Something anyway

Trying to catch up, trying to write. Any thoughts at all are appreciated. Many thanks and hello



And then the discovery that to keep going is the thing itself.

The sun spreads out over
morning buildings.
Yesterday was the kind of day
where the moon showed up
in the afternoon
and made friends with the clouds,
so that a translucent strip of gauze
ran across its cheese-pie face.

All day we were identifying
the major world continents in loosely
formed bodies of air that shifted
between the greater ruling powers of earth,
and caused a stir in the park
when Russia covered up the sun
for a whole 5 minutes.

Oh these days, when
the manifestations of summer
saturate everything so that the moon
was just a beautiful pale rock
floating like a fingernail in the sky.

Maurice Manning reads for the Cortland Review

Have you heard of Maurice Manning? If not, I hope to convert you with fifteen minutes of pure pleasure dipped in an accent that sounds like a dream.

The wristwatch of Casey Jones

or,

how the earth learned to tell time


Like the first blood to flow
through the delta’d veins
of a giant slumbering dream:
the first trains

carried prayers—
let me never be found
to be falling down—cannonball
between far-flung towns;

afternoon could be so wide
it gave no sign
of breaking;
before we had watches

nights be so unbroken
we knew no more
than earth knew
what course our globe was taking.

The engineer
of the iron horse
rode high behind
the sweeping pilot,

into the darkness
his six-pipe whistle like Orpheus
sounded; we set our watches
by it.

In loco moveri:
Aristotle’s phrase, describing movement
by change of position
in space;

in time
we call it progress,
unreeling a schedule clear
to the horizon-crease,

and up the skies:
Casey Jones
always got her there on the
advertised,

outbellowed cows
to clear the track. His whistle,
familiar Tennessee to Mississippi,
began softly,

rose, then doubled back
to a whisper. His own watch
stopped at the time of
impact

Skull crushed,
the coroner said,
his right arm
sundered.

Suddenly,
at 3:52 AM,
the 30th of April,
1900.

Reports begin to sound
both too much
and not enough like strings of
numbers.

Ole 382 approached
the town of Vaughan;
26, 72, and 83
waited on the siding

but a scorpion tail
of four cars curled
onto the main line;
a flagman

at 3,000 feet
went by unseen or unheeded,
flares at 800, 500,
at eighty

miles per hour,
the airbrake and whistle as Casey
glimpsed the No 83’s tail
just three hundred feet shy.

The fireman,
who at his engineer’s urging
jumped to safety
remembers Casey

quite happy
at the progress The New Orleans Special
Fast Mail Train was making:
making up time

shoveling on coal
pouring on steam Casey said,
“old girl’s got her dancing
slippers on tonight”

Not a passenger was hurt.
The engine later was repaired.
Only the good engineer and
his time-piece

stopped;
in the embankment
on the track’s
east side

the imprint of the headlight,
boiler, and wheels
were visible each to the spoke;
and when these disappeared,

corn,
scattered by the wreck,
grew, each summer, for years
in the memory of the nearby fields.

Invocation

Mike Fink. John Henry. Paul Bunyan. Casey Jones.

As though the wilderness in which these names forged their meanings has now grown

back

over the names impenetrably obscuring paths once cleared by salted rivers of sweat;

or perhaps

the wilderness is all disappeared? Wooded groves which harbored heroes now part,

reveal

horizons, and no figure larger than ordinary; no monsters in the rocky, fjord-like

crenellations

of the coast: sea heaves its sighs and strums its finger along the tight drums of

the rocks,

a tune that summoned the male muses, once, these waves that break their own

hearts.

Questioning room, post-Fall

No, we aren’t what we appear. The dangling
lightbulb yellows us, presses our shadows flat
onto the floor. Leave it to our shadows, then, to be
forgiven for what we cut out of the light. What other
part is there of a living person without pulse? We’ll stand,
here, yes, naked, even, as if that could help. You promised
power over language and animals but every word
calls out your distance, you, who formed us in the image
of a question, but, no, never promised to answer.

Mountain walk, late summer

I walked through the cloud, the cloud walked
through me. It was like this for a long time
called morning.

From the cloud I saw
only what I saw—this step down,
this loose tooth of rock.

Slowing my pace, the cloud
moved faster, peeled back one corner shrouding
the mountain before me,

that I didn’t know
was there. The sky breathed heavy again.
Cold mist hung waiting

to be caught by the wind
that rules changes here.


Each time the veil slips down,
each time
it lifts a little, I wait,
half-expecting to see
a new landscape,
like wanting to fall
back asleep
to enter a new dream.

How silly
to have thought I was alone. Here
come children,
mouths all black
with wild blueberries.

an excuse

The Time

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this

in winter especially. Summer comes,

I want to tumble with the river

over rocks and mossy dams.

A fish drifting upside down. 

Slow accordions sweeten the breeze.

The Sanitary Mattress Factory says,

"Sleep Is Life."

Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon?

Yesterday someone said, "It gets late so early."

I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.

Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem. 

-----

Every summer I feel this way, though perhaps more than most this year. Travels to Canada and rural Oregon have gotten the wheels turning but my pen is still out of ink (mixing metaphors, even). Any suggestions for how to take well-lived poetic moments and get them onto the page?