Also by David Sloan from Deerbrook Editions The Irresistible In-Between
A Rising & Other Poems
David Sloan
deerbrook editions
published by
Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions first edition
Š 2020 by David Sloan, all rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-7343884-0-4
Table of Contents I. A Rising 13 Sound-Traps and Trumpets 14 Muddying the Waters 15 Three Moments 17 Lesser Half 18 Fathers’ Hands 19 Becoming the Target 20 Teacher Packing 21 Little Egypt, Illinois 24 Odysseus Owed 25 Dear Teetcher 27 Why I Scattered My Best Friend’s Ashes at the Ballpark 28 How I Scattered My Best Friend’s Ashes at the Ballpark 29 Epithalamion 31 Giving Voice 32 II. How to Lie 35 Two Lies to Believe In 36 When Lying Is Close to the Truth 38 Kindling 39 After the Wash 40 Cockeyed Lazarus 41 That Chicken Bone 43 Del Sarto’s Final Face 44 Pound of Flesh 45 Zaide 46 Agiocochook 47 Transfigured 48 Unspoken 50 What Looms 51 III. Going like Gaudí 55 Printless 57 Persistent Uncertainty 58 Threshold Choir 60 Couple 61
Taking My Car Keys Away One-Lane Covered Bridge Down to One Holiday on Ice Dylan Had It Wrong Eel Fork The Watchers Church on a Lake A Moderate Hike Tandem Bike
62 63 64 65 67 69 70 71 73 74
IV Showtime! 77 Endings 81 Every Little Breeze 82 Reverie 84 Stolen Moment 86 Hard to Breathe 87 Tiny Racket 88 Playscape 89 Competitive Grandparenting 90 Dear Nature 91 Two Approaches to Gardening 93 Unruly 94 Tidying 95 By Design 96 Above Dingle 97 Acknowledgments 99 About the author 101
For Christine, My Lifelong A-Muse
A Rising & Other Poems
Part I
A Rising Rocks may be inert elsewhere; not here. From Cadillac, a pod of stone whales cruises into sunrise. The very ledge we stand on, stippled pink and orange, flickers and hums. At Little Hunter’s Beach, baritone breakers shrug question after question. A tenor chorus of polished pebbles sizzle back, and close by the fortress, Otter Cliff, a once-desert miracle now recurs daily at the shoreline—fog, then fire in the sky, then boulders into loaves.
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Sound-Traps and Trumpets I get stuck more on sounds than words. Sometimes I swallow them whole, smooth as streambed stones; more often I impale myself trying to vault an iron-pronged fence, flail like a kelp-twisted swimmer, struggle to muffle-scream my way free, but only bubbles escape. I notice sound-traps others set; sibilant assonance of Please, Russia, please get us the emails, silky consonance and limpid rhythm of Rocket Man’s on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime, elegant alliterative irony of Politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government. Sometimes I wake myself from a sound sleep, humming riffs and ditties. Their overflow compels this stitching, word weaving, where the only real difference between words and swords is the shape of a snake.
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Muddying the Waters The trail, rock-clogged and sodden after last night’s rain, curls along the lake’s edge, past goldenrod, cedar, the last asters, until it opens to a cove, sickle-thin, half-hidden by swamp maple, ringed by reeds. I slip off my pack and sweat-soaked shirt, then ease into the water, clear until the bottom billows up murk with each step. It’s so shallow I clear the tree line before I’m in open water up to my chin. Thoreau stood submerged like this for hours, fully clothed, but he preferred swamps, the gnat-hum, sizzle of dragonfly wings, skimming jesus bugs, wild huckleberry and bilberry, the bracing fragrance of decay. Such attention to minutiae. How could he not, after losing his brother to a nicked finger? One careless pass stropping a rusty razor, he awoke to stiffness in his jaw, then sweats, seizures, frenzied final gasps. . . I exhale under water, follow the bubbles up. When I surface, an eerie quiet fills the cove. The only other witness stands unmoving in the reeds, a heron, silhouetted question mark, 15
whose sudden downward beak flick and bent-winged takeoff become one kind of answer.
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Three Moments The first was as a child, when I stood at the crest of the hill overlooking my house. In the heat of the day, a rattlesnake, diamond-backed, indifferent to me, rippled through the brush like a perpetual shiver. The second: a promontory in the San Juans, sun setting on the right, full moon opposite rising like a slow surprise, silver and gold petals strewn on the water, and I became the fulcrum of a celestial seesaw. A third occurred last winter when, in blue-shadowed whiteness, I heard the stillness breathing. A cardinal darted down to the railing, saw a reflection and attacked the glass, its fury an alarm and a scarlet reminder.
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Lesser Half He took all the usual precautions: fenced-in yard, spring-loaded stair gate, fireplace guard, child-proofed shelves. So he can be forgiven—in some future life—for not thinking about a concrete block he dumped next to a halfempty rain barrel. On this balmy fall day, a pile of jumping leaves and papa, thirty feet away, pulling carrots, his back to his daughter, two-and-a-half last week. It took him that unhurried minute for a hush to sink in, after a child’s ditty trailed off. Then his alarm, repeating her name in a rising pitch, the soundless scream. How out of place she seemed, like a rag doll in the road he would swerve to miss, or remains of half a plane showering a sleepy suburb. She looked so peaceful, as if beholding the oceanic abyss. He tugged her out by her overall straps, pounded her back, blew too frantically into her mouth before fumbling for his phone. They came quickly, prayers half-answered. Nowadays they can bring a child back from beyond the brink, at least a part of her.
