Rapid Rapid,

The last line of this sent so many chills down my spine that it even made my away message for a couple weeks, not that it would have been noticed there.

Time of the Fieldmice
Brian Swann
Poetry

An old crashed cicada dragster, hole in the roof
where they'd cut in and hauled the driver out
who, luminous, broke from their hands and,
veins swelling, whistled about the dark
perfumed season till, exhausted, he returned
to the place where fire sublimed, then folded
his wings inside his dull mummy while all round
was turning bare as a bombed-out airstrip
with odd clots of color in which the animals
recede to a core, tighter and tighter, waiting
for the wave to bounce back, scoured and solvent
from earth's outer edges. Now is the time
of the fieldmice who have eaten most of the seeds
and nibbled soap to arrowheads. Their cache
has not diminished at the bottoms of drawers,
down the backs of horsehair chairs,
at the bottom of the bed you lie in, listening
to the noise stars make on very cold nights.

Dance
Two deep sighing outpourings clasp
the yearning strings in strong discord
and then, melting off with a heavy heart,
give way to pastoral melody,
bouncing and ebbing
over the flow of celli
and the clarinet's plaintive call --
then suspended in the oboe's reach:
up a region of ill-defined tonality
sliding into a chorale
subtly hanging in this
studied sketch of tragic fatality.


Storm
The grass was for a moment
the texture of fertilized earth,
the white specks of frozen sky
embedded among the blades rippling
in unison in the wind and water,
absorbing the ache of the ground
and tugging at the corners
of this curtain of rain, waiting
patiently for the stomping
feet of clouds to run their course.

I haven't had time to write much in the past couple of days, so here's a cop-out post for the day, not only unoriginal, but not even a new poet. However, the theme here hit so true with me -- and with everybody, I'm sure that's the point -- that I had to get it down on my blog. Many thanks to the person who created the online anthology where I'm getting all my life-inspiration this week.

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
'Mend my life!'
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations --
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -- determined to save
the only life you could save.

A friend introduced to me a new poet, Mary Oliver, who writes some very simple, sublime descriptions. Note the imagery in that last line (ummpf!):

The Hawk
Mary Oliver

This morning
the hawk
rose up
out of the meadow’s browse


and swung over the lake—
it settled
on the small black dome
of a dead pine,


alert as an admiral,
its profile
distinguished with sideburns
the color of smoke,


and I said: remember
this is not something
of the red fire, this is
heaven’s fistful


of death and destruction,
and the hawk hooked
one exquisite foot
onto a last twig


to look deeper
into the yellow reeds
along the edges of the water
and I said: remember


the tree, the cave
the white lily of resurrection
and that’s when it simply lifted
its golden feet and floated


into the wind, belly-first,
and then it cruised along the lake—
all the time its eyes fastened
harder than love on some


unimportant rustling in the
yellow reeds—and then it
seemed to crouch high in the air, and then it
turned into a white blade, which fell.

Also rediscovered a poem I'd seen once before but couldn't remember the title; this poem by Yehuda Amichai was published in the New Yorker a year or two back. His verse is celebrated for its reflective and unflinching treatments of his chosen subject matter, which is often serious or violent, and you can see the way that ordinary English words acquire a new power in his grasp, in a way that only translated poetry seems to achieve:

Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
Yehuda Amichai
Tr. from the Hebrew by Leon Wieseltier

Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
on the walls of the dams,
now, when the white storks, returning,
are transformed in the middle of the firmament
into fleets of jet planes,
we will feel again how strong are the ribs
and how vigorous is the warm air in the lungs
and how much daring is needed to love on the exposed plain,
when the great dangers are arched above,
and how much love is required
to fill all the empty vessels
and the watches that stopped telling time,
and how much breath,
a whirlwind of breath,
to sing the small song of spring.

When it looks like this outside:

you know it's time to break out the vegetables and make lunch. So yesterday I cleared out the fridge and threw this together:



And today, feeling like something light and crisp, went to the store for some chicken, and found a stash of some lettuce grown in a friend's garden, with colorful results:



And yes, I love cooking.

You know it is one of many nights
First the dumb yell
A mumbled rasp of a yell filtered
Through the wall before being caught
In her windpipe. You open your eyes
And stare. Blue gray plaster
Silence of air drawn
Through a dried windpipe. Whip-cracking
of a voice, the mounting shuffle of bedsheets
Your sheets shake solidly under you, the house
Off its foundations for a brief performance
Of her nightly stampede.

Or minutes before that recognizable thud
It was maybe her humming
Her music she keeps for protection
Mournful then violent
A rise in pitch and that paranoid sound
A broken peal before
She's wrapped in sheets and on the floor
Bruise on her head, eyes drawn shut
In confusion as the lights go on.

Or you don't get up, too tired or cruel
To care, so you sleep
Your ribs
Left hanging in a hollow of disquietude
Ears pricked open
For the sound of intruders.

What did she fear? As a girl
It was the spirits she tortured herself
With, or the closeness,
The visits to the villages
Where shadows lined the streets
Of stories too often told
They aren't real, but of course --
Better if they were.

Some nights you're the anguish
You're the beacon of her searching cry
Its failure, the shriek
A requiem for the missing
Sang nightly when her eyes close
And again the loss is renewed.

You wonder where your own dreams have gone,
Whether what ceased at the chirp of wakeful birds
Burst into vapor
Is no more or really lies
Beneath the filmy surface of black crude
Like lumps or bubbles
Burst and there's the crash
Of glass and the bleating destruction of steel,
The crunch of bone that leaves you orphaned
And free at last.

If fear incarnate is what she flees
In that mad scramble
Three feet onto hard wood
Then what you seek to hide
Is rather what's unfelt, the lack thereof.

Is this remorse then, or shame?
Moaning endlessly, inaudibly
Laid in hypothesis under daylight
And given proof
When no one sees but you.