Volunteering:

quoddy fog
rear view

Volunteering:  

 

What short wicks

we fuel with our blood.

                                Jim Harrison

                                Returning to Earth

I wonder from time to time if when the firemen

arrived that maybe they wavered at the front door

say the fire wasn’t

as fully engaged as they’d been led to be

alarmed by and maybe because they’re friends of the possible

deceased and maybe she’s dead

asleep in her now down

stairs bed (she’s been failing lately she’s been seen

taking orders

of oxygen) and maybe it’s those green

narrow cylinders they wait and weigh

their lives against

not craving opening the door

to that reluctant sucking sound like lifting a chest

freezer and all the fall meat eaten

and it’s an abandoned cavern: only a

small burn of ice a pebble of a bulb

of frozen snow to pinch between three

gloved fingers – it’s what they find, after hosing

the house empty of all human occupants: an empty freezer

blockaded by cat shit and cat bodies and a winter’s supply

of wood since it’s August and time to start

bringing it in and it’s neatly stacked

but they scattered it looking for fire isn’t that

what they’re supposed to do once they’re consumed

by nerve and blow open the door

break the glass right at the corner

of that sticker:

 CAUTION: OXYGEN

                                       IN  USE

After Reading Jim Harrison's "Locations"

comedy and tragedy: sic vita
modeled 1891-92, cast c. 1902-1905
bronze
alfred gilbert
clark art  

After Reading Jim Harrison’s “Locations”

Today’s blunt lines: all my poems are born dead.

And: In the dark barn/a stillborn calf on the straw.

rope to hooves, its mother bawling/nearly pulled to death.

Why those and why not the soft buttocks, why not the guitar

and the song why not all those lakes and dunes?  Why not

pilots pulling the chord before the crash that everyone ran to

and its melting in its own steel skin (is that what they’re made

of back then?)  I’m reading you like a eulogy and you in-

tended that I bet, surveying your whole life or someone

else’s but still if nothing else it’s an attempt at reconciliation

without the traps of accuse and excuse.  You refuse to see it

any other way than this:  the dead have a breath or two left

in them after all.  Exhaling isn’t the end it’s just settling itself

on random near and far things, like duff, like lips, like the flap

of the shirt pocket he or she closes before they go out the door

to report or just to walk, to make a little noise or to make

no noise at all just to walk with the living and the dead in their head.

Thoreau Goes Out to Fire Island

sail rock
west quoddy head
lubec

Thoreau Goes Out

To Fire Island

Our thoughts are the epochs

in our lives, all else is but a journal

of the winds that blew

while we were here.

                                Henry David Thoreau

When he went out to Fire Island to find his friend

Margaret and her husband and their son, somehow

in the wreck and on the beach everything was absolutely  

clean, the cacophony of debris carried off and off

and off by humanity.  The sea, see, is the only

constant, and her floor and her roof

and the two or three people who lifted

to see the body of her little boy who would be

buried there or nearby, people numb, people

greedy, people plundering from the plundered,

people who watched the ship break and break

against the outer banks who wouldn’t or couldn’t brave

the roils and fists of the waves.  But they waited

for that breaking, the way laid by the hurricane

that lifted the hold to unload with every able body

sea wind every dock-jack wind…by the time he

arrived all the bodies he can find are reduced

to skulls and from the skull a backbone and a part

of a hand…still with a shirt on, a cuff with one

button that he plucks up from the cloth. 

It comes away as easy as a ripe berry, plucked up

and softly rubbed and thumbed and thumbed

months later in his attic in Massachusetts maybe,

and he’s not shocked he’s not shocked at seeing

the too few bodies and the bare sand…maybe

what shocks him most is that he’s not shocked

and all he has between him and his friend

to touch and take away is maybe this little bit

of closure that maybe (he compared it to some

other button on another recovered shirt from a spilled

open trunk, what hadn’t been plundered) belonged

to Margaret’s husband, that the shirt was his

that she must’ve herself touched that button too, undoing

it, undoing her own.  I know Thoreau had read her “Meditations”

and maybe now remembered: 

