HEREABOUTS ~

Prize

Away from the road,

Off into the high edge

Of a field, unless I

Looked carefully you

Would never have been seen

Picking wildflowers

Growing in folds of sunlight

Among the tall grass.

Each snipped by hand

At the same height, then

Gathered inside a pail

Of shallow water.

The world seems weightless

Watching you work,

If this is work —

You call it a prize

Saved for the last

Hour of the afternoon,

Taking away what this

Plot of land has to give —

Flowers for the kitchen table,

Brightened windowsills.

Day and Night

How often have we

Stepped together into water —

You left your clothes on the rocks

And shivered your way to me,

Said it was freezing as I thought

Of the mountain stream filling this

Clear basin of evening light, and how

Swallows showed us the angles of the sky

Far above barbed wire and pasture heat

Which we came down from after work

Smelling lilac in the breeze —

And it was the long blonde hair you shook

Out of a blue bandana and later braided

That had me remember the day and night.

Hands

He was the first

One ever to show

Me anything, and

Make sense, about

A garden. When he

Called me down into

The fenced half-acre

I walked through the

Wire gate and found

Him shoulder high

In the early morning

Blossom of peas.

And snapping a pod

Open, with the same

Hands that cut timber,

Mended fence and

Milked cows — who

Came in here every

Morning before he

Went off to chores —

He put everything

Into my hands

When he said,

Now taste this.

Hereabouts

                

                        for Jim Koller

The town is acting proud,

Even a photograph in the newspaper,

Everyone I talk to hereabouts

Has something to say about

The bear that was shot nearby.

I haven’t really pinned down

Where it was killed, but one

Mile between us and the radius

Of the valley seems a fair account.

That would include across the river,

Up the incline of timber to

Owl’s Head Range, where three winters

In a row we would hear probably

The same bear rumbling around

In this box of territory left to roam.

Funny noises he makes, hoots

And barks, moans with long silence.

We listened. No better than

The next guy, just listened

To a sound you don’t hear

Too much of any longer hereabouts.

Like the golden eagle over

West River last spring, ice going out

I stood there where I was working,

Chain saw shut down quiet,

Watching the bird float above the day —
You miss it when it’s gone.

_____________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

ULTIMATE ROBERT JOHNSON 1936-1937 SESSIONS ~

A MIGHTY STORM~

DULCE MARIA LOYNAZ ~

Poems Without Names


XIII


   You have wings and I don't. You flit through the air like a butterfly,
while I go off to learn, from every last road on earth, what it means to be sad.




XVII


   Something subtle and profound happens when you turn and look
back at the road you have traveled.
   The road where you left no footprints, where all of life was left behind.




XXVII


   I always watch the sun go down because it takes something, I don't
know what, away from me.




XLVII


   There is still one difference left between us. You have a tenderness
grown weary and I have a weariness grown tender.




LX


   Of the twenty-four hours in a day, I will always leave you one to
abandon me, if that's what you should want.
   If you give me twenty-three hours each day, you can keep one
hour to think about leaving me, if you use the other twenty-three
hours wisely.
   This hour is yours. I respect all sixty minutes of it. I stop breathing
so that nothing, not even the air filling my lungs, disturbs or distracts
you.
   This is the hour of my self-annihilation, the hour in which I bind
myself to my heart, in which I turn my back on time, face the wall of
my angst, and tremble as a century passes through an hourglass.
   But when the hour ends and I open my eyes and see that you have
not left me, I greet you without making a single gesture, without
saying a single word, as if you yourself were a new miracle flowering
for me alone.
   It is the daily miracle that never ceases to be miraculous, the daily
agony that never ceases to be an agony, and the daily joy that never
ceases to be this marvelous, pure, unprecedented joy.



LXVIII



   Every day at nightfall she goes out with her lantern to light a road
in the middle of nowhere.
   It is a road nobody ever crosses, lost in the darkness of night, and
lost too, in the light of day. It is a road that comes from nowhere and
goes nowhere.
   The neighboring forest gnaws at the margins of the road, the trees
grip it from below with their roots, and weeds grow in between the
cracks in the rock.
   But every night she comes out with the first star and hands a
lantern above this solitary road.
   Nobody will ever come this way. It is a difficult journey and there
is no reason to come. Some roads have shade and other roads cover
longer distances in half the time. And there are still other roads that
make a straight line through an endless maze of streets. There are
many other roads in this world and people will travel them all. But
there is not one person who will set foot on hers.
   Why then does she light the road for a wayfarer who doesn't exist?
And why this constant show of obstinacy every single night?
   And why on earth does she smile when she lights the lantern?


