Copper Country

 It's beautiful up there, and you shone.

At home on the rocky shores of Lake Superior,

I was a smooth stone for skipping; you were sunlight on the water.

What I didn't understand was the night that far north.

Red-haired, speaking with a hint of Quebecois,

you drew me immediately, because I was little rocks beneath the tide

and mistook you for sunrise and a pleasant peninsula.

What I didn't understand was Gichigami's jealous nature.

Any geologist sitting on a stool in any tavern in copper country

can tell you that a rock can be both solid and fragile.

He could describe the smooth, sharp, shell-like fractures

called conchoidal. But he is drinking, leave him be. 

I brought heft with me, I thought, cases of books

and a hard restlessness, cold to the touch and longing not to be.

Laying eyes in you, I sensed your spark and mistook it for warmth.

Copper conducts, it borrows, it doesn't hold a damn thing.

I am a little of this, a little of that--a collector, I carry some of everything

that has ever touched me. I am worlds, a common rock, a human.

You are what you are, pure in your own denying way, charged but empty.

What I didn't see then was that I was seeking brightness down a shaft.

We lay together in the cooling nights, the snow came, ten-twelve feet.

I thought I was strong, and that you were worth every devotion,

but I was flint, cracking and stabbing as we loved, and you were 

never meant to be moved, turning weedy green in the northern air.

I miss copper country. It's real, though mined out now. I've moved south,

grown older, living alone, staring into the fridge at midnight as if at stars.

And you? You dug in deeper, a disused light on the shore, pretty and dark.

What I didn't understand was that we would hurt each other so much,

and that it would matter so little. The indifferent lake still shines and sighs.

__________________

for my friend Dora at Dverse Poetics: Lyric Petrologies

My father was fascinated with the history of our state, and took me with him all over, explaining and teaching as we went. There is nothing quite like being taught by a teacher who loves his subject. 

Michigan's state motto is, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you."

Lake Superior is vast, and always cold. The shores are rocky. Its wild, careless beauty is easy to fall in love with, and it does not care that you are there.

Music: Megan Dixon Hood "Drown"

Stars

 When I was just an olive sparrow living rootless in Texas,

I met Kris Kristofferson and some hay-blond woman with a kind face. I asked Kris, "Are you going to Willie's picnic?' and in that train engine rumble of his he laughed and said, "Hell, I see Willie at his house!" I never saw Kris Kristofferson again after that, except once, last night, around 3 a.m., in a cemetery just off Woodward Avenue. I asked him, "Where's Rita?" He said, "Oh, I couldn't rightly say, but wherever she's at I expect she's singin' " We sat together on a marker for Howard Greenbriar, husband and father, our beers at our feet, brown glass sweating in the grass, their gold-and-yellow labels giving them the appearance of votive candles. Looking up, I said, "I can't see the stars." Kris told me, "That's the lights, babe. We're like belled cats lookin' for angels." It was bright when I woke up. I wondered what happened to the hay-blond woman with the kind face. Her hair wasn't dark like Rita's or mine or turning gray like Rita's or mine. A friend texted, asking if I was going to the Kristofferson show that night. I texted back "Hell, I see Kris at his house!" But the truth is, I haven't seen a star for a very long time.

_______________

The part about meeting Kris Kristofferson in the first part of this poem is true. Or maybe it was just some rando who looked and sounded exactly like him.

At 23 (for Bob Green--not the famous one)

Our mutual friend

had told you

how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.

"Like it really happened?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

"It did happen, but now

things are so different that it seems

ridiculous."

I sat there,

shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--

like him, not dying

but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.

This man loaned me two records--

Joni Mitchell

and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--

Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after

to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers

off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,

and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston

where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry

on a Sunday morning.

______

Pony For Dray Horse

 If milkmaids dance,

I haven't seen it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen

when I'm asleep

or dying.

If apples can be poisoned

I haven't tasted one.

That doesn't mean to trust your grocer,

lover,

or restauranteur.

Oh you, decked in white blossoms like some ironic saint,

evangelizing my arms, my tongue, my will

like the loving dead.

I know now that I was kissing a corpse--

one heart beating for two,

pony for dray horse, dragging along.

I can't swear that I'll be smarter next time,

but I mean to be.

I'll remember your face, your ways, your smile,

turn my head like a lady

and spit.

_______

Note: I will be participating less in poetry blogdom, though I will still post my poems here, and continue the Word List. I am mostly HERE now. 

