River Under a Stone Bridge

 

The river runs under a stone bridge

down where no one ever goes

a place for old men where the trees bend

and ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

Its source is hidden as is its end

this river that barely flows

where the trees bend, a place for old men

who ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

Where the stone bridge breaks, it cannot mend

what deep January froze

a place for old men where the trees bend

and ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

______________

pourquoi chercher autre chose?  =  why look for anything else?

A ZaniLa Rhyme for What's Going On? "In Your Deepest January"  The instructions require that phrase or "In my deepest January" but there were two problems which I hope that our wonderful host Sherry will let me slide by with. One was, that phrase just doesn't sound like me, to me. The other is that a ZaniLa Rhyme has a syllable requirement of 9-7-9-9 and a rhyme scheme and inverted third line that would have made it almost impossible. The prompt phrase is 8 syllables all by itself, so I almost had to shorten it, and so I did. If Sherry sends the Prompt Police to collect me, I will understand.

Music: Simon & Garfunkel Old Friends

Oracle

 I was raised on the page of a magazine,

a pencil rammed down my spine that I might

keep better time.

My mother said, here, marry this potato,

this barbell,

this party hat,

this disease.

In the night they came to me

on the night trapeze.

I collected hallucinations--Laika in a capsule made of experts.

That winter, my husbands built priests in the garage,

confessed to plates of spaghetti

and drove down mine shafts to golf club coffins.

Now, I begin with new bones,

eyes placed on coins like hor d'ouevres 

for the Oracle who breathes deep

and tells my future

even knowing that no one will believe her.

The Nazarene

I wonder if we have some say
--I mean, with that other voice, the one we forget--
over how many bulls there'll be by the box car,
or how many bricks in the barrow?

Some do well in salt air,
bones rusting slow like the axles on the double wide.
Others show up at the old job with bent smiles
and die before the year is out.

So, I wonder, when I'm out collecting shells
in my sandals and straw hat,
what if that was the Nazarene in the camp chair there
with the cup untouched beside him on the sand?
_______

for Sunday Muse #92. 

"What Now My Love?" had the original French title "Et Maintenant?" or "And Now?"

Portrait of A.

She was an actress.
She ran for office.
She married the owner of the local baseball team.

In the winter she walks her yellow dog,
wearing a watch cap and pea coat.
There are curls at the edge of the cap.
She wears glasses.

In the spring she clears the gardens,
plants seeds,
hums.

I would like to buy her a wide-brimmed hat for summer.
A journal for her notices.
A gazebo made entirely out of election signs.
A bobble-head of her favorite player.

Instead, I deliver her mail,
slipping letters carefully into the slot
with a sigh.
______

From The Curve Of A Blue Womb

From the curve of a blue womb,
the one at the far reaches,
but as close as the next breath or the first,
the last,
spun from the flung white shine of a million stars,
into this space as narrow as a letter slot,
delivered by a Divine hand into a bone bowl,
blinking,
sitting here, writing this poem.

From the curve of a blue womb,
by way of the jaws, the wound, the perpetual shriek
of the keeper, the watchman, the madwoman,
set into a ready cage,
stripped of language and sex,
set out to dry and called art
by blind idiots with broken hands holding dawn in a coffee cup.

Something has been making its way up the stalk of my spine,
by increments, by prayer, by instinct, by race memory,
an insect, an emotion, a soul-flag strung on a line,
lifted by animus, by glory, by reflex, by holiness,
a mouth on a face on a body on its way
from solar plexus and on out through lips as an anthem or a gasp.

I'm telling you these things in your arms, in confidence,
in darkness, in fear, in recklessness, in sound mind,
in breakdown, in nakedness, in touch, in aphasia,
everything that curls and weaves and strikes within me,
this storm passing over the island of your body-sanctuary,
and losing strength even as strength is gained,
leaving bootprints in blood all the way from the start of the circle
to its end, a path out of myself,
through an impossible gauntlet of everyday 
spiraling up from the half-lit heavy pool of me,
aiming for an element only dreamt of in fevers and in ecstasy,
promised by absent angels speaking from the aviary of flesh and spirit combined.

From the curve of a blue womb,
I come spouting rot, nonsense, paperback scripture,
recipes for holy observance, bank holidays, disaster, doubletalk,
finding only in your kiss a distillery for spirits and the restless dead,
the quick, the clever, the blessed, the crazy, the torn apart, the unsatisfied,
the wise, the wept, and simple coneflowers
tossing like anti-aircraft gunners in the breeze
at the foot of your steps,
inviting me to at last fall into them, 
into you,
into some kind of peace I barely remember,
and which only comes back, for a gorgeous moment
when I am loving you.
_______ 
 

Busy World

In a busy world,
it's easy to lose one's bearings.
Old Bushka enchanted the traffic signals,
and Copper Pipe Charlie ended up way the hell out to mile marker 47
going on about Jesus
while Fire Company 3 cut him out of the cab.

Sometimes people just won't shut their pie holes,
and a person can get thirsty for some solitude.
Old Bushka says
the old ways were the best ways,
but she never liked cabbage,
which marked her out among her own as something of an odd duck.

Copper Pipe Charlie never could explain
how he came to be axle-deep in mud out by Caroline Bird's mailbox,
but she came out and kindly held his hand in hers
as if she were Jesus' own receptionist,
while the clouds parted overhead and a silver jetliner circled above them.

CNN can chase their tails all they like--
Old Bushka is the only one who knows where everybody went,
and she's not talking
except to her big split-eared tom.
High on the roof of a Gypsy wagon, he once saw the moon
from closer up than you.

He saw what he saw.
Why do you think you have to ask so many questions,
when the night is warm
and there are more like Caroline Bird
just waiting to be found if you let go and wash up on her shore?
______