LXXI


   Even in your way of forgetting there is something beautiful.
   I thought all forgetting was darkness, but your forgetting is luminous,
like a great radiance.
   Like the dawn wiping out the stars!




Autumn Melancholy


XL


   Your hands have a strange clarity. Have you been walking among
the stars? Or did you raise them toward the dawn through a blue,
translucent fog?
   Aren't you afraid of having luminous hands?




XLIII


   In the end the only thing that might excuse me for the failure that
is my life is the vague, absentminded way in which I go walking down
every road on earth.




XLVI


   I will caress the wind and smile at the darkness just in case you're
looking at me in the darkness or kissing me in the wind.




CI


   Your dark velvet eyes are going to close. One fine day, your dark
velvet eyes are going to close like two wild blackberries. They are
going to close. Your eyes beveled in onyx, encased in chests of gold,
and adorned with blue lashes will close one day for all time, for all
days and all nights, and they will never look again upon the infinite
green of trees or the eternal blue of the sea.
   Your eyes, like two wild blackberries, will close one day, and my
hands will be far, far away.




CIX


   I'm happy because it just rained and the wet earth smells just for me.



_______________________________

D U L C E     M A R I A     L O Y N A Z
translated from the Spanish by James O'Connor
ABSOLUTE SOLITUDE
(selected poems)
Archipelago Books, 2016

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FRANKS ~

edited by Garrett Caples & Julien Poirier

H A I K U


for Frank O' Hara



I

The lights are out

The cats are hungry

The room is full of gangsters



II

The dishes are dirty

The icebox is empty

I dream of celery and a compass



III

The roof is upstairs

The window next door

A guitar in the shower




IV

The hours disappear in my room

Where is my blue pistol

The door-god is knocking

F R A N K   O' H AR A



My heart wears a pair

Of shoes that once belonged

To a young poet.



Whose blood was as fresh

As water.

Whose seatbelt was the hair

Of beautiful women.



Who slept in a thousand dreams

Made of beds.

Who had a friend whose heart

Was a kite tied to a string.



Who was eaten by a taxi

Lost on a beach of fire



My dear friend still comes to me

After all these years.

To die once again and to stare

At the holes in my heart.


4.19.98







O K L A H O M A     A M E R I C A



          The fathers of America
have ruined the mountains
          The mothers of America
have dried the river beds
          The children of America
are dying at play
          Our forefathers watch our
neonates mouse the words of freedom
          Worms vagrant fallopian worms


Are birds freedom?
Are children sheep?

This is the year of the bullet
Of white professional homework
Of Nagasaki fertilizer
Of cheap fuel oil
Of tender SS movies
This is oncotic Americana
This is why fish will fly to heaven

We are the widow of our dreams
We are shrinking in their skin
We are attached to their wisdom

Look at the thermos colored sky
Fame flying on TV
They wash their hands in our womb
Where the dead know the stars
Are sleeping children
Like the procession of equinox
Condensing our fate

We are the Furies of entropy
We have killed
A hundred million
Human trees this century

Who will wear their clothes?
Death is as round as an apple
Holding a child ever so gently

They no longer see the kangaroo
They cannot touch
The innocent mirror
With their wet hands
The tears are drowning
In their sand pails
Like lyrical lips
The mothers will never be
The sun on their faces

O my beloved country
Where is the antelope of love?
Why does the earth
Turn away from the sun?
Why are the children covered
With concrete
Rain
And neglected
Specks of freedom?


4.25.95


___________________

F R A N K     L I M A
Incidents of Travel in Poetry
City Lights Books 2015

BLOSSOMS ~

Quills

He didn’t move —

With pliers I

Pulled 16 of them

From mouth, lips,

Nose and head —

Like last year

It is early spring

Hemlock

When the big hemlock

Washed down river

During one of the early

Spring runoffs, I went

Down with bowsaw and

Sawed off one large

Limb for the cabin

Steps handrail, and then

Went back and brought

Home a dozen smaller branches

Thinking they could be

Used for something —

Although they have only

Stood up behind the woodshed,

Bleaching in the sun,

Warping away from

Straighter timber

They once knew.

Friend

This sparrow must

Love the sun —

All day it has perched

On the stone well

Beside the empty

Trough of seed

All day its feathers

Lifted in the breeze

Its head turning

The oddest angles

If I could have him

He would fit in

The palm of my hand

Blossoms

Beneath rain clouds

She wheelbarrows

Loose black soil

Of daylilies

From the brook

To plant around

A ledge of stone

And in a month

She will smell like

The yellow blossoms



_______________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
MAD RIVER PRESS