The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems Read online

  near Parker Creek,

  a doe bounding away through

  shoulder-high fog

  fairly floating,

  soundless

  as if she were running in a cloud.

  That his death was disfigurement:

  at impact when light passed

  the cells yawned then froze in postures

  unlike their former selves, teeth

  stuck by the glue of their blood

  to windshields, visors. And in the night,

  a quiet snowy landscape, three bodies

  slump, horribly rended.

  Acacia Accidie Accipiter

  flower boredom flight

  gummy wet pale stemmed

  barely above root level

  and darkened by ferns;

  but hawk

  high now spots the car he shot

  and left there,

  swings low

  in narrowing circles,

  feeds.

  My mouth stuffed up with snow,

  nothing in me moves,

  earth nudges all things this month.

  I’ve outgrown this shell

  I found in a sea of ice –

  its drunken convolutions –

  something should call me to another life.

  Too cold for late May, snow flurries,

  warblers tight in their trees, the air

  with winter’s clearness, dull

  pearlish clear under clouds, clean

  clear bite of wind, silver maple flexing

  in the wind, wind rippling petals,

  ripped from flowering crab,

  pale pink against green firs, the body

  chilled, blood unstirred, thick with frost:

  body be snake,

  self equal to ground heat,

  be wind cold, earth heated,

  bend with tree, whip with grass,

  move free clean and bright clear.

  Night draws on him until he’s soft

  and blackened, he waits for bones

  sharp-edged as broken stone, rubble

  in a deserted quarry, to defoliate,

  come clean and bare

  come clean and dry,

  for salt,

  he waits for salt.

  In the dark I think of the fire,

  how hot the shed was when it burned,

  the layers of tar paper and dry pine,

  the fruit-like billows and blue embers,

  the exhausted smell as of a creature

  beginning to stink when it has no more to eat.

  The doe shot in the back

  and just below the shoulder

  has her heart and lungs blown out.

  In the last crazed seconds she leaves

  a circle of blood on the snow.

  An hour later we eat

  her still-warm liver for lunch,

  fried in butter with onions.

  In the evening we roast

  her loins, and drink two gallons of wine,

  reeling drunken and yelling on the snow.

  Jon Jackson will eat venison for a month,

  he has no job, food or money,

  and his pump and well are frozen.

  June, sun high, nearly straight above,

  all green things in short weak shadow;

  clipping acres of pine for someone’s

  Christmas, forearms sore with trimming,

  itching with heat –

  drawing boughs away from a trunk

  a branch confused with the thick

  ugliness of a hognose snake.

  Dogged days, dull, unflowering,

  the mind petaled in cold wet dark;

  outside the orange world is gray,

  all things gray turned in upon

  themselves in the globed eye of the seer –

  gray seen.

  But the orange world is orange to itself,

  the war continues redly,

  the moon is up in Asia,

  the dark is only eight thousand miles deep.

  At the edge of the swamp a thorn apple tree

  beneath which partridge feed on red berries,

  and an elm tipped over in a storm

  opening a circle of earth formerly closed,

  huge elm roots in a watery place, bare,

  wet, as if there were some lid to let

  secrets out or a place where the ground

  herself begins, then grows outward

  to surround the earth; the hole, a black

  pool of quiet water, the white roots

  of undergrowth. It appears bottomless,

  an oracle I should worship at; I want

  some part of me to be lost in it and return

  again from its darkness, changing the creature,

  or return to draw me back to a home.

  LOCATIONS

  I want this hardened arm to stop

  dragging a cherished image.

  – RIMBAUD

  In the end you are tired of those places,

  you’re thirty, your only perfect three,

  you’ll never own another thing.

  At night you caress them as if the tongue

  turned inward could soothe, head lolling

  in its nest of dark, the heart fibrotic,

  inedible. Say that on some polar night

  an Eskimo thinks of his igloo roof, the blocks

  of ice sculptured to keep out air, as the roof

  of his skull; all that he is, has seen,

  is pictured there – thigh with the texture

  of the moon, whale’s tooth burnished from use

  as nothing, fixtures of place, some delicate

  as a young child’s ear, close as snails to earth,

  beneath the earth as earthworms, farther beneath

  as molten rock, into the hollow, vaulted place,

  pure heat and pure whiteness,

  where earth’s center dwells.

  You were in Harar but only for a moment,

  rifles jostling blue barrels against blue barrels

  in the oxcart, a round crater, hot, brown,

  a bowl of hell covered with dust.

