Daughter of the Rain New and Selected Poems
Gail Gauldin Moore
deerbrook editions
publ i s h e d b y Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions
f i r st e di t ion Š 2019 by Gail Gauldin Moore All rights reserved ISBN: 978-0-9600293-8-9 Book design by Jeffrey haste
Contents Acknowledgments 7 Queen’s House 15 Tincture of Days 16 Book Covers 17 Ramifications 18 Wounding of a Light 19 Wounding of a Light #2 20 Nomads of the Heart 21 January 1, 1963 22 When I, G, was Poet 23 Unpackaged Disorder 24 Pieces 25 Memories Out of Time 27 Walking on Glass 28 The Fine Tissue of Being 29 Snapshot 30 Canyon County Soliloquy 31 Lady Justice 32 A Visit 33 Soul on Fire 34 December Minutes 35 Inveterate Courage 36 Spillage 37 Seizures of the Heart 38 Grief Spun Out in Legalese 39 Renaissance 40 Defender of the Heart 41 Understanding in Parts 42 Frail Contingencies 43 A Recording for Future Use 44 Meeting the Needs of the Dead 45 A Political Reverie 46 History 47 For Jose 48 For Jose #2 49 Razor’s edge 50 Josephine 51 Mutter 52
I Speak for Your Eyes Unmanageable Heart The Fine Tissue of Being #2 To My Familiars Stinging Nettles Small Houses For D & D Sara A Woman Code Blue For Todd Metanoia Unseemly Disclosures Psychotherapeutic Dialogue Pretensions of Mrs. Holly Windinchat Old Man in a Dugout Vital Signs E. F. Scanning the Logic Fifty-Six Years Later Stone Resistance An Imperative Request For Christopher Vying for Certitude A Core Petition Network of Parts A Little Light Music Christ is a Rainforest Second Words Spiritual Autobiography Daughter of the Rain
53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 66 67 69 70 71 72 73 74 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
Reference Notes
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Acknowledgements My thanks to, Marjorie Power, Sonia Greenfield and Maura Harvey. Special thanks to those who saw me in my own eyes and gave me writing room, especially Brendan Constantine, Christine Candleland, but also Annette Robinson and Gedda Ives.
Poems in this book have previously appeared in Rivertalk, Cedar Hills Press, Verve, Cedar Hills Review, Brick House, Daybreak, Prophetic Voices, California Quarterly, Stepping Stones Magazine, Rise Up Review, and Stand Magazine.
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To my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren
Prelude Dear Aubrey, I go to bed with my Dream horse every night. In the morning, I’ll tell you a poem. You are my poem. You are my dream horse. I hope you like me. I am your poem. But I like you, Aubrey. And hope you are loving to me. All the time, I am loving you. Shannon (three years)
“In the gifted child, it is not so much the terrible things that happen to us in childhood, but the terrible things we do to ourselves, to keep them from happening again.” —Alice Miller, Drama of the Gifted Child
“The poems to come are for you and me and are not for most people.” —e.e. cummings
Queen’s House The queen of hearts she made some tarts all on a summer’s day. The knave of hearts he stole those tarts and took them quite away. This is for you, Susan Roanoke leaving by a side door, having left your dreams outside. This is for you –half proud—half repentant. To you, most certainly. No one can say you did not dance in time, or rise to fall and rise to fall again, or slap the moon’s face when love went old and dry. No one can say you did not make a leap for grace. One cannot say you did not try. I myself think of you with enormous affection. But I must mention you hidden face, disfigured by the accidents of birth and place. I’m glad I found my tongue in time to ministrant against your aptitude for disorder and disgrace. Still, you should know that we admire your effort to be discreet. Fall’s child, coming lately into Spring, stay awake and spend awhile inside the house of Kings. And praise the Queen of Hearts as well, for the Knave he stole her plan. Still she moves with grace through careful days and over stunted land.
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Tincture of Days The world is a bridge. Cross it, but build no house upon it. —Jesus Christ I am an old man locked in the house of my unknowing, mixing paths with time, closing seams, crossing bridges, building houses on them, wearing disingenuous clothes in July heat. Remember when we were children how much room there was? And who was the lover who whispered my name, in days of rogue and plenty—in days of root and bird? I am an old man on sea-ground swelling, wearing warm clothes in summer. I am an old man in settled time. My hair is the color of ancient sin. I speak from the poetry of my senses and the hands of days are thin.
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Book Covers You must not think of me when I am dead. You must think of me now, small and stalled, embittered by the lack of always and the straight-laced rejections of the moon. Annul the wind. Put all prayers to rest, fold up the corners of the world. Then and now won’t mix and my dreamscapes are up in arms. Days have started to sprint or sputter. Yet we are great books in an obscure cover. Should I put cucumbers on my eyes? Buy only grass-fed meat? I’ll call you soon, not later than sometime, but before the wind changes your hair.
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Ramifications I write about ramifications: a lost work of art, islands. I don’t care about the Gypsy Moth who seems to have no calling. I write about bones which are unbearable by themselves. A cricket is singing somewhere. His singing is strong, then weak. His trouble is unexplainable.