At Breakfast

 

at breakfast

your smile

made me want to smash it

as bravely fragile things

sometimes do.

at lunch

I called you

like climbing Everest

because it is there

and like a metronome

because it always has.

At dinner

I made something nice

that our son wouldn't eat.

I said,

starve then.

you said,

what would you like instead?

At midnight

you wanted it

but I

kissed the dog,

told him I love him

and rolled away from you

like a pearl

from a broken strand.

______

shared with WGO? open link

The Saints of 1962

 

It was summer, 1962

and I was seven years old. 

I loved our screen porch where my mother never came

except for meals in the berry-bush cicada evenings.

It was my father's domain, and mine.

He read his newspaper or did crosswords

with a ballgame on the radio.

I loved the march music at the opening and in the beer ads. 

Sometimes the weatherproof rug was a dance floor

for my dolls when my brother wasn't there to make fun. 

My main thing that summer, though

was my cards spread out on the old

table, retired from the kitchen, now the grand dame of the porch.

I had prayer cards--

Saint Anthony, Saint John Bosco, Theresa of Avila,

colorful as comic books, bright as the light of Heaven.

I had baseball cards--

Rocky Colavito, Cuno Barragan, Orlando Cepeda

with dark woody borders

and early 60's dark caps

they looked as if they played in perpetual shadows.

There was incense

in the form of my father's Dutch Masters cigar.

There were the sacraments

and the sacrifice bunt.

The saints seemed backlit, blessed by Divine Hollywood.

The players cards were sometimes misprinted with a

green-tinted background as if they were undersea.

I liked to mix them, shuffled and fanned out.

Saint Sebastian, patron of athletes, his foot

resting on the top step of the dugout, gesturing

his fielders into position

with a wave of his scorecard,

or by messages brought by angels.

Jim Bunning striking out the devil with a wicked side-arm fastball,

making Old Scratch look foolish

as the vendors call and the fans

cheer. Jim walks off the field in the sunshine, no shadow in sight.

I have forgotten which cards I had, mostly.

Who was the beer sponsor? Schlitz? Blatz?

What had I done that spring?

What did I do that fall? In summer 1962

my father and President Kennedy were alive 

and so were the saints and ballplayers

On the table

on the screen porch

in summer, 1962.

_____________

for What's Going On? "Forgetfulness"

Music: Gale Garnett We'll Sing in The Sunshine

And Detroit Tigers march music radio intro

Mistral

 

In Spring the madding winds arrive

and leave the winter to its dreams

of fools such as my love and I.

In your eyes Provence does lie--

false Spring is never what it seems

when Mistral sings the lullaby. 

The ring is left to rust and die

by drowning pool or icy stream

while scudding clouds above it fly.

Your wind has temper come alive

to kill the bud or turn the cream

and howl unchecked to Italy.

So comes the Mistral, mad with spring

My love, destroying everything.

_______

for Dverse Meeting the Bar "Wild Wind."

The mistral is a strong, cold, northwesterly wind that blows from southern France into the Gulf of Lion in the northern Mediterranean. It produces sustained winds averaging 31 miles an hour.

It is said that madness occurs particularly often in the Spring. I believe it.

Wishbone

 

When I was young, I learned the art of

decisions made with wishbones. 

A living heart had informed them

with a love of yellow corn and a fear of silver hatchets. 

I came out of my shell one night during 

a traffic accident like waking during surgery.

Wrecked Chevies turn shy as little girls

but their drivers find illumination in oil and blood and pavement. 

Jail and church are cousins and I found

in one what had eluded me in the other. 

That morning they returned my effects.

A crow had nested inside my leather satchel like swag from limbo.

Why bring all of this up? Why now, when

October is just a penny on the railroad track

shiny and done with, like an old flame?

I guess I'm just telling how I got here, the whole swerve of my life.

Living alone takes nerve, more than I ever had young.

Magic never gets the laundry done, or the

chicken fried, but I have it in spades these

rainy days, when my hawk-heart feels the wishbone

and I wonder what it will tell about me, how it will split

between sweetheart and shrew, drunk and duena,

all the spilled tiles and tears that depicted my face,

the one I wore while here, doing the best I could, grandmother and memory.

________

for Word Garden Word List--She Had Some Horses

Music: Katey Sagal Bird On The Wire. 

Ode to L.

 

Here is an ode for you, my dear

to celebrate your ferric heart

and an idiocy of intimacy

as valueless as modern art. 