  The angels you sensed in your youth

  smelled strongly as a rattlesnake

  smells of rotten cucumber, the bear

  rising in the glade of ferns of hot fur

  and sweat, dry ashes pissed upon.

  You squandered your time as a mirror,

  you kept airplanes from crashing at your doorstep,

  they lifted themselves heavily to avoid your sign,

  fizzling like matches in the Atlantic.

  You look at Betelgeuse for the splendor

  of her name but she inflames another universe.

  Our smallest of suns barely touches earth

  in the Gobi, Sahara, Mojave, Mato Grosso.

  Dumb salvages: there is a box made of wood,

  cavernous, all good things are kept there,

  and if the branches of ice that claw against the window

  become hands, that is their business.

  Yuma is an unbearable place.

  The food has fire in it as

  does the brazero’s daughter

  who serves the food in an orange dress

  the color of a mussel’s lip.

  Outside it is hot as the crevasse

  of her buttocks – perfect body temperature.

  You have no idea where your body stops

  and the heat begins.

  On Lake Superior the undertow swallows

  a child and no one notices until evening.

  They often drown in the green water

  of abandoned gravel pits,

  or fall into earth where the crust is thin.

  I have tried to stop the war.

  You wanted to be a sculptor

  creating a new shape that would exalt itself

  as the shape of a ball or hand

  or breast or dog or hoof,

  paw print
in snow, each cluster of grapes

  vaguely different, bat’s wing shaped

  as half a leaf, a lake working

  against its rim of ground.

  You wear yellow this year for Christmas,

  the color of Christ’s wounds after three days,

  the color of Nelse’s jacket you wear when writing,

  Nelse full of Guckenheimer, sloth, herring, tubercles.

  There were sweet places to sleep: beds warmed

  by women who get up to work or in the brush

  beneath Coit Tower, on picnic tables in Fallon, Nevada,

  and Hastings, Nebraska, surrounded by giant curs,

  then dew that falls like fine ice upon your face

  in a bean field near Stockton, near a waterfall

  in the Huron Mountains, memorable sleeps

  in the bus stations of San Jose and Toledo, Ohio.

  At a roller rink on Chippewa Lake

  the skaters move to calliope music.

  You watch a motorboat putt by the dock,

  they are trolling for bass at night

  and for a moment the boat and the two men

  are caught in the blue light of the rink,

  then pass on slowly upon the black water.

  Liquor has reduced you to thumbnails,

  keratin, the scales of fish

  your ancient relatives,

  stranded in a rock pool.

  O claritas, sweet suppleness

  of breath,

  love within a cloud that

  blinds us

  hear, speak, the world without.

  Grove St., Gough St., Heber, Utah,

  one in despair, two in disgust,

  the third beneath the shadow

  of a mountain wall, beyond

  the roar of a diesel truck,

  faintly the screech of lion.

  Self-immolation,

  the heaviest of dreams –

  you become a charcoal rick

  for Christ, for man himself.

  They laugh with you as you disappear

  lying as a black log upon the cement,

  the fire doused by your own blood.

  The thunderstorm moved across the lake

  in a sheet of rain, the lightning

  struck a strawpile, which burned in the night

  with hot roars of energy

  as in ’48 when a jet plane crashed near town,

  the pilot parachuting as a leaf through the red sky,

  landing miles away, missing the fire.

  There was one sun,

  one cloud,

  two horses running,

  a leopard in chase;

  only the one sun and a single cloud

  a third across her face.

  Above, the twelve moons of Jupiter

  hissing in cold and darkness.

  You worshiped the hindquarters

  of beautiful women,

  and the beautiful hindquarters of women

  who were not beautiful;

  the test was the hindquarters

  as your father judged cattle.

  He is standing behind a plow

  in a yellow photograph,

  a gangster hat to the back of his head,

  in an undershirt with narrow straps,

  reins over a shoulder waiting for the photo,

  the horses with a foreleg raised,

  waiting for the pull with impatience.

  The cannon on the courthouse lawn was plugged,

  useless against the japs.

  In the dark barn

  a stillborn calf on the straw,

  rope to hooves, its mother bawling

  pulled nearly to death.

  You’ve never been across the ocean,

  you swept the auditorium with a broom

  after the travel lectures and dreamed of going

  but the maps have become old, the brain

  set on the Mackenzie River, even Greenland

  where dentists stalk polar bears from Cessnas.

