Downwind from a shaggy headed bull the air is alive with a damp odor of hides. Lightning and thunder or prairie fire spirits him, or a mild wind like this over the rise, with cows grazing the valley below. The bull on a bluff, tail slapping flies and nose to the wind, I stalk him low through the tall grass, frame him on the horizon with equal parts of earth and sky, and focus on infinity -- his great horned head turns the other way.
Our horizon closes
in. Against our wills
we are made
to taste the earth.
We learn our lesson
again: find shelter --
every breath brings us
back, further back, until at last
we retrace our steps
to the steps we sat on
in front of the Sunday school
where once we learned
our catechism: _sons of Adam_,
_we are clay_.
Nothing we drink
washes away the dust.
And how long we wonder
must we live with
this fine falling rain
dusting the half-buried faces
of our sleeping children?
Friend, to guard against a blue day when no game fish is willing to fall for your hula popper, take some local advice and for insurance carry a soup can you can fill down the street with earth- worms dug from Frank DeVivo's compost. Forking over coffee grounds, egg shells, and melon rind, he'll dig for you and give you what you want, throwing in any night crawlers he can find just in case you need the added premium.
Always the opportunist,
its buzz words insinuating
a way into your dreams,
double-jointed, with collapsible
wings and legs for water-skating,
the smart anesthetist
sticks you when you feel it
only too late.
And if you wake from sweet sleep
punishing the air with karate chops,
it only bobs and weaves on the breezes
of those close shaves, and hums
in your red face even as you curse.
Lighting your house up like a Christmas tree,
you swat at walls and grab wildly,
squeezing the air from your fist
to end its tiny life.
Relaxing your white knuckles,
you open your hand to find
a smudged hieroglyph and see
in the crevasses between fingers
it unfolding itself like some Houdini
brushing his clothes off, climbing into the air,
earning your grudging applause.
Like a salmon fighting falls, once I shouldered wind, wrapped in an overcoat in my private war, when a blackbird threw itself up from dried grass, hit the stiff head wind and hung there, beating wings-- my spirit cheered. After a long moment of fists pounding a door, its spirit buckled, and I thought all was lost-- but with set wings, it sailed the wind away.
I wished to tell you once,
_Sleep now, hold this quiet_
_close to you. Sleep will_
_bring you closer to yourself_
_and teach you the possibilities_.
Tonight, alone, and childless
under this wide moon, I share
a father's concern. My thoughts
drift toward you now, as your
father's did then, on a night
when we talked and you
slept little between dreams,
his words straying from the paths
of conversation as your cries
reached him from a room teeming
with stuffed animals, all
called by their first names.
Tonight, walking an unlit
country road, I remembered you
when the night had grown too big
for you, or your bed too small.
Once again, the night has brought us
closer together. But tonight,
under this sky, I know that any man
can bless. So Elizabeth, whenever
you wake fearful, may you wake
to a voice close grained as oak,
strong enough to hold the darkness
at bay, strong enough to hold you.
And someday, may you remember
how, from lilac branches
outside your window, song sparrows
woke you to another life.
Farm boys lost to this world
immortalize themselves,
their dates, their broken
engagements. In finely tuned
machines, they try to make
the crooked ways straight
by speeding head-on
into lovers' headlights and out
of this life where cotton
withers on the branch
and no rain falls. A world
all wrong for them, they leave it
for a good girl or a dream
gone bad.
Cracks in the earth grow
wide enough for livestock
to fall into.
The nearest beer is miles
across the county line.
Across the way, some others,
tanked up and riding high,
talk loud, laugh. Shouts.
They have been to the other side
of the county line, their faces
dimly lit by flames.
A rough circle of torches
and men. In dirt at their feet,
an armadillo is trying
to crawl back
into its uncharted ramble,
its night-walking life
where moonstruck eyes can hide
from torchlight.
One of them has it by the tail.
He is one of us
who live and work under
a burning star,
crawling out of our everyday lives
to answer the unspoken summons
of the night and take this
beast of the dark, the shadow-ridden,
and coolest hours, for
its life is one of ease.
This is something he must do,
even if it does not bring rain,
even if the wild animal inside
does not die out.
The trapped beast, doused
with whiskey and gasoline, crawls
farther and farther
into itself, until
lit by a single matchstick,
the dying animal blossoms
into flames, lighting the darkness,
lighting our faces.
In memoriam, James Wright
One of your books, now
out of print, I didn't buy.
I might have borrowed it
in good conscience, smuggled
it into Indian Summer light
and found some quiet place
beneath a sycamore, far from
the dust of book shelves.
But a friend told me, Here
take mine, copy it.
The proprietor told me he would not
break the law, but I could
and could use his machine,
saving 2 cents a page.
I didn't want to steal bread
from your widow's mouth,
but my friend lent me his copy--
your book handed from friend
to friend. You would have approved
if I read you right.
I had to give up my place
at the machine for another.