I sigh, half-charmed, half pained.  My sense is living,

And, taking in this freshened beauty, tells

Its pleasure to the mind…

                                                But the heart

Sends back a hollow echo to the call

Of outward things,---and its once bright companion

Who erst would have answered by a stream

Of life-fraught treasures, thankful to be summoned,--

Can now rouse nothing better than this echo

Posture

Posture

Long enough ago it was so long ago

I can’t remember but it was

it was long, long ago.  I say it

with my face turned away in shame,

maybe because I know my place

I’ve always known my place

and I’ll admit now that I’ve lost

my way.  The last time wasn’t

marked as the last time how

grief of what’s to come to an end

makes every sense bloom

out and take in as much for memory

as it can stack for winter like last fall’s

canned goods because you know

in  your marrow you’ll never be

back you’ll never be asked

and that’s maybe the hardest

trip of all walking off with the cause

in the pack and the first stone thrown

is the truest aim as ever was

truest and new as first times:

lips, knives, one shell, the dead

doe felled where her lamb stood

once last spring and maybe a cotton-

tail nosing the grass not far off,

or maybe it was the spring before,

like I said it was long enough ago

it was so long ago.

What Makes It What Doesn’t Make It

two
s. lee photo

What Makes It What Doesn’t Make It

and the resourceful creatures see clearly

that we are not really at home

in the interpreted world.  Perhaps there remains

some tree on a slope, that we can see

again each day: there remains to us yesterday's street,

and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit

that liked us, an so stayed, and never departed.

                                             Rainer Maria Rilke 

                                             The First Elegy

Q: What’s your definition of bravery?  Or maybe not definition, but how do you arrive at it?

A:

What makes it maybe is the length

of time its looked at and then seen

seen to bring it meaning to make it more

than mean to tip it off or be

tipped off the                 (remember the first time you learned

                                       what a fulcrum was and was it

                                       a crowbar for you and an arrow or was it

                                       a stick for you and an arrow or was it

                                       a wheelbarrow for you and didn’t you look

                                       a long long time too long wasn’t it

                                       a shard of  your life you were looking

                                       how can I get a wheel-

                                       barrow (and be honest, up until then

                                                       you were spelling barrel) how

                                       how can I get a stick how

                                       how a crow

                                            bar iron enough to lift

                                            jack cool enough to (in summer)

                                            lay down the tip then the middle

                                            of your tongue to tingle it entirely through to the root

                                            before rust comes up like blood before it all                                                                                              comes up like blood look look it square

                                                       (and why square why not round why not                                                                              rhombus or tri-

                                                                                               angle)?

in the face maybe take it into your eye that has a tongue

all its own and it’s got the potential

to be a drinking man

bold at the bar a  man’s man a fire

fighter whose last tail

of smoke is still

living in the crimp

of his kangaroo and kevlar glove what one

he pulled off with his teeth

after he lifted the three

children come together as one

under the bed one soft almost gelled

body Jesus this trinity and now his bare hands

on the what was but is now now tell me

that isn’t a fulcrum designed at lifting bravery

face it face it face it gravely before you let it shudder

because by god who’s going

to believe eyes that see seas that see Sistines that see

runts of the litter come back screaming in a fire I’m telling you

he looked she looked : they faced and saved each other,

                                                they angled the fulcrum

                                                of light and quietly when no none was

                                                watching

                                                lifted it lifted it enough to take it

                                                and ran ran ran for their very lives.