  The wrecked train smelled of camphor,

  a bird floating softly above the steam,

  the door of the refrigerator car cracked open

  and food begins to perish in the summer night.

  You’ve become sure that every year

  the sky descends a little,

  but there is joy in this pressure,

  joy bumping against the lid

  like a demented fly, a bird breaking

  its neck against a picture window

  while outside new gods roll over

  in the snow in billowy sleep.

  The oil workers sit on the curb

  in front of the Blue Moon Bar & Cafe,

  their necks red from the sun,

  pale white beneath the collars

  or above the sleeves; in the distance

  you hear the clumping of the wells.

  And at a friend’s house

  there are aunts and uncles, supper plates

  of red beans and pork, a guitar is taken

  from the wall – in the music

  the urge of homesickness, a peach not to be held

  or a woman so lovely but not to be touched,

  some former shabby home far south of here,

  in a warmer place.

  Cold cement, a little snow upon it.

  Where are the small gods who bless cells?

  There are only men. Once you were in a room

  with a girl of honey-colored hair,

  the yellow sun streamed down air of yellow straw.

  You owe it to yourself to despise this place,

  the walls sift black powder;

  you owe yourself a particular cave.

  You wait for her, a stone in loamy stillness,

  who will arrive with less pitiful secrets

  from sidereal reaches, from other planets of the mind,

  who beneath the chamber music of gown and incense

  will reflect the damp sweetness of a cave.

  At that farm there were so many hogs,

  in the center of the pen in the chilled air

  he straddles the pig and slits its throat,

  blood gushes forth too dark to be blood,

  gutted, singed, and scraped into pinkness –

  there are too many bowels, the organs

  too large, pale sponges that are lungs,

  the pink is too pink to understand.

  This is earth I’ve fallen against,

  there was no life before this;

  still icon

  as if seen through mist,

  cold liquid sun, blue falling

  from the air,

  foam of ship’s prow

  cutting water, a green shore beyond

  the rocks;

  beyond, a green continent.

  OUTLYER & GHAZALS

  for Pat Paton

  1971

  OUTLYER

  IN INTERIMS: OUTLYER

  Let us open together the last bud of the future.

  – APOLLINAIRE

  He Halts. He Haw. Plummets.

  The snake in the river is belly-up

  diamond head caught in crotch of branch,

  length wavering yellow with force of water.

  Who strangles as this taste of present?

  Numen of walking and sleep, knees of snow

  as the shark’s backbone is gristle.

  And if my sister hadn’t died in an auto wreck

  and had been taken by the injuns

  I would have had something to do:

  go into the mountains and get her back.

  Miranda, I have proof that when people die

  they become birds. And I’ve lost

  my chance to go to sea or become a cowboy.

  Age narrows me to this window and its

  three-week snow. This is Russia and I a clerk.

  Miranda throws herself from the window,

  the icon clutched to her breasts,

  into the
snow, over and over.

  A world of ruminants, cloven-hoofed,

  sum it: is it less worthless for being “in front”?

  There are the others, ignorant of us

  to a man: says Johnson of Lowell who

  wouldn’t come to tea who’s he sunbitch

  and he know armaments and cattle like

  a Renaissance prince knew love & daggers

  and faintly knew of Dante, or Cecco.

  It is a world that belongs to Kipling.

  What will I die with in my hand?

  A paintbrush (for houses), an M15

  a hammer or ax, a book or gavel

  a candlestick

  tiptoeing upstairs.

  What will I hold or will I

  be caught with this usual thing

  that I want to be my heart but

  it is my brain and I turn it

  over and over and over.

  Only miracles should apply,

  we have stones enough –

  they steal all the heat and trip

  everyone even the wary.

  Throw stones away.

  And

  a tricky way of saying something unnecessary

  will not do.

  The girl standing outside the bus station

  in Muskegon, Michigan, hasn’t noticed me.

  I doubt she reads poetry or if she did

  would like it at all or if she liked it

  the affection would be casual and temporary.

  She would anyway rather ride a horse

  than read a poet, read a comic rather than

  ride a poet. Sweetie, fifteen minutes

  in that black alley bent over the garbage can

  with me in the saddle would make

  our affections equal. Let’s be fair.

  I love my dear daughter

  her skin is so warm

  and if I don’t hurt her

  she’ll come to great harm.

  I love my dog Missy

  her skin is so warm,