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Fathers’ Hands Carving a bow for my son, who wants a weapon to terrorize squirrels and deliver the world, I snag the blade, fumble the whittle stroke and slice my finger. The cut oozes. My hand is sturdy, scarred, nothing like my father’s— unmarked, maple-colored. His hands stitched gashes without a flinch. They mortared rock walls to hold a hillside up. On the violin, his fingers flew like wingtips. Once as a child I saw sparks spray from that smoking bow. He tried to teach my hands how to drive a nail straight, which spans would bear a load and which would snap, how to follow the grain of things, how to hear notes first, then pluck them as if out of a peach tree. A single feather in his hair, my son stalks the squirrel, holds the bow steady, draws back the shaft, aims, lets fly. Target and archer are unruffled by the miss. He bounds over to the arrow, takes it in his nimble fingers, so like his father’s father’s, and nocks the end, eager to aim, miss and aim again.
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Becoming the Target after Sharpshooter by Winslow Homer I hav a payn in my side that wont go awey. Havent slep muche on cownt of the constant shellin I miss you and my littel ones more on sabath deys like this wen the suns out and the cricks babbelin. Excerpt from a Confederate soldier’s letter With measured stillness, he balances on the pine branch, one leg braced against the crotch of the trunk, the other almost casually suspended on a column of air. The muzzle rests on a limb he steadies with his hand. He squints through his scope, a glint of metal and slash of gray in his sights. The feathery pressure of his finger on the trigger, gap between hammer and cap, cartridge and target, all confide an intimate detachment. The moment holds its breath. Does he pause until the hand scrawls the letter’s last words? Does he take time to think beyond this moment, when a rifle kick, puff of smoke and luminous red insignia will invite a long-distance reply, leaving a vacant perch and quivering limb?
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Teacher Packing My new little friend sits snugly, holstered and hungry in my waist band, as undetectable as that bucket of water students rigged above the math room door to douse old biddy McCracken crab walking in late. My Glock is the favorite of discriminating shooters everywhere. Three days of training, I get why. It’s not snappy, the recoil less mule kick than hard kiss, even if you lock your elbows, as long as you squ—eeeeze instead of pull. Tried different carry spots. Nixed small of the back; be wary of hard and pointy objects behind you. Shoulder holster was bad-ass—very Eliot Ness—but required a button-down vest or baggy cardigan. Ankle site was too slow for a pull; what am I going to say—’Scuse me, you AR-15-totingAllah-doting lunatic while I bend down to, uh, lace up my hunting boots? I have to laugh at admin, their gleaming toy guns tucked away
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in a biometric safe in Langford’s office. How much carnage will an unhinged wacko unleash before someone locates their cojones, jitters to the safe and stills shaking fingers long enough to spring the lock? I prefer fate in my own steady hands. Practiced for weeks in the woods behind my barn, blasting cans and beer bottles, perforating terrorist-silhouetted cutouts, before turning the barrel on pesky squirrels and, yes, even Maloney’s thieving, mangy mutt slinking toward my chicken coop. It’s true; packing a piece really does feel like the great equalizer. Piece = Peace. I almost wish those hooligans in Health class would get lippy, try dangling dorky Phipps by his ankles out the window again. How surprised would they be if I whipped out the Glock and fired toward the ceiling a little warning, or maybe even grazed
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that greaseball Gomez, buzzed off an earlobe or tip of a thumb. That would command their attention, prove I’m half wrathful god and half guardian angel, the classroom sentinel where vigilance never nods off, where my students will feel the comfort that comes from knowing I hold them all in my arms and in my sights.
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Little Egypt, Illinois Like most plagues, it hardly registers at first— a low-country road at night, deep summer; corn fields crackle and simmer. Amid marsh elders, cicadas rehearse. A single illuminated hopper squats along the shoulder; we don’t even need to swerve to miss. Past some reeds, the air turns gelatinous, headlights pick up several tiny leaping arcs, webbed blurs water-glossy and wild to cross a pitted road to some undefiled pond. They must be scouts in the dark; suddenly we head into a maelstrom, surrounded by legions of frog clans leaping as if to escape bedlam or a tsunami of fire, an exodus so grim that nothing stems the onslaught, not the thudding against metal like horizontal hail, nor their terrible pop-eyes nor their bloodless corpses caught in soundless thwumps beneath tires. Swerving now is useless. Black crosshatches mark their last landings. We drive breakneck, try the radio to muffle the racket, settle nerves, but every report’s about ISIS; in myth, goddess who revivified the sundered body of her brother-mate, made him the haughty, deathless lord over the desert realm of death.
