WOODCUTTER, Part 1 ~

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Night Table

Here is part of you

While you sleep —

The small shine

Of silver earrings

Dogs In Snow

I bring them out water

They drink around the ice

Chains rap on the bucket

Shivering I wait

Looking up into the stars

What I see in their eyes

Plowing back to the house

After shaking their coats goodnight

Strength in my hands

The Pleasures of Love

 

The last of my noon hour

Black tin lunch pail

Sitting on a sap soaked maple stump

Woodchips nettled on my woolen socks

Finding the fruit cup she made for me

Clear cold glass in my oiled hand

Neat slices of strawberry and pear

 

December

She’s supposed to be land clearing

Heaping brush to burn in first snow

But the pale yellow ghost of tall

Summer grasses she sweeps down

Is instead caught in her hand

And placed that way in a kitchen vase

Showing a warmth to last us through winter

_________________ 

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press) 


photo ~ a young farm worker smiles for the camera


 












 

SHERRY ~

It’s been seven years today since my older sister Sherry died. In Florida. Unexpectedly. Alone. I think of her as a friend from my hometown on Crandall Street works to put together a Facebook page of all the kids that once lived on the street and my sister was one of those kids, one of the prettiest ones, as all the girls were pretty in that long ago. The street was our world. I could walk out my parents house and see Mount Greylock loom large right above the house tops of the neighbors across the street. The street was our world. The hospital where many of us were born was midway of the street and we played all our football games there in its field. Tackle, not touch. Most driveways were tar and almost every driveway had a basketball hoop, at least where the kids lived. There were great old ladies on the street. I had a pair of them either side of our house and we were friendly with all of them, especially two right next door to our basketball court (the driveway) where I’d wander over after supper and sit on their front porch with the rocking chairs and rock with my old lady friends. I can’t remember their names and remember everything about their faces, the walk into the inner sanctum of the beautiful home inside, the polished oak woodwork, the darkness, the cuckoo clock, the back door kitchen light where I found again sunlight and I moved through the darkness of the rooms to get to that sunlit door, into the backyard, the terraced gardens, a small built garage for one car. Everything in its place. My sister Sherry dressed me up in girl’s clothing since she didn’t have a little sister. My two younger brothers weren’t born yet. I was trans-gender before there was trans-gender. She played music by The Shirelles that still booms in my head off her on the floor 45-only turntable. Huge and sassy and blossoming women voices. Out of the girl’s clothes and into my clothes, older, she brought me Dylan. I already had the Beatles and the Stones but on The Byrds first album there was this insect looking spectacle called Bob Dylan. He looked different, darker, wiser, more dangerous than the troubadour on the first Dylan album I bought “Another Side.” My sister had a boyfriend who played Byrds songs. He had a guitar like Roger (Jim) McGuinn’s, long slack hair, my parents one night kicked him out of the house. He stayed lurking, slept on the driveway that night. My great sister. Right out of a Shirelles song. Where we buried her one late morning you can really see Mount Greylock. The tallest point in Massachusetts was in the clouds when we arrived early for the burial. How many times did I scramble up the Thunderbolt Trail with my pals off Crandall Street! Insisted on taking every member of my family up that mountain with me; the guitar player boyfriend of my sister (now married to him) I grabbed one winter day and we scaled up through snow. Scared him half to death. Laughed our heads off for years afterwards remembering that day, all those days. By the time Sherry’s ashes were set into the ground, the mountain, obedient to its friends, came out of the clouds. And the sun did shine.

 [ BA ]

My Sweetest Friend at Longhouse

CLASSIC ~

READ ABOUT BOZ SCAGGS

SSHHHH~

sweetheart

GENEALOGY ~

Camille Rankine

 Genealogy



I was born in a forest.

I don't know my name.

I was born on a mountain but changed

my mind. I was born

in the desert. All my people died

in the fire and left me

with the gods. They called me dust.

How it burned me. I come from the sea,

I believe. I come from beryl,

aquamarine. All my people

rode their horses off

the edge of the world and left me

on your doorstep. They called me

sorrow. I don't know my name.

