for the blood to slow.
Cold water soothes the throb
and so he walks the river bed.
His belly is empty as the sky
but turns over sickly,
his body's shock at violation.
Up, through the grasses, silently.
He will stay here, concealed
on his side, panting.
Licking the wound, resting
he will either heal or not--live or not--
the same as any other day he has known.
_________
for Sunday Muse #166.
"Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling." --Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River part one.
_______
Michigan Vacation 1967
When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me
with a love of lake water.
Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.
Goodbye in the eyes of my father.
Solitude in a red paddle boat
watching the sea-weed swaying.
White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.
A time cut short. We won't be staying.
That summer, Detroit and drift wood burned.
My paperback left behind.
Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.
Something born or dying. Something fine.
When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me
with a week that never leaves.
White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.
How to love well and then, how to grieve.
________
Process note: My father had a particular fondness for Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. I can't read them without thinking of him.
For Dverse Poetics "One True Sentence." This form is called a ZaniLa Rhyme, invented by Laura Lamarca.
He can say "pretty bird."
He can take off your finger before you know it.
There is a room with a large cage,
or that is a large cage,
with a sentinel window where only light passes.
Say that this bird is yours.
Say that he lights on your shoulder.
Your skin will envy the window glass, and long for distance.
You can sit quietly in the evening.
The bird can strut and scream on its perch in the afternoon.
When you die, tomorrow or ten years from now,
The bird will tilt its head, fluff its feathers, tap its mirror
tap tap tap
in boredom or in victory, a line of sun across its rope trapeze.
_______
There in the void, scattering lava-spitting planets from Hell to next Thursday,
kid must have been stone lonesome.
If He drowned his toys in the bathtub for forty days, hey, it was The Exciting Game Without Any Rules.
Bitter little bastard, and so would you have been.
Time goes by, tick tock.
Awkward with girls, He just popped one pregnant.
Fast forward, single father with a son.
Awake at night, His fuck-ups from years ago torture Him still,
all the aggression and acting out.
Stone tablets just made it weird for everybody,
but He had to learn on the fly, no teachers, no friends.
What a smoking pile-up.
So there's His only son, chopping chairs and hope chests out of trees in the shed by himself.
"I'm gonna give you twelve friends, let you see the world, set everybody straight, do and have everything I never had!" Big smile, open arms, well? Well???
Jay turns back to planing the edge of a door.
The flying chips remind Him of His old lava-spitting planets, most of them rocky and dead in the end, and He goes off.
Presto, Jay's in the desert with the devil, for the good of all concerned.
Oh, He talks to the neighbors about sacrifice and salvation,
But every time He sees the hand-crafted coffee table out in the garage,
dusty,
forgotten next to the Jarts and the lawn mower,
He dips His old white-haired head,
leans down with His spotty hands on His knees
and whispers, "I am that I am," to nobody.
_________
for Sunday Muse #164.
"You must make allowances for me," it said.
"I am overfilled with grief, like a suicide's bathtub."
"I will bow you more gently," said the girl.
"Gently shmently," said the cello.
"Make me a tree again, restore my rings and skin."
"Cash me ousside, how bow da?" said the girl.
"Cry me a river, cello.
We both moan from inside our changed bodies,
Bowed by handsy players who take bows for our fracaso."
-----------
for Sunday Muse #163.
fracaso--Spanish for defeat, ruin, downfall, calamity, destruction