Gallant Feet

"Mt. Fuji looks like a small bump from up here."
-Laurel Clark, on the Space Shuttle Columbia

When meals of death become our
drive-thru dinner hour, when morning news
on Saturdays of slate blue skies
is headlines of a requiem,
"the stricken look to you for strength."
It's been a year of salt and graves.
Of mace and terror and massacre.
Religion is busy, but where are the gods-
I heard them snore in sonic booms,
in rattled air above the Texas prairie dust.
Wreckage will be gathered up
as if it's straw from Bethlehem.
We'll pan debris for clues to where
their gallant feet stubbed a toe,
left us in a jolted daze, beards of hubris
leveled to the weeping pore.

Seven heroes sprinkle raw intrepid seeds.
From here the wildflower grows or dies
in gardens showered by grieving hail.
Tiny palms will play with shuttle look-alikes,
plan their missions in the dark,
aim at stars because these fingers
pointed at these miracles.
Muscles torn and tendons cut,
the dream will stand because it must.
I hunt beneath black funeral robes
for pastel shades of coming spring-
see a crocus in the yard
that rises on a schedule
outside the limits of my hands.

The Flower Box

It's almost spring-
too warm for coats, too cold for shorts.
That middle ground
between thin ice and blossoming.
Sunsets still approach so fast-
like apples falling from a tree.
Our Daphne buds in whiskey barrels;
its girth has multiplied and grown.
Symbiotic evidence of renaissance,
of menus way beyond my hands.
Sky is a spotless blue
as we sever reeds and skeletons
of passing mums
last winter took in grinding teeth.
A little sweat attaches
to your wrinkled brow
as if you know commitment comes
with digging up the dying bush.

The cedar box you built for flowers
is bulging with moist soil;
it calls aloud to rusty trowels,
shovels caked with bliss on hold.
The secret calcium of rain
snuck in to vitalize dry dirt.
You lined the slats
upon this box so perfectly
to give me color I could reach,
roots to finger in the sun.
Without a leg, kneeling to plant-
rising to look-they're both
that uncorked miracle
in someone else's cupboard space.
Few men would arrange
for the garden to sit
within the sad perimeter of tired eyes,
of antiquated, graceless bones.

The Logic of Wasted Blood

When steel again
is showering our tender clay,
a hundred phone calls hit the wires.
"Metal's falling from the sky."
"Remnants of a skeleton
are sitting on my frozen pond."
With war about to be a verb
that massacres and leaves
its bile on every lawn,
its aphid chewing every rose,
we're ready for the next attack.
Grass of hope grown tall with weeds;
ears are tuned to sorrow's
coming sonic boom.

This time it's tragic accidents.
The shuttle doesn't make it back.
But panic is the acid reflux
of sadness in obstinate ash.
I can't look up and see a plane
without a queasy trembling
that calls in question every star.
I expect a vapor trail
to be the wagging tail of sin,
of hatred coming home to roost.
Logic of the wasted blood
lives on and on like
costumes of a wicked witch
in dusty closets nailed shut.
Sleep and peace are thinning soap.

The Brink at Logan Pond

On Logan Pond, the rose gold sky in pines'
Embrace between the cedar-shrouded hills,
Now from the stained-glass stone-still surface shines,
Just wrinkling at the emptying of rills.
The heavens condescended on this cruel
And vacant stretch of wet, this verdant sink.
Beneath its jeweled face, this silent pool
Still craves the careless creatures from the brink.
Just pausing there, at water's edge, I feel
The almost tidal pull of Logan Pond.
It tempts me from the land, to blindly reel
In wanton waves and break my earthly bond.
The gorgeous waste shall not see me descend.
I'll stand my ground ashore until the end.

Unspeakable

In the shimmer light, soft suddenly,
a call floats dimly from the darkling lake,
turning ghastly in the gloaming, groaning
hopelessly, as if a heart could break
from just the twilight's common fade.

No one embarks at dusk on such
a bleak expanse of iron glassy shine.
No one heeds the pleas of unknown throats
and unseen eyes. Who knows what calls fine
men into the waiting edgeless deep?

They retire to their cots for guilty sleep.
But cabin walls pass through the plaintive wail.
So, dreamless men re-gather on the shore.
Wordlessly, they launch their boat and sail
in search of that which chills them to their core.

What they find, and leave untouched, remains
unnamed in a spot unmarked. They flee the reach
and, breathless aboard their boat, as it strains
against the current back toward the beach,
each vows silently to sail no more by night.

Amber Sun

There is a house
on the continent of ice
north of the rumored pole
where the shadows never change.
The amber sun sleeps on the horizon
and seeps its insipid glow
colder than chance
through the empty doors and windows.
Every board has its shadow
but the house has none.
In the perfect frozen air
nothing lives, nothing rots.
The air is a copper red black miasma
like the desert afternoon
when murder was done.