Here is a pot of chrysanthemums

with viper heads on every stem

to commemorate the quacks you quote

and your absolute belief in them.

Behold the cradle that holds the child

who turned to fog before she cried

and the trivia you cared for more

than the funeral or the fact she died. 

Who holds the torch and crosses eyes

at you in imaginary dance?

You, the center of the world

departing now by ambulance?

We were once and once was us

in kinder intervals that fell

into the ditch like cur and bitch

chasing cast-iron kites through Hell. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Hapax

Mount Pleasant

 "But in the grey of the morning 

my mind becomes confused

between the dead and the sleeping

and the road that I must choose"

The Moody Blues Question 

I remember a secret place behind new house construction

still untouched, with a little brook; I knew the hidden entry.

It was September, yellow leaves nattering on thick birches

with impossible blue sky behind. My solitary sanctuary.

I've not been back but know

that a sub and casino took its place.

SUVs, neon signs, leaf blowers,

but in my mind it's still my private place. 

My wandering discoveries now unfold in recurring dreams

of curious, fey, deserted neighborhoods found just beyond a rise.

The streets are new, but the homes deserted and crumbling

with just a face here or there behind a curtain, calmly waiting to die.

In these latter years, one seems

as real and compelling as the other.

I once saw a pheasant burst from a bush

and a grackle's lost feather flutter.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Autumn. 

Music: Frank Sinatra The September of My Years

Wings & Anvils

 

September was vivid as a kiss

or a hard push back then--

one scarce, one common.

The smell of a new eraser, the pungent insistence

of a just-opened jar of paste, the grind of a sharpener,

or the sound of snubbed scissors cutting through 

construction paper--I remember them all.

I loved the school library with the soft edges

of books read a thousand times, the dark wooden

window frames, the rows of tables like boats at a marina.

September also meant doctor's waiting rooms,

the assault of hospital smells and rooms full of

us guilty damaged goons, our mothers' faces

as brittle as dropped plates. We're defectives and know it.

I remember. Here is my hat being thrown ahead,

out of sight, down the hall. Here is the boy touching his face

while staring at mine, afraid he might catch the ugly.

Here are the mimics, a circus of relentless clowns.

I remember all of it, though to look at me, you'd never know. 

That child rides on my shoulders and inside my mouth--

the one that could not make herself understood.

I was educated and the lessons were both wings and anvils,

the thorn in my flesh that God gave His stunned child.

________________-

for What's Going On?--"Education."

Image: The Broken Witness by MistiStudios, redbubble. 

Music: Morrissey November Spawned A Monster

Black Roses

September in the city

and nobody knows you're here.

It's okay to walk down the boulevard

it doesn't care if you're sad or broke or queer

All the familiar faces

washed away in an angry rain

now you're here in September in the city

and you have to start all over again

The sun just over the pigeon roofs

is yours as much as anyone else's here

and black roses in a sidewalk garden

bless you as much as anyone, dear

September in the city

and god is in the windows and the leaves

you will be all right, for one more night

if you just remember to breathe

The sun just over the pigeon roofs

is yours as much as anyone else's here

and black roses in a sidewalk garden

bless you as much as anyone, dear.

Book

 

Let me tell you about the book I've been reading.

I started it so long ago, I can't now recall the opening lines 

or even how I came to have this book.

I think it was a gift, but I'm not sure from whom,

and though it's at most about a hundred pages long.

it has a great many chapters and characters.

Sometimes I love it and wish I could stay on a favorite page forever,

but by turns I want to throw it against the wall or destroy it.

Every time I think I've figured out where it's going or what it means,

the narrative changes and goes off in some unexpected direction.

I'm often displeased with the author or the characters

and wonder why in the world the story goes the way it does.

For the first few chapters, I was eager to read it quickly,

but as I've gotten nearer the finish than the start I want to slow down.

I loved some characters so much that they became part of me,

and I genuinely suffered when they were written out of the tale.

Others I hated and yet they lingered for page after page.

I had hopes for what would come next, more when I started than now.

What began as a children's book, became YA, adult fiction,

and now it's almost a memoir. I'm not sure how many pages are left.

I wonder, what if I had found myself reading a different edition,

a sequel, another book by the same author, a different genre,

setting, plot, or style? Would i have liked those better, or less?

Ah well, even though I have thrilled to the love scenes, cried when

the characters failed, were terribly hurt, or died, believed every word

or scoffed at the absurdity of it, none of it is even actual in the end.