I come from wartime. How it burned me.

I was born aflame, I believe. A sun

so intentional. A sun in repose, a sun

in continuous sunset, sinking into the ground.




____________________

Camille Rankine
Incorrect Merciful Impulses
Copper Canyon Press 2016



 

THE CUCKOO ~

More than one pretty bird

JAMES SALTER, THE ART OF FICTION ~

University of Virginia Press

2016

Only months before James Salter passed away,

at the age of eighty-nine,

he agreed to serve as the first

Kapnick Foundation Distinguished 

Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia

where he delivered the three lectures presented

in this nifty little book, with maybe a

too long introduction by Salter's friend

and fellow novelist John Casey.

Something smaller, intimate and

comfortable with the size of the book

may have been a better choice.

No problem with the Salter.

We would love a fourth lecture,

a fifth.

I N    M E M O R I A M

TOM HENNEN ~

Home Place



The old house went down the basement stairs
And didn't come back up.

The people
The cows
The sheep
The pigs and the chickens
Have disappeared through a great hole
In the landscape.






Cold in the Trees



The hoot
Of the owl
Is large enough
To carry off a whole sheep.






Knowing Nothing



The hole in the landscape is real.
I can walk through it and back again.
Every time I do
My clothes look baggier.
My hair sticks out.
My boots become untied.
My coat unbuttoned.
My education gone.
I don't care anymore how the world thinks.

I only know that the snow
Has reached my knees.






After a Long Trip



The river is going to the Gulf of Mexico.
The moon on top the water
Doesn't move.
It's not interested in a
Trip to New Orleans.
Its light is already tired from traveling
250,000 miles
To shine on some trees.






Love for Other Things



It's easy to love a deer
But try to care about bugs and scrawny trees
Love the puddle of lukewarm water
From last week's rain.
Leave the mountains alone for now.
Also the clear lakes surrounded by pines.
People are lining up to admire them.
Get close to the things that slide away in the dark.
Be grateful even for the boredom
That sometimes seems to involve the whole world.
Think of the frost
That will crack our bones eventually.






Found on the Earth



The simple words no longer work.
Neither do the grand ones.
Something about
The hanging bits of dark
Mixed with your hair.
The everlasting quietness
Attached to the deserted barn
Made me think I'd discovered you
But you already knew all about yourself
As we stood on the edge of a forest
With your dress as languid as the air,
The day made of spring wind and daffodils.
Then the sky appeared in blue patches
Among slow clouds,
Oak leaves came out on the trees,
Grass suddenly became green,
Filled with small animals that sing.
All the parts of spring were gathering.
The earth was being created all over again
One piece at a time
Just for you.






Late March



A dark day raining
A bright flash
Of blue jay disappearing
Into black folds
Of a dripping spruce tree.
Bark of ash and apple tree shine
In the dim drizzle.
The woodpecker's
song this afternoon
Is a chipping noise,
A sound that puts little dents
In the wet air.




__________________

TOM HENNEN
Darkness Sticks to Everything
Copper Canyon Press, 2013 


 

DANIEL AARON ~

D A N I E L     A A R O N

b. Chicago, Aug. 4, 1912 ~ 2016

Daniel Aaron holding one of 155 volumes of the diary of Arthur Crew Inman, a failed poet and scion of Southern wealth, which he condensed to 1,661 pages.

photo ~ Steve Liss/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images

EDWARD ABBEY ~

E D W A R D     A B B E Y

B A C K R O A D     C H A L K I E S

S P R I N G    2016

Photo: © bob arnold

CLAUDE LANZMANN ~

FARAWAY, LIKE THE DEER'S EYE ~

V I C T O R     J A R A

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It's So

After love, you lift your dress

Wash in cold running water.

I’ve to work in the morning,

Drive through the field, frighten

A flicker from wet grass

To the stone wall, birch, white oak.

It all started with you hugging my neck

Pulling back and laughing.

We’d open a large window upstairs

Lie down in the river sound.

The mason’s young helper unloads stone

Then breaks for a cigarette,

All day guns cement mixer blades.

