| Contents Beyond
Love in the Middle Ages
My Sarasota
The Artichokes are Blooming
Window to Word Land
Johnny's Piles
Grandpa Jones
Greeting the Beech
A Crooked Little House
In A Rent Week
The Father Like Thunder
Codifying
George's Rhetoric
Teresa
A Transient Issue
Fescues
BEYOND
He came out the other end
and, as it happened, it was fall.
Leaf piles for the garden and
good, black compost for the beds.
She understood him and he understood
that she had created it all.
At first he had hoped for something
beyond, but it ended up very human.
Human creations, ah, human creations,
all of them, except for leaves and trees,
except for cool, crisp air, except
for everything except the house and
the book and the road and the family.
She had created those in secret.
LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
She says she wants to.
I can't say I saw it coming,
but I will put forward a thesis.
She is a little distant,
wanting to like playing tennis
in a still forest with crickets.
She wants to, yes, she wants to.
I am not denying it, just wait a while.
It is leaf raking time.
Two years ago today she took her stand.
She was a little hostile,
kept looking my way and squinting.
The autumn was beautiful that year,
clear blue and cold with red maples,
red, red, red, and oaks yellow.
I wanted to then. I planned it all out.
She moved a little then, like the old
poet said, motion within motion.
But I am two years older now, and
I have just started a new correspondence
course, love in the Middle Ages.
MY SARASOTA
Simply put, this is a put on,
this is a show tune, this is a rum dance.
The stems will thicken
to branches and then to trunks.
This is a projection
and I am just slivers and palm prints.
It is a repetition, we are
playing the same game that others played.
The children are growing up,
our bodies are rebelling, we are old.
The sky has longer shadows, precise
contrasts, depth, it is fall.
And there are so many distractions
to choose from, such wealth.
The storm is passing and we want
to hold something that defines storms.
Talking about creating texts
has become the most interesting text.
It took me twenty years to really
decide on what others consider obvious.
This is discursive, yes, not like
a wrinkled hand resting on an old knee.
Wrinkled hands typing at a keyboard
to make a living by stages.
I drove by a field of pumpkins.
The vines were dead.
I watched children playing soccer
in a valley as hawks flew over.
I walked around a tree that
had fallen across a path in the woods.
THE ARTICHOKES ARE BLOOMING
The artichokes are blooming
and the yard is full of small machines.
The artichokes are blooming
and the streets drip with slow honey.
It is a grand time for pickers,
a grand time for the rising moon.
She sits down in her sheets and
lets the sweat drip, lets air
prickle out yellow follicles
until she is a rising motion
sweeping through the hallways
and the green borders, past the fences.
The artichokes are blooming
and the counters have counted noon.
WINDOW TO WORD LAND
My cloths don't fit, a fit, not fit.
My pants are short, short with her.
Day time night time some time.
March, march, no, slouch, slouch,
home in the dark, squint from the
headlights, bent, lent to her.
Speed up, speed, time to market,
smarter, not harder, swelling, swell,
my pants are short, short with her.
Sit in the box, window to word land,
sit, snit, type to type it,
my cloths don't fit, a fit, not fit.
JOHNNY'S PILES
The piles were
added to my order
and I can see that
there will never be
a better day for
barn storms or the
real duty of all
women, to love me.
The piles pile up
and never a delivery
before its time
so I run out to
the back shed and
instruct the straw
on the ultimate
imperative, to love me.
The picturesque piles
on pallets are what
they are, why fight it,
especially when the
day is like lemons
and there are so many
ways to do what really
matters, to love me.
GRANDPA JONES
Stopped at the corner he watched
a moving whisper of tall grass
as if it were an icon, a mandala,
quietly, with grave attention.
The birds in the graveyard seemed
to be blue birds, then they were brown,
but they were blue birds flying.
He wanted them to land on his grave.
Comfortable cloths, books, movies,
a garden patch, a walk in cool weather,
driving through farm land, book scouting,
his family in a simple house talking.
GREETING THE BEECH
We went up to the woods behind
the house to say hello.
The dutchman's britches were gone,
but the wild geraniums were there,
and the virginia blue bells
down in a dip we could see
from the trail.
We circled down the hill
to the gray old man,
sixty feet tall, his skin
marked with old messages,
of historical interest, I said.
We got down to it and
patted its smooth elephant hide.
"Hello, tree!", I said, and
"Hello, tree!" from you
three feet lower.
We couldn't reach the leaves,
but the seedlings were there
and their leaves krinkled like
paper as they should, "See?"
Then we continued around
the hill past the tree
with the hollow, the
entrance to the elf city,
I said, but I don't think
you believed me, even then.
A CROOKED LITTLE HOUSE
It sits in an old orchard,
but the fruit trees are long gone.
Now it is ash, white pine,
and maples, huge, slowly hollowing.
Old farm house, field stone foundation,
dug out basement, sloping floors.
I sit on the stone bench and look
up to Sugar Loaf, white, blue trim.
Be careful when you walk, the house
will shake down, old village street.
It's a poor house, but I am not poor,
well relatively poor, maybe poor, poor.
It's sometimes musty, but we filter the air,
sometimes it helps, old mildew, damp.
There is no shame in it. It may be a
shack but it's paid for. We're simple.
We claim postmodern diversity,
now it is retro, back off, house facist.
I love my old house, can't give it up,
crooked old house among the minimansions.
It works, look, electricity, water, heat,
computers, video, stove, plumbing.