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Owed to Odysseus Gods almighty, that little jaunt to Paris and back really took longer than it should have, given my crackerjack knack for celestial navigation. But the weather was absurdly uncooperative— on that oddest sea; so much for that mild Mediterranean climate— and the crew turned into a mob of mutinous pigs whenever I took a nap. What’s the fun of a cruise if I have to deal with every whiny demand on a winedark sea? Please, O, O please, let us eat more lotus; and Why do YOU get all the gifts? We want to know what’s in the bag. . . As for the sacred cattle barbeque, I warned them to make do with olives, grape leaves, maybe a little calamari, but no, they needed beef, even after the disgusting display of that cannibal in his claustrophobic cave. Sure, I made a few missteps, but every mortal has his hiccups and psyche-flops. I admit that incident with the one-eyed flesh-eating freak was a tight spot— no sane Greek sailor wants to end up as some overgrown troll’s appetizer, but hey, if it hadn’t been for my canny sheep escapade, we’d all have ended up that anthropophagite’s dessert. I know you’re going to point tsk tsk-ingly, bring up my Circe fling, and Penny’s perfect fidelity for 20 arid years, but hey, as you feminists like to ask, Isn’t turning men into swine redundant? I agree; men are pigs in every epoch, but I’m not going 25
to apologize for jumping into anyone’s flawless bed; besides, that sorceress sure knew what to do with a magic wand, if you know what I mean. The rest of the trip was just one annoyance after another; Hades was stuffy, crowded and full of surprises—especially seeing Mom looking so shady. The sirens? Disappointing; I was expecting better harmonies. Poseidon’s pout-storm left me feeling clipped—so I had to spend a few years as a sex slave to a nymph on a paradise island. Could have been worse, but I was anxious to get home and I knew Penny would be getting worried. And what did I find when I finally hobbled back to the manor? I know beggars can’t be choosers, but returning to a houseful of leeches, boors and leering riffraff was the final straw. I showed them Athena too; let’s just say I had to iron out some wrinkles in the Great Hall, then grabbed my Pen, made sweet love in the olive-trunk bed on the second floor; below, the handmaids I didn’t hang lugged away a hundred souls, all unsuitable— not your straight arrow sorts—and lit a heartwarming bonfire.
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Deer Teetcher: I’m righting you this note instead of my book retort on Gilgamush because circus stances perspired against me last nite. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have procreated until the last minuet, but to be perfectly canned it, I’ve been horribly buzzy this past weak, what with my dans reprisal and my grand maw’s funnel. She was only 68, which is very sad, and even satyr, she died when she joked on a chicken boner and couldn’t coffin it out. It was very upsetting to intend the fumigation, and to see grantmaw all cosmically made up in the basket so she didn’t even look like her reel dead self. Then the nexus mourning, my liddle sister had a sissy fit when I told her to turn down her Itunas (I hate Justin Beaver’s stuff even when she doesn’t cranky up the valium) and we had a whore bull splat witch ended with her dumbing my eyepad into the toylet. I almost thru my serial bowel at her, but I dint—wuznt that bigamy? Anywho, I’m reelly truelly sorry cuz I wanted to rite abowt that toteally harry dude Inky doo and his ex-raided hoocup with the sluttie prostrate toot. To be onist, if their were more seens like that won four all are other book assininemints, I’d problee be dewing mulch bitter in Inglish. Butt my riting is inproving, doncha thick? since-early, Tiffany
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Why I Scattered My Best Friend’s Ashes at the Ballpark Because his widow asked; because I’d missed the funeral and needed redemption for a long string of undeeds; because I was in Philadelphia for only the second time ever and he was a Phillies phanatic, so wholly that ph’s replaced f ’s in all of our emails: How does it pheel to have your phailing Mets phlogged and bephucked in such a satisphying phashion by the phearsome, phabulous Phils? Because it would be risky and illegal— two of his favorite fascinations—and to pull it off I would have to be audacious and cagey, two of my weakest traits; because five years into the deserted dugout, shuttered kiosks, inert turnstiles of his absence, I could not conjure his image without seeing that red hat with the jaunty P and frayed brim; and because I have felt for too long like a lost mitt tossed into a forgotten box in a cobwebbed basement, waiting to be brushed off, oiled, reshaped, and readied for a catch with an old friend.
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How I Scattered My Best Friend’s Ashes in the Ballpark It would have to be a covert operation, Mission Impossible-esque, with me in Cruise’s role, aided by a cadre of wily accomplices who would know when to wisecrack, when to keep worshipfully mum; who wouldn’t get sidetracked by hot dog and beer vendors—especially Tröegs Dream Weaver Wheat—or spooked by watchful stadium police. His prescient widow had poured some ashes from the urn into a prescription pill container that I could pocket. We passed the first hurdle at the gate; security only seemed interested in purses, backpacks and metal. I couldn’t just stroll past the ushers down to the field boxes, hop the barrier, waltz to the mound and sprinkle his remains on the mound where the immortal Steve Carlton had fogged his filthy fastball and roundhouse hook past befuddled hitters (confessed one: Hitting his slider was like trying to drink coffee with a fork). Nor could I cuff-dump ashes on the concrete stadium aisles Shawshank-style; no eternal glory in being swept up with peanut shells, stray popcorn and half-squeezed
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