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Wounding of a Light I was four years old. Because I was a bad girl, my mother drank Lysol. She said it was because of that—my being a bad girl. I promised I would be a different girl. I said she could have my eyes. I said she could have my doll Susie Miranda. In the hospital, she had blistered lips. My father said, “You won’t be like other children.” I became cloudy. I became a porcupine’s quill. I pawned my heart, or cupped it in my hand and let it spill over each good season. I called the fire department, though the only fire was within. I called my mother Mommy for the longest time. I had a dog with a bigger name. It was never a question of forgiveness because of the reasons—given.
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Wounding of a Light #2 It is morning: I want to call my mother. The years since her death have been windy. It is morning: nothing warms me, not the red coat nor the blue one. It is morning, and in the morning embers from childhood float by. “On the mountain stands a lady who she is I do not know. All she wants is gold and silver. All she wants is a nice little girl.� In the morning, I am a long syllabus of sighs. I bow and scrape to an old God with two faces.
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Nomads of the Heart My people have fallen out of their photograph. The sun and moon wear messy clothes. I have nowhere to put this knowledge. I sit in a back row, following morning to morning, while the privileged build their privilege around me. If I stay inside my shadow I will not see them. I cannot stay in my shadow with no memories. My childhood remembers, but it has backed up and spills over my best effort. The privileged go around me. But my shadow is not diffident. If I scream, it will cover the sky. My childhood lived near the sky. It always wrote what it knew and there were no prompts.
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January 1, 1963 for my father This is the day my father went from here to there. He could create uprisings in a stone, create tunes from the sky’s infusions. This is the day I began rehearsals for life without him. I formed new branches on the branchless tree and exquisite sensors for the tousled brain. This new growth governed my middle years and kept consistency going. Now I am a dispirited partner in an affair with time, waiting to close one gate and open another.
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When I, G, Was Poet I wanted to scream over the din of the world’s gyrations. When I was Mother, I was part mistake. And when I was Child, I was hope’s envoy. So it stood to reason that I became sad, became a purveyor of underworlds and large dissents. I still do not know where to aim my love. Now I, G, retract my deal with death.
Sometimes I invite murder.
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Unpackaged Disorder My father slid on liquid fire My mother made a necklace
for the moon.
My sister had organdy bridesmain dresses and a staying alive gift in our what-of-it house. She slept on the rain I slept on my side gifted in flee or fight and wore hand-me-down
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disorder.
Pieces Mother, a featured event When I was five, my mother drank Lysol. She said it was because I was a bad girl. If she hadn’t said that, I would have been a different girl. Other images from childhood I had a red wagon. The wagon hurt my knee and it was hard to steer. I was always carrying something heavy. I had a red car which moved when I peddled it. I held the wheel with both hands the way my Aunt Henrietta held her steering wheel. She kept her pocket book on the other seat. She was purposeful. I was secure. Other things that mattered My green taffeta dress. Also, the summer one, made from oil cloth with printed flowers. Father: an algorithm of a higher sort I love you, why can’t you come back? Even now I ask this, though it has been fifty years. More images from childhood Our telephone was black and was easy to use. We had a party line. I sometimes asked them to please hang up. The ice man came with blocks of ice. I ate the ice from the truck. The tar man came and I chewed the tar. At first it was soft, then my jaws ached. A psychiatrist told my mother I was not smart and would never make it through high school. I remember this, as he said it in front of me. The dolls in his doll house were rubber and smelled funny. Tommy Farraguto bought a chili dog with onions and he wouldn’t give me a bite. My grandfather gave us an allowance. He was a socialist, my mother said. 25
My sister and I carried picket signs in front of his apartment asking for a higher allowance. He gave it to us right away. My grandfather left my grandmother and lived with a blond woman. I didn’t blame him. Applied lessons My first perm burnt my hair off. Before that my tricycle fell over and a stick jammed into the side of my throat. Father again ( Joy) I ran to meet you over a field of grass. Much later I was smart. A teacher in college said that out loud. She said Well, she’s smart! And a student said Well that’s because she’s smart! But way before that, my family bobbed about, floating in the wake of my mother’s fall. Ends before beginnings When time past and time future meet time present, pieces recognize where they belong, and you can forgive the sins of seven generations.
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Memories Out of Time If only I had skipped the small deaths. Created whole things instead of parts, I might have been a guest speaker for the world’s good. If only I had teased peonies into my hair, using water for truth and speech for good, then everything would be counted as plenty. But as it were, spasms of caprice wore me down, and I, having had nothing to match myself, began to speak of the theology of emptiness or moral utilitarianism. Wrote scalloped phrases in the book of days. But it was for you that I wrote at all and from you, I learned a masterpiece, knowing it then first-hand but never knowing it again, except once, when everything was known.
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Walking on Glass Last night I was young— fretful— but young. Perhaps I will be young again. But now, I cannot wander beyond the length of myself. I once had a lover who checked my teeth to see if I was good enough. We drove in my car and I let him check my teeth. Some things were good enough. My father baked a ham. My mother was reassured. I remember when I was magic and my sister was a large brown eye. Did all the weeping make me shrink? Why did you leave me? Wasn’t I beautiful?
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The Fine Tissue of Being Did I ruin your speech to God? Did you choose me as your mother? Did you draw my name between “time past and time present“? If “what will come has been already,” when I go forward, will I be going back? And when I know you again, will it be for the first time? But what is the sense of going back and forth if not to find the still point? Then, is the search over? Or will it close in the ordinary, at an office supply store or at home, wearing a frayed slipper?
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