Immortal Child

Dear great-grandmother's grave, surrounded by
grey beneficiaries of her long
gone bliss, and his, now echoes with the slow
and somber intonation of the psalm.
The witnesses to her mortality,
displaying just enough grief and no more,
uneasy in their uniform of black,
observe with dusty eyes the obsequies.
Except the restless twitch of well-turned wrists
to check the time, they seem absorbed, transfixed.
No stifled sobs; no softly murmured prayer.
No mournful frowns; just anxious bitten lips.
Meanwhile, the heiress plays between the plots
and plucks the buttercups that flower there.
The tot ignores the holy rites. Upon
her face there blooms a Giaconda smile.

Inner Harbor

The harbor, at tide's turning, hesitates.
The slapping of the waves around the pier
degenerates into a gurgling swirl.
Now, as the estuary's flow reverses,
the circling gulls come swooping in and drop
to settle noisily on rolling swells.
A splash disturbs the rhythm of the night.
Below a piling heaped with her discarded
dress, high heels, and purse, a woman floats
upon the harbor's face, a cold white flash
amongst reflected city lights and stars.
In time, the tide recedes. Its lunar ebb
begins to drain the darkened basin of
the inner harbor, pulling down the ghost
white shadow of the limp and lonely corpse
without a sound, to silent, inky depths.
The tide rolls out. The seagulls soar again.
In Baltimore, a rowhouse quietly
awaits the footsteps of its occupant,
the homely waking sounds of single life.
And, on the pier, police, their cruiser lights
all flashing red and blue, intently search
for clues, ignoring witnesses aloft.
The screaming seagulls cry her requiem.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan, we know you've suffered very long.
Your dead heart, although bathed in blood, won't beat.
Your scarlet rivers plunge through endless tear-stained caves
in killing cold, far deeper than your mountains rise.

Fratricide can't satisfy your murderous lust.
You could not stop with merchandising death worldwide.
You had to spit your venom in a peaceful nation's face.
Afghanistan, you sealed your fate that day!

Your barren border cannot reach the flinching sea.
You chill the moaning north wind with your glacial hate.
Your ice air stinks of carrion and cordite now.
Afghanistan, your exorcism is at hand!

Your earthquakes thunder faintly amidst the roar of war.
Your vaunted mountains are being leveled, day-by-day.
Your caves are being choked with countless bombs and bodies.
Afghanistan, is your bloodlust yet satisfied?

After you surrender on the battlefield,
when bare shinbones no longer shine in desert sun,
we'll watch the sunken lakes rise to your valley floors
again to stain the poppied fields a telltale hue.
Afghanistan, we'll have to keep our eyes on you!

Face on a Milk Carton

This is the 5th grade face we drink
for breakfast: a thin smile waxed
over teeth that never lacked
for orthodontia. She blinks

to look out under bangs like grass
in a vacant lot, brown as summer.
You'd think she might be humming
with a bead of amber glass

in her cheek. Kids keep such things
about them, just to hold the world
as we won't let them. A word's
at her lips, is she about to sing?

Milk poured from a box, commonplace
as any waxed unchanging face.

Plaint

Dear God, you're bound to teach mortality
to mortals-don't You have gentler ways?
We learn to love and lose, to cherish Thee.

Is that the lesson, counting loss by three:
first, a grandfather-who taught us praise
for God, who's bound to teach mortality

in a life that falls, brown leaf from a tree.
Two, pony with a boy's first fields to graze.
He learns to love and lose, to cherish Thee.

A faithful dog wandering death's immensity:
does it follow You as in a sightless haze?
Dear God, you're bound to teach mortality

by beating down a heart, that it beats free.
More losses heaped on those, a giddy daze
of learning love and loss, to cherish Thee.

What's left except one self, as guarantee
there remains something left to raise?
Dear God, you're bound to teach mortality
by love and loss. But how to cherish Thee?

Longer Nights Than Days

A full moon illuminates one side
of the house, duality that underlies
the every-day. Have you noticed
how the oak leaves-stained and dry
in the tooth of autumn-pull tides
against our sleep? As if the night,
that drain of dreams, were a mind
from which we can wake up and deny
everything. As if we rose up clean
as daylight, as if the wind at night
weren't a river, tributary to a sea
of breaths we learn by swimming.
As if you weren't already slipping
downstream so far ahead of me,
not quite drowning in your sleep.

Storm

The clouds whip up the heavy oaks with rain.
It's not at all the weather that you planned,
as if a spirit shaman got into your brain

with his feathered weaving of pleasured pain,
his song that strokes healing from a hand.
The clouds whip up the heavy oaks with rain,

and what they whisper is a dumb refrain
without words, a scatter of dull sand
as if a spirit shaman got into your brain.

So little light comes through a window pane,
this monochrome etching of sky and land
where clouds whip up the heavy oaks with rain

and the tallest fir tree shakes its mane
and the woods march inside, a savage band,
as if a spirit shaman got into your brain

to work his magic, genius or insane.
Your mind by such imagination's fanned
that clouds whip up the heavy oaks with rain
and a spirit shaman's got into your brain.

Dorian's First Day

The leaves are lush as last year, and the stars
of honeysuckle like a gardened sun
that throws the trellis shadow down in bars
and shimmers toward this evening's run.

Such gardens are immortal in their place
for whiling an immortal afternoon
with friends; the one who photographs your face,
the one who murmurs to you, "all too soon..."

Of course you hate that photo, how it shows
your unburnt cheek, your hair a windblown tease
that charms just as it scatters from a pose.
Perfection is to earth as skin to breeze.

A photo's countenance forever lies:
the smile behind its shuttered beauty dies.

Around Our Table

The dead pheasant, draped like a still-life
across this table heaped with adjectives
you'd think would break it, seems to say
there's no hope. Could words wash away
the plumbed depths? Hold no hope for art,
pressed deep into flesh, but steadfast
through thunder. The windmill won't draw
water. Nothing but an ultimate rainstorm,
a cloud of TV smoke on the horizon. Fears
gather, running. Who cares about meaning?

The plumbed depths hold no hope for art
through thunder. The windmill won't draw
across this table heaped with adjectives.
Water, nothing but an ultimate rainstorm
you'd think would break it, seems to say
"gather running." Who cares about meaning?
There's no hope. Could words wash away
a cloud of TV smoke on the horizon? Fear
the dead pheasant draped like a still-life
pressed deep into flesh, but steadfast.

Inevitable

I find it takes so long to clean a room-
the piles of papers waiting to be dealt
like cards in order, fortune or doom.

Here, petals scattered, a rose past bloom
in the center of the table. Candle-melt.
I find it takes so long to clean a room

of dog-hair, where you stooped to groom
old King (he's gone now). Here I knelt
at cards in order: fortune or doom,

as if, shuttling strands through a loom
in cunning patterns, Luck-of-the-Celt
I'd find. It takes so long to clean a room

and scrub a brightness out of gloom,
a lightening of mood, as if I'd felt
the cards re-order, fortune against doom

in a space too long occupied, a womb
outgrown, or last year's fashion belt.
You see, it takes as long to clean a room
as cards to order fortune, or doom.

A word, here.
A word, there.
What sense or nonsense
is part of a poem?
What is a significant gain?
So much depends on questions.
Who can decipher?
Who makes amends?

Part of a poem.
How is it possible
to understand?
Who will comprehend?
Why does a poem-or does it not-
begin or end?

When did part of a poem
become
The Poem?

Go!
Go out of that now!
Absorb and dissolve.
Resolve into memory, a part of a poem.
Between the lines and punctuation, Go-
circle toward the definition.

After You. No, You.

I don't know why we're so uncomfortable
together. No, I'm sorry-

I expect it's because of the politeness.
Something that began in the early
awkwardness of our relationship.
Something that never released its grip
from the door knob to let one of us go first.

It built in intensity until a simple thank you
led to a thank for thanking you
or excuse me for pardoning myself.

We never progressed to the stage
where pass the salt
did not begin with please
or end with thank you.

Even after five years
I can't burp in front of you.
Excuse me, I mean belch.

Last week someone told me
she saw us in the store together
but didn't approach because we seemed
so engrossed in each other,

like honeymooners.
We wait for each other
to stop waiting.

The only time we discuss anything intimate
is when we travel a long distance in the car.
We direct our words toward the windshield,
eyes trained toward the white-lined shoulders
as they zing over the horizon behind us.

Catching the Red-Eye

It's important that you know
I have the same dream.

The one where the train
rocks through the darkness.
The one where the conductor
asks for our tickets
but you've misplaced them.

The dream where we ride
the black iron backs
of smooth train tracks
straight to the end of the line
though we arrive at the same station
we began from last night
over and over again.

Bedtime At The Garden's Edge

I rise from the chaise and go
to the edge of the garden,
stand beneath the grape arbor
in shadow of stripe, globe and leaf.

Muggy evening approaches.
There begins the click and tick
of small things that live
in the new mown grass.

The chirp and chirr of day's-end,
when the moon overtakes the lawn

and I stay

your hand as it reaches up
to pull night down-No,
Let's see what it offers tonight.

We wait still as statues
white against dark blades
of yucca that slice evening
into short fingernails of less-light.

Fireflies pop on and off,
earthbound stars in miniature
strobe about our heads.

We realize it is not we
who wait for dusk to arrive,

but the twinkle of twilight
poised upon the eyelid of our lives.

It waits to tuck us in
with an eclipse of coverlet
slowly pulled up to our chins.

It's the dawn of darkness crouched
upon the windowsill of our slumber
that turns its great face to ours,
kisses our cheeks, smoothes
our bright brows, wishes us,
whispering-
sweet sweet dreams.

Gunpowder River Poetry is Copyright © 2003 by Denis M. Garrison.

All rights are retained by the poets.