These early evenings, the sun sinks slowly,
like a 'do-ragged painter down spider-leg scaffolding.
We are all weary these days
as the world rolls beneath us and we logwalk,
our eventual fall following beside us like an unpredictable dog.
Then quietly, as crickets guard the evening filigree,
your ghost comes to me
where I smoke in the Adirondack
under the weak-sister yellow moon of the outside light,
to portend a storm that's already passed and gone.
In a canning jar, under the basement stairs,
I have kept your hoodoo,
that sacrifice chant-dance made of woodsmoke and razor grass
that you wove to your bones
to make me love you as if you were food, as if you were solid earth.
Whether in Butte or Chicago, Pushmataha County
or Devil's Hand, it makes no difference.
Even the ocean is not shatterproof, so my bags drowse in the attic,
with old costumes and dressmaker's dummies
that you went to while I slept off the soft poison of your words.
I know why you're here.
I know why yellowjacks have stingers
and I can't write these poems forever just to stave you off.
You'll use the knife I gave you as a pick
and play some stupid banjo breakdown at my funeral
as if it were spring, as if you were sane, as if I didn't matter.
_______
I don't smoke. The poem lies!
Music: Gordon Lightfoot "Dreamland"
The seasons come and go giving us no choice in the matter, just like lovers and children. I absolutely love this Shay. I can feel the sting and as always your imagery makes us feel that sting even more powerfully!
ReplyDeleteO!M!G! Fantastic. Every poem I think, no way can she top this, and then she does. Too many wonderful lines to quote - the unpredictable dog, "I cant write these poems forever just to stave you off" - just brilliant writing, as original and endlessly surprising as it gets.
ReplyDeleteYou build a landscape stroke by stroke here, one where every shape is sharpened by its shadow, every cut bleeds--but softly, and every phrase takes us down the path of experience to an unexpected end--this poem reminds me of waking from a dream, with your mind full of images which your heart has to explain. You set the mood in the first stanzas, then shatter it with the following three, with the third and the last my favorites. Another one knocked out of the park, Shay.
ReplyDeleteThat is fantastic. Amazing language and everything works together towards those ending lines. "as if it were spring, as if you were sane, as if I didn't matter." Wow. And this: "to make me love you as if you were food, as if you were solid earth."
ReplyDeleteThis is an exquisite poem...It so brilliantly speaks to me of October and it's beautiful leaves that tempt us to forget winter is coming, all the winters that have come and gone. With each line of this October poem I can feel the whithering acceptance sanity is fluid. We have moments of clarity, yet life spirals us into unhinging, and we trudge on pretending we are sane in the crumbling.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful vivid tumble of imagery, Shay. Like a haunting arthouse film short. That last line really tops it off :-)
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