When she left, the machine fired
one, two, three, fourteen copies
of "October Ghosts" before anyone
reset the counter. For my copy
$1.61 plus tax. He didn't charge
for the thirteen.
And though I know this lament
will do you little good, I am ready
to pay and will be ready for the authorities
when they come to collect what I owe you
as they figure it. But the way I see it,
my friend and I, and the rest
of us-- all honest citizens--
owe you thanks for your plain talk
and your breaking into song
like a man in church, who is aware always
he is a man in church singing,
so he sings, sometimes a half-step behind,
sometimes a little too gravelly voiced,
yet he sings like the man he knows
himself to be. And though it may be vain
to hope even one copy falls
into the right hands, I know at least one
has when I return my friend's
book-- yours. Which belongs now
to those of us you've left behind.
Before the end of the world came for him, Bo Sample dozed as he always did every Sunday behind the wheel of his oversized pickup outside the Baptist church. Across the street Jed Bowlin, with his jug, lay propped against one of the brick walls of the high school before wild trumpets announcing destruction woke him from his blurred dream. Inside the church, no one was giggling anymore at the Davis boys' coonhound howling from their pickup in his cracked treble. All singing stopped when a voice like a runaway freight train's commanded the walls to shake, shingles to fly off and follow, and the church, too, to fall to its knees. Then everyone knew the dog was not joining in with the singing congregation but tuning to a note higher than G. When the twister struck, what Jed Bowlin saw sobered him: trees flying, the ball park's chain-link fence uprooted like a weed, crazy flocks of shingles, and one yellow dandelion at his feet. Later, though all the lines were down, word began to reach us, how some men had to pry Bo's broken body from his mangled truck, how Clara Hammond's newborn flew out of her arms when the roof blew off, how she stared into the screaming funnel, how she came to when they found her baby, cooing and unharmed, still blanket-wrapped in an uncut patch of timothy, and how Jed Bowlin, who saw it all, threw down his bottle and was born again.
Roosevelt Dime
Viens ici, boys, viens ici
Parlez vous Francais?
Oui, monsieur.
Comment ,ca va?
Tres bien, merci, mon oncle.
Pas mal, merci, mon oncle, et toi?
Tres bien.
Look what Uncle Lucien
has for you.
A dime! a shiny new dime!
and a nickel, too!
I knew it: E Pluribus Unum--
In God We Trust.
But this time he didn't ask.
A nickel and a dime,
for my brother
and for me: In Uncle Lucien
We Trust!
Here, boys,
which one you want? The big one
or the little one?
Uncle held out his hands.
Make cents, now,
it makes sense.
Who first?
Youngest first this time.
Little brother grabbed
for the greasy nickel
and held it tightly
in his fist.
Everyone laughed.
I got the dime
and the joke, too.
You make any cents? Uncle said.
I held up the dime.
Right, mon oncle, makes sense.
United States of America
E Pluribus Unum
In God We Trust.
One thin dime,
ten cents.
Gentlemen, first, let me reintroduce Mr. Jim Beam. Now, after having chosen a good vise, we must choose a hook that will hold and lie like a wild-eyed fisherman hanging on to your sleeve. Let's make him a small fish lost in big water. He'll be hurt, too, injured, a sort of cripple. That always calls the big Cutthroats out from under cutbanks after more blood. Clip off the barb, too. Be sports, give the poor suckers a chance to throw our hook. They'll still have to fight the current and our taut lines. Let's have no flashy bird of paradise or oriental fighting cock. Unassuming North American bucktail will do for our western, Missoula, big sky variant of Mr. Red-Nosed Dace, a game and gimpy little guy, nosing his way against the current. White, grey, black, and brown streamers will wave to Dolleys from the riffles and boiling white water. Wrap some tinsel clouded over like old chrome, sunburnt and tarnished to flakes on the bumper of a stalled Chevy weathering bad skies from the side of the high road from Philipsburg to Kicking Horse. Where did Mr. Beam go? Somebody, please, tell him attendance is mandatory. Now wind those threads tight. We don't want any threads of our fish stories unraveling.
Back again, the chickadee
we noticed from our
frosted window's melted
peephole, whose coming
and going we watched for: the one
with the crippled leg.
His wings worked overtime
just to stay balanced
on his perch, still he
hung on, with his
one good leg. one good leg.
When he reappears
again to visit our feeder,
alighting on a branch
of the rose of Sharon,
it's as if he is telling us: Hang on
a while longer, the winter is over;
let's pick the millet
from among the stones,
and see what can be done
with one good leg.
"Paradis's title, TORNADO ALLEY, is audacious. By giving Jarrell's famous metaphor of the poet as a man who spends his life standing in thunderstorms waiting to be hit by lightning a new twist, it requires that the poems which comprise that title live up to a most difficult claim. And they do: Paradis's art is patient enough and is so hard-won that, poem by poem, they do." -- Jonathan Holden