It is an enclosed space where we do things,
rest, read, live our life, keep our stuff.
It has a small garden with too much shade,
bare patches in the grass, silence.
I am not my house, I am not measured by
house, here, look at my zip code.
Cry for the old houses for they have
fallen, but we can patch them up.
IN A RENT WEEK
He lifted his head to blue,
parting reeds like curtains,
puzzled at tumbling clouds,
squinting like money due,
like ghosts through walls,
in a rent week, past plodding,
he said, "Anger is possible."
Night came hiding its danger,
mists praying over roads,
swiftly, no thought for day,
wisping past buildings at speed,
puzzled at falling stars,
past bending, in a rent week,
"At last, at last, anger."
THE FATHER LIKE THUNDER
What's this all about, little boy?
The father came serious, dark thunder.
Just living, living within the limits,
language, experience, desire, that's all.
But the father came again, thunder,
the heat of searing, little boy.
The boy dove into the flowers, down low,
stroking petals, silent beneath leaves.
The father passed over like a shadow.
Boy, boy, I justed wanted to know, boy.
CODIFYING
What are you now, twelve years old?
It seems a long time since you first came home.
Your mother started you on goat milk. I should know.
I had to go out in the cold to get it,
sleeping at the wheel as I came back from the goat farm.
You were not an easy baby, I tell you, but lucky
for us we remember the good things, or the mysteries.
Like your first laughs, so deep I thought some
changeling elf was having a little joke on me.
And when you began to speak, spooky echos,
like winds had formed a face to speak.
I still find it hard to believe, you so small
taking on the ancient words,
but it is the most natural thing in the world.
Remember, you started bouncing on my poor
old man's belly? I would lift you up with my feet
and then, vwump!, let you fall back down again.
Then I had to get my exercises, ten daughter push ups.
And you wanted to fly. I would fly you around the
house, through the rooms, up the stairs and then
collapse on the bed. "Again, Daddy, again."
"Again, again." Your Mom would read book
after book to you, then "Again, again."
You don't know that you kept us going some times.
It was the responsibility. And we always had a
common interest, you.
We always went to Victoria's for your grilled cheese
sandwich. I don't know when that started.
Or up to Gambier to the bookstore. You would ride in
your car seat, the whole 45 minutes without complaining,
watching for cows, horses, pigs, or black wagons with
little girls in bonnets. You would play in the fort
in the bookstore right above the philosophy books.
Then we would drive home as the sun was setting.
GEORGE'S RHETORIC
I caught George once making some
sweeping rhetorical statements
to his potato vines, something
about the importance of resisting
the blight, fighting back against
decay and such encouragement as
he felt it necessary to provide.
But in general, he was not much
for grand statements. Something
about the local elections maybe,
or how his kids were doing in
school. Not many knew he was a
philosopher, or culture critic,
or whatever you call it these days.
Once I tried to pin him down on it.
Here he was publishing such tomes
as "Oppositional Linguistic Modes of
Animated Rodents and Red Planet Neonoids"
when what he really cared about was
aphids or some good chile or chasing
his wife around the trailer at sunset.
He tried to explain it in his way.
Something about the dense packing of
everydayness or the deep metastructure of
garage bands or the silence beneath the
noise of endless silence, I don't know.
Finally, he just sat on a log and said,
"Look, I got to make a living some way."
TERESA
You know that big old boulder on
top of Sugar Loaf? That's where
I found her, sitting on top. I
don't know how she got up there.
When I got up next to it, I
paused, looked around at the bare trees.
She had a look like miles down the
road, no coat, hands in her sleeves.
She said, "I have been looking for
some new enthusiasm, some
big run to last a few more years,
like taichi, or taking old men home."
A TRANSIENT ISSUE
Publication, selection, and fee collection
can now be separated.
Anyone can publish in the sense of making
a text available to the public.
Fee collection can be handled through
subscriptions or download fees.
The real issue is selection. There are
too many texts to choose from.
In addition to the mechanics, publishers
provide a brand.
Readers use the brands to help them choose,
writers get legitimacy and fee collection.
Critics have a large role to play,
but from a preselected pool.
Now the pool is anyone, anywhere. Do
the critics just ignore it?
Eventually, they won't be able to. The
public can go direct.
But the public will be more and more
bewildered and will look for brands.
Or for some pointers from those helpful
experts and professors.
Will the canon include web pages? The
canon is just a selection.
And print is just a technology of
distribution (and control).
You have to pay to get the thing the
text is printed in.
Now the text is let loose to wander,
but still writers must be paid.
If you think people will pay for your text,
charge them to access it, that's OK.
That's not much of an issue for poetry,
of course, except to cover costs.
But what costs are we talking about now?
Network access, computers, and time.
And we can work around publish or perish.
Make it, get added to a list or perish.
FESCUES
Joseph had a need for indirection,
his rivets torn like steal meanders,
his longing looks down sag floor halls
like pictures of russets floating in
green pools, his machines running up
to feathered futons like spike muled
slings ripping bags of wilted fescues.
Joseph needed lists, like: two hazel
nut trees bearing no nuts, a rusty
paint can with two brushes caked
into the dried yellow paint, three
books on agriculture in semiarid
regions, a magnifying glass, two
small pocket knives, a wheat penny.
Joseph did his needful work in corners
while festooned pontiffs spiraled by
to the sound of tingling and banging
copperware, where covert cominglers
worked out their dry and tender bargains
in broom closets of heated alabaster
spirting blue in corporate fountains.
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