Long handle shovel stuck in sand

Lime dust blowing

Whitewash peeling from ripped out

Barn ceiling boards.

Two weeks ago this was a new job —

Rotten sills weren’t jacked

Bolts cut —

A buzzard flew up from the valley

Cockeyed in stiff wind

Beating rough edged wings,

Very black on melting snow.

Now 4-wheel drives burn tread

On the hillside, tool boxes slam

Workers pitch vision to the ground,

Black flies sting our skin.

By the end of day a red fox

Hops out of that sunny part of the field.

I hear a school bus downshift miles away.

Two guys clean out a wheelbarrow

Drink from the hose

Talk of bear hunting.

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Faraway, Like the Deer's Eye

                      for Victor Jara, Chilean folksinger

Ah yes, now I believe I know —

A cool breeze and very early morning

A wood thrush breaks from the pasture,

Fences have all been mended,

Here and there animal hair.

I think of Jara; Victor,

By jesus as they busted your fingers

And you kept to the last moment

Something loving, say your sister, far in your belly.

Then they beat you like the backside of a horse

And it all fell — my chore bucket spilled

Suddenly in Vermont.

I may still have the gathering of birds,

The pull of this long river

Where I wade to my waist, undo my hair and wash slowly

Strong sweat and black flies,

A quiet day with the saw

Now near its end.

But Chile stays — forever.

How in the hell can you ask me to forget

A father dragged down from an attic

And pumped into a scream

In front of his huddled family?

The blood goes everywhere

And they live with it

And the killers — shit,

Something the raccoon wouldn’t even wash.

Daylight goes.

Evening is soon.

My friends, we are to become

The last light in the pond.

________________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

Walter Lowenfels took "Faraway. . ." for his seminal anthology

For Neruda, For Chile (Beacon Press)

 

DOWN AND OUT — THE SAD SOUL OF THE BLACK SOUTH ~

A POET PACIFIST GREAT ~

D A N I E L     B E R R I G A N

 (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016)

Daniel Berrigan on Democracy Now!

Daniel Berrigan's New York Times Obituary

 

J.H. PRYNNE ~

Smaller than the Radius of the Planet




There is a patch like ice in the sky this
evening & the wind tacks about, we are
both stopped/fingered by it. I lay out my
unrest like white lines on the slope, so that
something out of broken sleep will land
there. Look up, a vale of sorrow opened by
eyes anywhere above us, the child spread out
in his memory of darkness. And so, then, the
magnetic influence of Venus sweeps its
shiver into the heart/brain or hypothalamus,
we are still here, I look steadily at nothing.
"The gradient of the decrease may be de-
termined by the spread in intrinsic lumin-
osities" —the ethereal language of love in
brilliant suspense between us and the
hesitant arc. Yet I need it too and keep
one hand in my pocket & one in yours,
waiting for the first snow of the year.




_____________________

J.H. Prynne
THE WHITE STONES
New York Review of Books 2016

 


 J.H. Prynne

SABRA LOOMIS ~

Geography Lesson



She learned the names of rivers
and of mountain ranges.
For rooms full of visitors. So willing was she —
it was a way to impress the new men in her family,
who were on leave from the Pacific
or Pearl Harbor, facing a long, silent war.

Always maps, and the nervous
mapmakers, changing their minds.

She learned to follow
the slow curves of a river
to a source in the high wall
of the Andes. To follow
the Orinoco, the Amazon, the Nile.

Sometimes the rivers went underground.
You could hear them murmur the names
through canyons and grottoes,
emerging up ahead.

Always the maps, big glistening maps
with worn-out folds,
which Time was always changing.
The blue and brown and green fields
asked to borrow a new history —
changing names, or having their names erased.

Her own name had been changed —
the forever name buried,
left at the border.

She could unfold the maps completely
and follow the drift, as if allowed to swim away
from the family boat,
where they were sitting out on deck,
heads down over nautical charts —
at some distance.

Slow curves in a northerly direction,
to the high points, where the mountains become one.
Does this ever happen?


_________________________

S A B R A     L O O M I S
House Held Together By Winds
Harper, 2008