog
in the valley, or settled more generally about,
the sun when it breaks through feels warm as ever.
I mow, watching a soft wind canting
a Monarch butterfly (butterfly!) sideways across a near field
while, their tails languidly flagging,
the dogs dig in the asparagus bed.
Quiet comes early at dark.
Still, I listen to crickets, remembering
the heron’s blue shadow crossing my words
in the morning as it flew across the sun.
Sitting poised at the picnic table, holding pen
to paper, I again muse and wait, ready to observe
all the common, somber allusions,
but my only true thought seems more unoriginal
than unusual.
The world is as it was, and I am happy to be here—
and really, who would prefer anything else?
***
Walking Barefoot Through Dandelions
A galaxy of yellow suns
float as purple afterimages on a field of green—
until I concentrate upon a single bloom
long enough to wonder,
Where are the honeybees of yesteryear?
Two metallic-blue swallows dip and churn
wheeling acrobatically overhead
while tendril clouds revolve ‘round and ‘round
and stars circle unseen.
Like a castaway waiting on an island shore,
I stand on a cool slab of smooth fieldstone
marking a golden dog’s simple grave;
I close my eyes beneath an upraised hand
to see him prancing yet through purple haze, approaching
forever towards me.
***
Things Aren’t Always as They Seem
Moon, sun
move in the sky,
one revealed
nights and days
or concealed, reconciled
with its opposite other.
The near, revered,
reflection of either one
indirectly lets us see
hidden complexity
in plain sight.
What is is real
as well as false:
moon one, the other
sun.
High noon
or night
the inconstant sphere
becomes mother
to numerous conceits
and a lone fear;
at times she hides,
at times elides
chance and continuity—
her every phase
a shadowy iteration
of worlds that glide
inside her; yet
entangled they go
into oblivion,
following each set,
indifferent sun.
***
This Moment
This moment in which I sit quiet with the sun on my back
will never repeat. Though I live a thousand years
the same concurrence of things shall not recur in my life’s time.
The little flies smaller than gnats swirling in a cloud overhead,
the swallows swooping to the water’s mirroring surface,
the bluegills floating motionless in an ageless amber pond
will no doubt recur here in some similar iteration some future day
fine as this one—but none of it will be quite intricately the same as now.
The crickets already are chirring at the onset of fall;
the goldenrod stands at the berm’s dry edge in full bloom;
across the way, the cattail heads have turned all dark velvet brown;
and the world changes again as an unknown fish dimples the still open surface
while a damsel fly hovers, before alighting, weightless as light on a lily.
Now a pigeon, one of a pair, drinks at the near shore before flying
back to the barn with a whimsical, almost musical whimper.
Still, I wait and watch the elderberry transforming its white florets
into green berries and ripe purple fruit, observing as well the cut grass
floating on the tensile top of the water an arm’s reach away.
The dogs lie panting beside me on the grass, on a curved strip of lawn,
enjoying with me this timeless respite before we rise and move on.
***
The White Fields
Morning reveals a confection
of fragile fields. I feel them
crackle underfoot.
Cold seeps
into opening woods, continuing,
continuing,
penetrating the timbers of a relinquished
warm house.
I take off my glasses, and look
to the sky.
***
The End
Thank you for reading
Water Water
Water water everywhere
and not a drop to drink,
with salt enough and waves enough
to make one float or sink.
***
Begone