If There is a Hell, It is the Threat of Hell

 

I have a message from the world kept in the memory of my cells.

It says, you are on a collision course with meaning, and you are getting warmer.

 

We stand in the full room of tradition

We carry dreams in our backs.

            This is our dream house,

                        Then new rooms are built by day

                                    And found at night.

 

I’ve wanted to survive my fears

            So I could make music with my heart.

Freedom, freedom, where have we come in the dark?

            I covered my tender woman’s skin in a wailing night,

Now I don’t know where I am. I’ve never been to this day before.

 

Come now fire, warm along the sweetest vein,

Scare rattling in very redness

And a seeing, wakening and right.

 

 

 

FISHER

 

Beyond where my father stood by the shine of the bay’s many rippled surface,

The figure of the air moved,

Weighted with salt and age.

It flowed in invisible parade between this

Little beach and the far green rim of land,

The circling terns and cormorants.

He was dark-faced and focused on his boat

Before the bright face of the bay.

He waded with my cousin, big-booted, into the low

Waters at the nearest edge, set the seine’s beach anchor,

Then became buoyant and light-faced as he lowered his bulk

Into his net boat, bobbing, sure, and steady.

 

He manned the oars, oiled in their sockets, parting the silver and blue

In silent silken “V”s.

He lowered an old man’s wiry brows, nodding to my cousin,

Who stood at the stern to lift the net up and throw it out

In high, short arches. It dropped heavy, black, and silent,

The corks rising in bounces onto the shush of the bay,

And the leads falling too deep for anyone to see.

The water, great glitter to the sky, dimmed what it held below.

 

As they rowed the near side of the half-moon arch to the far end of the curve

Their faces were too dark for us to see from shore. We knew

The set of their bodies, as familiar as their scent. Then, the bay’s gleam

Pressed in around their black forms, to swamp them with light.

As they pulled back round to the beach, the sky filled up with swirls of Pelican and Gull

Spinning above the shine and above the slip of the boat.

My father climbed heavily after my cousin out onto the sand, and each began

To pull one end of the net in, whispering together across the length of the beach,

So to not frighten the fish as they came up to the shore.

 

As the two net arms came towards us, the pocket of shiners,

Rolled and rose onto the maw of the beach, twisting and flashing

With an iridescent energy. My father boomed his Hoorah to us

Across the fish box feast.

 

 

 

THIS PLACE IS INDELIBLE IN ME

 

Again the iris garden around the bell-house,

Which I weed for the boney woman

That I come from,

Stains my dream

With aching, bending, pulling,

And a high-scented stand of flowers,

Tender beside the wet coastline.

 It is spring

And she finds a reason to come out of her sea-watching house,

Behind her prickly red barberry wall,

And into the sweet, full yard,

Where I have set myself to dig foot by foot of soil.

It was she who placed the wisteria tree to rise at center,

Maybe forty years ago. 

Now, suspended soft links of her real heart cloth

Make a twelve foot high glow for her to see, and me.

And she moves the place below the leaf light

Where the pattern, set and binding,

Sends the jolting bits of fine particulars

Within the cell wheels winding.

Light moves the edge of spinning green

Or tune, out so,

But only so.

It finds the dragon reason in its way, to be

That shining silken thing, unspun

And spun again,

Its fire the way the sun folds and spins

Within the making of the thing,

Its windy waters, solidified within the flower edge.

It’s hers and mine, and mine to tend.

 

Perhaps I can get her to speak to me.   

 

 

 

THIS SONG

 

We want songs in the air, don’t we,

Where we walk, where we think and work? But a song or two we can agree on.

 

The bump down into the rocks under the streets and city talk, into

The cold clean water where humans have not swum

Could make us both older and younger too.

A water like no village had used it, but had its singing in mind,

In each waiting cell, that song could help some idea better come alive.

 

Wait for water and dogs and trees to speak of

How to live or what to do

With this dreamy mass mind, and

We could be waiting a long time again.

But we might want to be slow in our growing,

To see how far cities can grow. Is that right?

 

We haven’t yet formed societies as adaptable,

Steady and fairly peaceful

As a stream flows or as a dog’s life can be,

Or as close to the earth and long-lived or graceful

As a tree’s life can be, one even lovely and breaking,

And coming back whole enough after a snowstorm.

But we might study, come up with the purpose

That would quiet our fiery entrepreneurs in 100 years or so.

 

We can say, Love, and in that dream of understanding,

Being not alone and healed for just a little while,

Wake to the longer sight of the world,

Older than ourselves,

A world with a past that leads us to this decision:

 

That we would care for something that seems other than our selves.

 

The face that I see then, you in your finest glow, watching me,

Catches in its cells, the waves of touch we have made.

 

We say Peace, and move out of fear

And the rattle of tin armies that will all lose finally,

And into our eyes, clearing,

These woods in our back yard, and the ones down the way, we know,

Singing and breathing like a lung of us all,

Alive still.

 

Say Hope,

And birds, so light, rise off of the birdseed,

Where I was able to place it, poor as I am.

In all this bounty,

I was able to find seed,

And we all wait for

 A human society that would be kind

And not too proud….

 

 

FLOWERS

 

I study summer to harbor it in my darker land,

A glittery, gold-laughing ship sending out

Adventurers in fuchsia coats and bee-hummed

Rosie frills parading into my wilds, leaning

On each other, red-silked, purple plumed, blue fluff,

 

Till I breathe in gasps after bird-hatching,

Corn flagging in the wind into high green glamour.

Today. Erupting in the evening, dimming a hot and witty

Clamor, long, green shoots

Break pink and melt as the sun goes.

 

All fancies are flowers in the warm blue sky-rounded night.