                                                It is the prize of all prizes

stick

stick

Finally in full bloom the live oak

received them all six to come to

squawk and gawp on the lawn

and spread their good news noise

to the whole street.  Oh oak,

oak, to take it like a dog, or

a faithful lady- in- waiting while they

hop from branch to branch, while

I watch them pick a brief bearing

to squat to not to squat to quibble

maybe but to gain the best view

to set off from.  The dead

thing is not far from your trunk:

struck by the tour bus, it’s life fell out

like children who mis-

judge the distance to the next

branch and they slip, foot or fist

and feel themselves listening

from a different part of their body

than they even knew could

listen, the soft possibility between

their legs full of charge, the privacy

they’ve always been warned to

protect, the way crows protect

their ownership of their dead, or not

the same way maybe, but still

with a bit of noise, with some jumping from

bar to bar on the scale, cawing

to the drunk conductor who’s lately

late, ever always late, dropping his baton

in a gutter to watch it stick

to the shitty runoff after the last heavy

rain, to gain some dignity

when, after it’s left alone by him, it’s

picked up by a boy or a girl

on their way out of the rain

and they take it for what it is:

a stick, a simple wooden branch:

oak maybe but how would they know

and would they even care, waving

it around to conjure, to conduct

to orchestrate their flight,

their dark and timid and tumbling

body relenting to the weather

in any kinds of sky

Thermometer

Thermometer

plaster
Chesterwood
The Studio
Daniel Chester French

Ultimately it’s your call

after you take what’s been offered

and stalk your buffet

and ignore being

watched as you walk back

to the place  you’ve been sitting

to the place you’ve been waiting

                doing all your looking

                                and your listening

                                and tasting          (yes, let’s

                                                not forget the tasting)

                                                and touching)

                                                yes, let’s

                                                agree there was a lot of touching and

                                                waiting

waiting especially

because isn’t it              waiting            isn't it one of the primal

spaces or maybe let’s agree it’s married

to each and all of them

the senses I mean

                                in case you’ve lost

                                track

it’s once and for all patient

it’s the kind of patient

a patient may be whose chart

is read in front of them

where all there is to see in black

and white

and grey

matter most

not to the lung

not to the liver

not to the brain

but to the doctor

(maybe sometimes maybe sometimes

                not) this is where you might call him or her

bigamist – or would you prefer polygamist

                                or does it even matter?

two women, one kitchen

the adams memorial
augustus saint-gaudens
(s.cassidy photo)

two women, one kitchen

isn’t (or is it) coming up from some pride some

prejudice in a manner of speaking they say

that you only read people from your kin?

the present moment Richard

Blanco said triggers

                                                a memory

                                                a memory triggers

                                                a conversation

                and to look you see it: con-VERSE!            SATION

(you see verse

and stretch it and you’ll get sated)

                see it sit itself down at ease at your knee see you sit yourself down at ease at its knee

but lately

the word I’ve been looking for

for days and days I’ve been looking for it

is pretention does that mean I’m getting ready

to be tense to be tight to be right

in the moment now only

going back I’m not I’m slack

as twenty year old

unplucked Fender strings

and not getting on with the base-

board heat its been hippin’ with since I moved in

so when finally when there’s time

for a chord for twisting

those knobs on the head (what are they

called) and pressin’ and frettin’ I’m less

surprised at breaking than the sound I’m less surprised

at breaking than the prick of blood I’m less

surprised at my tongue’s taste-buds

coming up from the     
                                                         bottom’s                 s’mottob

(fold it

you know

you can

and want to)

bottom

like the something’s that’s been

stirred is loose enough say it came up from your favorite

lasagna pan finally coming clean at the elbow

brillo Dawn Lestoil (fuck that’s funny given the circumstances) and all

the turning up goes washing down the gurgle the gurgle

s:

the gurgle

of the

in

sink

or

ator

and this kitchen is as glad a place

I’ve been since my mother

deep in the bed-sheets twisted

at her knees her street morphine ease bleeding

beside the lifted toilet seat and the perfect arc of her

mastectomy mark a cello clef I’ve never seen full on

until I found her hours afterwards and the exclamation

on her cheek (temple to chin)

a discrete twin to the porcelain sink

where she went down feet first

and went into her shrine only the once the last ever time

while the tea-kettle burned dry while Segovia

while Bon-Jovi while benevolent

neighbors kind

afterwards save their nasty anno-

tations who like kids with playground fists will

junkiedrunkshitassbitch

baldchemowitch

shewassickbeforetheytookhertits

bring in an arm-load of wood to keep it all

from going colder than it absolutely has to