It's a tale, something made-up, though it has seemed very real.

Novels, plays, films, they move me, change me, sometimes bore me,

irritate me, or leave me in despair, but they are only shadows. 

One day, the book will fall from my hand, and I'll protest that I

wasn't finished! or perhaps I'll sigh and say I'm glad to be shut of it.

No one else will read my particular book again after me, though

sections and passages may be passed down and I'll be

a character in someone else's book, a product of imagination.

_______

for What's Going On? -- Books/Reading.

Don't forget that Word Garden Word List remains active through Sunday. 

Music: Crash Test Dummies Afternoons & Coffee Spoons

Big Sur

 

Back in bus-and-duffel days

turned out, less to than away,

half-high, with no plan,

I went up the coast.

San Luis Obisbo, Carmel, San Fran

and on up to Portland.

That's where we go now

--people my age--

but this was then

when I had no means, no ways,

and just my naivete.

Out in the water, somebody said

to watch for the whales.

They live in the dark underneath,

and like me, come up, then back down

without learning a thing or so it seemed.

On the bus some guy liked

Gordon Lightfoot

You've Been Talking In Your Sleep. 

He spoke my language like a native

better than the pidgin kid that was me.

He told me a blue whale's heart

weighs as much as a grand piano

and can be heard from two miles away.

Bye daddy, behind me down the coast--

thanks for kicking me out.

I wondered, as Seattle became B.C.,

what if it's all just big empty water,

and me lugging some big booming beater for nothing?

Or what if I'm all ears

but the watersong was never for me?

What then? 

And what now?

I look out these days not at California coast

but at Michigan lakes,

cold and deep, choppy or still.

I know only that I still don't know

and never will.

________

for What's Going On? -- Whales and Other Wonders.

Music: Bobby Womack California Dreamin'

Crow & Astrolabe

 

Crow, obscured by wing and leaf,

there we were

under the stars.

Who knew then that we would bond

over common language

and common loneliness. 

You came when you would, and not that often,

like others of your kind

I had known before.

I thought, if I can crack the seed your heart will open

starved as you were

starved as I was. 

Crow so black against indigo sky, I lacked

Rosetta Stone

or Tarot deck.

So, I wrote you poems upon an astrolabe

looking for heaven

Deus ex machina.

Crow with your song in ghost-ship semaphore,

you sang to me

beautifully

Yet crows are crows, and stars are reclusive.

Astrolabe and downdraft

broke both our hearts.

I have learned wariness of crows, and they the same

both poorer but safer

for such sad education.

Still, I have my astrolabe, an antique affectation

like the love I once had

for an obscure bird.

_________

Jennifer over at Poet Laundry--no doubt prodded to do so by a thousand devils--challenged me to write a poem about or including an astrolabe. This is that poem. I encourage you to go visit her there; she is a genuine peach of a poet. 

Music: Alana Davis Can't Find My Way Home

Santa Anita

 

When I think of you 

                                     Daddy,

still to this day I see you in

                                               overcoat and fedora,

newspaper under your arm,

                                                  breath visible in the cold,

coming down the sidewalk from the

                                                                 train station--

I would run to meet you, overjoyed.

Years later,

                    post-divorce, me a

21-year-old 

                     home from overseas.

I stayed with you

                              and your new wife

that stranger, and you Daddy, 

                                                    you a stranger too

in the unfamiliar sprawl of L.A.

You took me with you to

                                           Santa Anita racetrack

with the beautiful thoroughbreds

                                                            ambling

in their easy gait, the jockeys

                                                    leaning forward

as if already running the next race.

                                                              I was looking

at the odds board and then you were gone.

I waited as the horses with their

                                                         strange wonderful names

finished race after race,

                                           feeling lost, and sad, then angry.

I still regret how I spoke to you

                                                       when you finally appeared

but you took it all with a funny smile. 

                                                                  Years later I realized

that you had gone to call the new wife.

                                                                      You just

couldn't be away from her, for me. 

Daddy, I don't know who you turned into.

My adored father

                               became someone who lived

with plastic over the furniture

                                                     and the Lakers on tv.

Oh for a ballgame with you

                                                 at Tiger Stadium

or another trip to the DIA

                                             to see Diego Rivera's mural.

I would run to you, overjoyed,

                                                     but you are gone,

just a sad California memory.

__________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Left In The Lurch" hosted by my friend Dora. 

Music: The Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang