middle-aged man. When he was a boy,
going with his dad to the barbershop,
or even later, a teenager, how
could he have imagined his life
would someday allow him the privilege of
a beautiful woman to travel with,
and sleep with, and take his breakfast with?
Not only that—a woman who would
quietly cut his hair in the afternoon
in a dark city that lay under snow
3000 miles away from where he’d started.
A woman who could look at him
across the table and say,
“It’s time to put you in the barber’s
chair. It’s time somebody gave you
a haircut.”
Happiness in Cornwall
His wife died, and he grew old
between the graveyard and his
front door. Walked with a gait.
Shoulders bent. He let his clothes
go, and his long hair turned white.
His children found him somebody.
A big middle-aged woman with
heavy shoes who knew how to
mop, wax, dust, shop, and carry in
firewood. Who could live
in a room at the back of the house.
Prepare meals. And slowly,
slowly bring the old man around
to listening to her read poetry
in the evenings in front of
the fire. Tennyson, Browning,
Shakespeare, Drinkwater. Men
whose names take up space
on the page. She was the butler,
cook, housekeeper. And after
a time, oh, no one knows or cares
when, they began to dress up
on Sundays and stroll through town.
She with her arm through his.
Smiling. He proud and happy
and with his hand on hers.
No one denied them
or tried to diminish this
in any way. Happiness is
a rare thing! Evenings he
listened to poetry, poetry, poetry
in front of the fire.
Couldn’t get enough of that life.
Afghanistan
The sad music of roads lined with larches.
The forest in the distance resting under snow.
The Khyber Pass. Alexander the Great.
History, and lapis lazuli.
No books, no pictures, no knick-knacks please me.
But she pleases me. And lapis lazuli.
That blue stone she wears on her dear finger.
That pleases me exceedingly.
The bucket clatters into the well.
And brings up water with a sweet taste to it.
The towpath along the river. The footpath
Through the grove of almonds. My love
Goes everywhere in her sandals.
And wears lapis lazuli on her finger.
In a Marine Light near
Sequim, Washington
The green fields were beginning. And the tall, white
farmhouses after the tidal flats and those little sand crabs
that were ready to run, or else turn and square off, if
we moved the rock they lived under. The languor
of that subdued afternoon. The beauty of driving
that country road. Talking of Paris, our Paris.
And then you finding that place in the book
and reading to me about Anna Akhmatova’s stay there with Modigliani.
Them sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens
under his enormous old black umbrella
reciting Verlaine to each other. Both of them
“as yet untouched by their futures.” When
out in the field we saw
a bare-chested young man with his trousers rolled up,
like an ancient oarsman. He looked at us without curiosity.
Stood there and gazed indifferently.
Then turned his back to us and went on with his work.
As we passed like a beautiful black scythe
through that perfect landscape.
Eagles
It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle
dropped near our feet
at the top of Bagley Creek canyon,
at the edge of the green woods.
Puncture marks in the sides of the fish
where the bird gripped with its talons!
That and a piece torn out of the fish’s back.
Like an old painting recalled,
or an ancient memory coming back,
that eagle flew with the fish from the Strait
of Juan de Fuca up the canyon to where
the woods begin, and we stood watching.
It lost the fish above our heads,
dropped for it, missed it, and soared on
over the valley where wind beats all day.
We watched it keep going until it was
a speck, then gone. I picked up
the fish. That miraculous ling cod.
Came home from the walk and —
why the hell not?—cooked it
lightly in oil and ate it
with boiled potatoes and peas and biscuits.
Over dinner, talking about eagles
and an older, fiercer order of things.
Yesterday, Snow
Yesterday, snow was falling and all was chaos.
I don’t dream, but in the night I dreamed
a man offered me some of his whiskey.
I wiped the mouth of the bottle
and raised it to my lips.
It was like one of those dreams of falling
where, they say, if you don’t wake up
before you hit the ground,
you’ll die. I woke up! Sweating.
Outside, the snow had quit.
But, my God, it looked cold. Fearsome.
The windows were ice to the touch
when I touched them. I got back
in bed and lay there the rest of the night,
afraid I’d sleep again. And find
myself back in that dream…
The bottle rising to my lips.
The indifferent man
waiting for me to drink and pass it on again.
A skewed moon hangs on until morning,
and a brilliant sun.
Before now, I never knew what it meant
to “spring out of bed.”
All day snow flopping off roofs.
The crunch of tires and footsteps.
Next door, there’s an old fellow shoveling.
Every so often he stops and leans
on his shovel, and rests, letting
his thoughts go where they may.
Staying his heart.
Then he nods and grips his shovel.
Goes on, yes. Goes on.
Reading Something in
the Restaurant
This morning I remembered the young man
with his book, reading at a table
by the window last night. Reading
amidst the coming and going of dishes
and voices. Now and then he looked
up and passed his finger across
his lips, as if pondering something,
or quieting the thoughts inside
his mind, the going
and coming inside his mind. Then
he lowered his head and went back
to reading. That memory
gets into my head this morning
with the memory of
the girl who entered the restaurant
that time long ago and stood shaking her hair.
Then sat down across from me
without taking her coat off.
I put down whatever book it was
I was reading, and she at once
started to tell me there was
not a snowball’s
chance in hell
this thing was going to fly.
She knew it. Then I came around
to knowing it. But it was
hard. This morning, my sweet,
you ask me what’s new
in the world. But my concentration
is shot. At the table next
to ours a man laughs and laughs
and shakes his head at what
another fellow is telling him.
But what was that young man reading?
Where did that woman go?
I’ve lost my place. Tell me what it is
you wanted to know.
A Poem Not against Songbirds
Lighten up, songbirds. Give me a break.
No need to carry on this way,
even if it is morning. I need more sleep.
Where were you keeping yourselves when I was thirty?
When the house stayed dark and quiet all day,
as if somebody had died?
And this same somebody, or somebody else,
cooked a huge, morose meal for the survivors.
A meal that lasted ten years.
Go on, sweethearts. Come back in an hour,
my friends. Then I’ll be wide awake.
You’ll see. This time I can promise.
Late Afternoon, April 8, 1984
A little sport-fishing boat
wallowing
in the rough waters of the Strait.
I put the glasses on him.
Old guy in a canvas hat,
looking grim. Worried,
as he should be.
The other boats have come in
long ago, counting
their blessings.
This fisherman
had to be clear out to Green Point
where giant halibut school.
When the wind struck!
Such force it bent the trees
and caused the water
to stand up.
As it’s standing now.
But he’ll make it!
If he keeps the bow into
the wind, and if he’s lucky.
Even so I look up
the Coast Guard emergency number.
But I don’t use it.
I keep watching—an hour, maybe less —
who knows what passes
through his mind, and mine,
in that time?
Then he turns in to the harbor,
where at once it grows calmer.
Takes off his hat then and waves it
like mad—like an old-time cowboy!
Something he won’t ever forget.
You betcha.
Me neither.
My Work
I look up and see them starting
down the beach. The young man
is wearing a packboard to carry the baby.
This leaves his hands free
so that he can take one of his wife’s hands
in his, and swing his other. Anyone can see
how happy they are. And intimate. How steady.
They are happier than anyone else, and they know it.
Are gladdened by it, and humbled.
They walk to the end of the beach
and out of sight. That’s it, I think,
and return to this thing governing
my life. But in a few minutes
they come walking back along the beach.
The only thing different
is that they have changed sides.
He is on the other side of her now,
the ocean side. She is on this side.
But they are still holding hands. Even more
in love, if that’s possible. And it is.
Having been there for a long time myself.
Theirs has been a modest walk, fifteen minutes
down the beach, fifteen minutes back.
They’ve had to pick their way
over some rocks and around huge logs,
tossed up from when the sea ran wild.
They walk quietly, slowly, holding hands.
They know the water is out there
but they’re so happy that they ignore it.
The love in their young faces. The surround of it.
Maybe it will last forever. If they are lucky,
and good, and forebearing. And careful. If they
go on loving each other without stint.
Are true to each other—that most of all.
As they will be, of course, as they will be,
as they know they will be.
I go back to my work. My work goes back to me.
A wind picks up out over the water.
The Trestle
I’ve wasted my time this morning, and I’m deeply ashamed.
I went to bed last night thinking about my dad.
About that little river we used to fish—Butte Creek —
near Lake Almanor. Water lulled me to sleep.
In my dream, it was all I could do not to get up
and move around. But when I woke early this morning
I went to the telephone instead. Even though
the river was flowing down there in the valley,
in the meadows, moving through ditch clover.
Fir trees stood on both sides of the meadows. And I was there.
A kid sitting on a timber trestle, looking down.
Watching my dad drink from his cupped hands.
Then he said, “This water’s so good.
I wish I could give my mother some of this water.”
My dad still loved her, though she was dead
and he’d been away from her for a long time.
He had to wait some more years
until he could go where she was. But he loved
this country where he found himself. The West.
For thirty years it had him around the heart,
and then it let him go. He went to sleep one night
in a town in northern California
and didn’t wake up. What could be simpler?
I wish my own life, and death, could be so simple.
So that when I woke on a fine morning like this,
after being somewhere I wanted to be all night,
somewhere important, I could move most naturally
and without thinking about it, to my desk.
Say I did that, in the simple way I’ve described.
From bed to desk back to childhood.
From there it’s not so far to the trestle.
And from the trestle I could look down
and see my dad when I needed to see him.
My dad drinking that cold water. My sweet father.
The river, its meadows, and firs, and the trestle.
That. Where I once stood.
I wish I could do that
without having to plead with myself for it.
And feel sick of myself
for getting involved in lesser things.
I know it’s time I changed my life.
This life—the one with its complications
and phone calls—is unbecoming,
and a waste of time.
I want to plunge my hands in clear water. The way
he did. Again and then again.
For Tess
Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping,
as they say here. It’s rough, and I’m glad
I’m not out. Glad I fished all day
on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back
and forth. I didn’t catch anything. No bites
even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!
I carried your dad’s pocketknife and was followed
for a while by a dog its owner called Dixie.
At times I felt so happy I had to quit
fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,
listening to the sound the water made,
and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
r /> that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.
For a while I even let myself imagine I had died —
and that was all right, at least for a couple
of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.
As I was lying there with my eyes closed,
just after I’d imagined what it might be like
if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.
I opened my eyes then and got right up
and went back to being happy again.
I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.
Ultramarine
…sick
With exile, they yearn homeward now, their eyes
Tuned to the ultramarine, first-star-pierced dark
Reflected on the dark, incoming waves…
— DEREK MAHON
from “Mt Gabriel” in Antarctica (1985)
I
This Morning
This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk—determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a field strewn with rocks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out the usual musings on
what was right, and what was wrong—duty,
tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat
with my former wife. All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.