Tomorrow the duteous man and woman will wheel along the line of the beach,

For sugar-sweets, for riding in the warm tide,

So we sing in the day, wade in the seaweed stream,

Stare out to find horizon on the curve of the water nearest us.

 

Now the revelers, drunk, full,

Take this continent for the sun

Before their boat is out to sea and gone.

 

 

 

I FEED THE WOLF A STEAK

 

The black wolf chatters in the garden, circling, shuffling on the lawns,

Along the row of big trees,

By the roses and the bird bath,

Old as roses are, old as pools are,

And still  demented.

He snaps at nits that travel through his path.

I could see his drooling mouth., if I could open my eyes.

 

I moan, wishing he’d settle at his watch

Under the furthest tree.

He can’t be tied.

 

The chickens bundle in their house,

The dog snores, fat.

Where is that cat tonight?

The horse sees my light at the window, and still grazes,

Red in the open field in the dark.

A horse’s heart feeds on the bright green all around, but I am poor.

 

Running out in pink pajamas,

I throw the wolf a steak and my bowl of fear,

And panting, stand holy still,

Move my hand along the horse’s side,

Feel his stubborn flesh this night.

I’ve contained my deepest sight in darkness,

But looking in the horse’s eye,

I find the whole of my divided sight.

A trick of saving what I see has made me wealthy.

 

 

 

GROUND

 

Where I now stand, head in the sky,

This little land of endless round

Spills green into space,

Turning itself

Under a covering sun.

 

Little land underfoot,

Keep in your dear little box, my gold glow of knowing;

Pull all care clean through me

From head to ground;

 

Mind on fire a million years long,

Keep in your great big box, the gold of knowing.

Come here to root awhile.

Stand in your own backyard.

 

Eyes a-fire, put your hands in the ground,

And slow the feel of form so loosely bound.

No worry will outlive this bending, planting in the sun.

Put iris’ down to

Flush up runs of niter and phosphorescent speeling;

The world of midnight crust goes green, in us, along its rim.

 

And when you think you’re done, dear one,

Put that hot head underground.

See the lattice roots go inching.

And see safe and far below,

Through miles of cool ground to where

The earth’s deepest fires are quietly burning.

 

 

 

THE LAST TIME DAD MADE POPCORN

 

He’d been on morphine for awhile.

There was the big overdose, the leveling off

And the old man was up late.

I came down from the loft to hear him

Throw up the chicken and dumplings of dinner in the bathroom,

Clean up the sour smell, with soap and water, and then saw him Come out with his flashlight and turn on the kitchen light.

There were a few thumps on the front porch as coon, possum,

Or skunk moved away from the cats’ bowl and out of

The circle of white, into the silken black of coastal air.

We were miles from any other houses, nearer the bay and frontier Than the town.

                                                            *

He was searching around for a suitable pan—that orange one with The heavy bottom—oh, he was frustrated—where does that cook put things?!  He typically rattled around in a kitchen.

He turned the gas stove on high, put the orange pan on, shook

Out some corn when he’d found it

In the dark walk-in cupboard, and then he burned it.

His face squinched up like a sweet boy’s, and I rustled about him. He put on another batch and burned that too.

Finally I came from my camp by the big table and bullied him

Out of the line of fire.

I took over the roasting pan

Until we were crunching the puffed up corn

Huddled at the table, deflated.

                                                            *

Dad had usually rattled loud in the kitchen.

I had not stood him down before,

But scattered before his decisions.

He had the Arc of Fatherhood fixed to the wall above the stove

Where children could likely see it: If not,

It could be reached down and handed around

At sudden turns in conversation or under

The time constraints of cooking. 

Children will not speak, unless . . . !

He bellowed, we mannered.

And he liked his bread made yeasty. Three minutes of boil were Allowed the morning Egg.  Fifty year-old sturgeon was grilled direct From the front porch beach seine, and not cooked too long.

The cobs were pulled from the green when the kettle was hot.

 

He knew how to do it Right.

 

 

CHICKEN

 

Chicken running is a great whoop.

She leans forward, eyes spanning two-sided

The wide yard of grass,

And patters just clear of the green ground, wings akimbo,

For love of going, the sunshine silver but promising,

Bugs whistling, puddles gleaming.

What could be more than this?

 

 

GAIA

 

I am not Gaia, she says.

 

She’s laid out her greens for him,

The valleys, the leaves

Of many shapes.

I’m not the laughing dresser of mountains

Before the mirror sea.

And I don’t hold the scenic play

Of wolves and mice

In those woods where he wonders alone.

 

I am a woman in this time,

With this chest, this heart, this clumsy face.

I am the lover of a man

Who goes to the open space

Surrounding his heart,

Fixed and hierophant crossed.

 

I’m not the earth mother

Though he walks my body finding what she gave.

I am home to speak or mate,

And I am satisfied we work it out,

As we sing to the perfect one under our eyes.

His is sunny and unclouded. She is our sight.

 

She is the one who waits outside.

She is the endless one, without her veil,

Washing her open face in the blues,

Where he hunts at night

And drives his arrows straight.

 

I am a woman spinning, untied by pain or age.

I turn, being filled by a steady light

And am calling out,

I’m found, I’m his,

I’m eaten, I’m bound, I’m right.

 

 

JUST SO, BUT NO

 

A miss of this, a

Love of that, a low song

For despair; she sings out loud,

A wail or shout,

Sweet shy fools beware. Outback, she moves the

Rose, for now she knows where it should be,

And sees a mouse,

Black, bright eyes aware, and

Dreams her house; the sky

That newly thrills is seen

From that tower

The sea entire in a glass. A flower on a wall.

She sweeps her rooms to keep her place.

She rubs her bones to know her face.