Poemunity — your poem community

Old Mother turns blue and from us, “Don’t let my head drop to the earth. I’m blind and deaf.” Death from the heart, a thimble in her purse. “It’s a long day since last night. Give me space. I need floors. Wash the floors, Lorine!— wash clothes! Weed!”

Snake walks with that old squiggly stick, walks slow down by the waterfall, from stone to stone down by the waterfall, shuffling on his bare feet while dancing on the edge of it. Now shimmer that, now shimmer this, while now just one, an Old One steps the beat of it. How may he walk with that old squirmy stick? Soft, soft he goes, and gathers sun. Soft, soft he goes, he has no bones. Soft, soft he goes, and gathers wind. About his neck, a bone flute hums the flux of it. Something congeals and flows. Snake says, just spirit matters.

I Back in time car in yard shutters at windows paint on gray boards old man, old woman their children gone then man and woman younger with young children west wing not yet built on house one wagon, horse arrive untended land back too far young man, woman with eyes like bright baubles holding space one shutter closes on another. II Grizzled, unpossessed on the ledge of plains factional roof meager walls written upon like points of long prairie grass the house stares across the highway as though remembering a fir tree carried on horseback through blinding snow. III Survival of facade when content does not endure one part has nothing to do with the others all is hollow ramshackled but house still stands on prairie customs still leap on points of delicate prairie grass where the bright bauble of the eye blinked once too often.

A host of poppies, a flight of swallows; A flurry of rain, and a wind that follows Shepherds the leaves in the sheltered hollows For the forest is shaken and thinned. Over my head are the firs for rafter; The crows blow south, and my heart goes after; I kiss my hands to the world with laughter— Is it Aidenn or mystical Ind? Oh, the whirl of the fields in the windy weather! How the barley breaks and blows together! Oh, glad is the free bird afloat on the heather— Oh, the whole world is glad of the wind!

Blow back the breath of the bird, Scatter the song through the air, There was music you never heard, And cannot hear anywhere. It was not the sob of the vain In the old, old dark so sweet, (I shall never hear it again,) Nor the coming of fairy feet. It was music and music alone, Not a sigh from a lover’s mouth; Now it comes in a phantom moan From the dead and buried South. It was savage and fierce and glad, It played with the heart at will; Oh, what a wizard touch it had— Oh, if I could hear it still! Were they slaves? They were not then; The music had made them free. They were happy women and men— What more do we care to be? There is blood and blackness and dust, There are terrible things to see, There are stories of swords that rust, Between that music and me. Dark ghosts with your ghostly tunes Come back till I laugh through tears; Dance under the sunken moons, Dance over the grassy years! Hush, hush—I know it, I say; Your armies were bright and brave, But the music they took away Was worth—whatever they gave.

Test for the Old Smile, they’re going to roast it— it’ll have to keep its ends up all night, for the secretary says she finds it creepy, and the golfing partner says you got that right, and the rival says it’s fake, and the ambitious junior makes his point with a few slides, and the protege the Smile was always sweet to walks up and says it turns his insides. They harp on it, the bosses and the buddies, and things get even better by these lights, which is to say it’s shredded like a secret, which is to say it’s one of the great nights; and folks are saying so while they’re still roasting: they cry out to the Smile and it smiles back, like something huge is burdening a hammock, or is until you hear a frightful crack.— And then you better run like you saw nothing. And then you better run like you weren’t there. There is a line, it’s long and isn’t smiling. You won’t believe me when I tell you where.

We were made to understand it would be Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge, Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst of us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down. A long age Passed. When at last we knew how little Would survive us—how little we had mended Or built that was not now lost—something Large and old awoke. And then our singing Brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down From trees. We took new stock of one another. We wept to be reminded of such color.

A few days after my mother died the furnace went out, and my father, who had been sitting in his chair across from hers since the funeral, his unshaven chin on his chest, heaved himself up and went down the cold gray cellar stairs to see if he could relight the pilot himself or would have to call for help. I know what it must have been like because I remember him other times on his back down there, cursing match after match, god damning each for burning his fingers, as he reached through the tiny metal door as many times as it took. This time it lit, caught, and roared back to life. When my father sat up he faced the washer, the dryer, the empty laundry basket, the ironing board, and my mother’s radio above the sink, her absence so vivid that climbing the stairs he thought he heard her behind him, and he turned around.

In the story of my life there is a field filled with chicory, daisies, and mayflowers. It’s the field behind my childhood house. In summer, I used to spend hours lying in it looking at clouds before my mother brought us to the town pool where I spent some more hours swimming. In the other seasons I went to school. In the school there was a library. In the story of my life there is a book. The book was bound in rough green cloth. Its glossy pages smelled oddly like puke. The book told the story of two children, Johnnie and Jill, I think. They got lost in a deep forest, drawn in thick dark ink. They were brother-and-sister orphans. They met fantastical creatures. One was the goddess of spring, or was that in Botticelli’s picture that I saw in the same library in a book of art history for kids, old European art of course. The other kinds they did not want us to know about. The picture was magic and so was Johnnie and Jill though not a children’s classic. I don’t really remember the title. In the book the goddess of spring rescues the children in trouble and then — I can’t remember a thing. I’m sure there was a villain in the book, probably a woman, who practiced dark arts on a dark hill, so evil she wasn’t human. In the story of my life there is a hill that tamely rises above the field. We sledded there in winter. In spring our bikes wheeled down the hill dangerously. I walked on the hill this summer tamely, carefully, slowly, alongside my mother. It isn’t hard to say what had brought us there. We were old and middle-aged in the knife-like summer air. Slowly and tamely we walked and I remembered the book. It was called —Julie and John? I wanted another look. So what was the title? And was it an allegory? A Catholic one? (It was a Catholic school.) That would ruin the story. A story is only good if it’s made up but convinces you it’s true. Even better if one of the characters is someone who could be you. How else do you know who you are? I once asked an old strange friend: You only know you’re the person who’s with the people you love, in the end.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore, Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide That gazed back at me so gay and glorified, It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness. But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways, How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane, Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole. Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle As it cut acrost some orchard to'rds the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot. And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be— But never again will theyr shade shelter me! And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.