If I could tell you

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

-W. H. Auden

Happy Christmas!

Making a Meal Out of It

Hoboken snowtime and the big slushy
mounds are the laundry of the future,
with next-door’s mortician rating
my clumsy shoveling by shouting:
“You’d never make it as a grave digger!”

Time pulse quickens with walkers
and curb lackeys merged in the quadrille
of symbiosis. In local shop windows
they sell devices capable
-----------of reordering speech. I pass. I have
that exile’s sense of recreation
& believe rebirth is possible
from the wreck of our common misery
& that songs are clear when sung

by heroes, but not in this epoch. Niggling
winter dreams fueled by the rhythms
of the world’s desire. This is my version.
I know the dimensions. I live by a river.

-Joel Lewis, 2006

I just discovered this today--Christmas is Happening, a musical Advent calendar.

It's nice. So, on this fourth Sunday of Advent (peace, in the tradition I've been taught), passing it along. Happy Christmas. And for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas (as well as everyone else), there will be a lunar eclipse on the morning on the winter solstice, which evidently hasn't happened since 1378. So.

Tomorrow I pack up, move out, move on--but I won't have internet then so let's just pretend like it's today. I'll be going up to Massachusetts to be with my family for the holidays and then some. Right now the future is fairly nebulous, but I think that might be okay.

Mountain Life

In summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O'er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.

But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands up the archipelago,
A home of shining peace.
The mountain eagle seems to sail
A ship far seen at even;
And over all a serried pale
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
Fronts westward threatening heaven.

But look, a steading nestles, close
Beneath the ice-fields bound,
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
The quiet home surround.
Here place and people seem to be
A world apart, alone; --
Cut off from men by spate and scree
It has a heaven more broad, more free,
A sunshine all its own.

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
Half shadow, half aflame;
The deep, still vision of her gaze
Was never word to name.
She names it not herself, nor knows
What goal my be its will;
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
It bears her where the sunset glows,
Or, maybe, further still.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
Where close the glaciers jut;
Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds
Stone byre and pine-log hut.
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
The winter's well-worn tasks; --
But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
One sunset in the mountain pays
For all their winter asks.

-Henrik Ibsen, 1851

I've made a playlist each month for the past sixth months. Here's December's, abridged slightly because some of the tracks on it couldn't be uploaded. And because I'm about to go microwave leftovers for dinner, here's a couple winter recipes. Enjoy.
(Ironically, my last eats post was also a music post with an 8tracks playlist--evidently music and food go hand-in-hand in my mind, regardless of season.)

The Egg Had Frozen, an Accident.
I Thought of My Life

The egg had frozen, an accident.
I thought of my life.
I heated the butter anyhow.
The shell peeled easily,
inside it looked
both translucent and boiled.
I moved it around in the pan.
It melted, the whites
first clearing to liquid,
then turning solid
and white again like good laundry.
The yolk kept its yolk shape.
Not fried, not scrambled,
in the end it was cooked.
With pepper and salt, I ate it.
My life that resembled it ate it.
It tasted like any other wrecked thing,
eggish and tender, a banquet.

-Jane Hirshfield, 2010

New York, again.

Beautiful Sunday

The streets are empty as a jar

I could begin an important job
something that would give me satisfaction

but I wander to the windows
one after another
all morning long

Their brightness oppresses me

The words of one sentence
shake against each other
the first forgotten
the last trailing off

We should have gone to the orchard today
instead of yesterday in the rain

I can't get started
reminding myself of too many things
feeling the presence of others
which isn't their fault

I could walk, taking a book
or leaving that behind
have my coffee outside in the sun

but somehow things lack savor
although I'm not despairing

Beautiful---Beautiful---Sunday!

and I can go nothing

the day has already been taken

It's been waiting
but I don't want to lie down

-Miriam Levine, 1976

Miriam Levine has a blog, incidentally.

8.

whisperings exist, whisperings exist
harvest, history, and Halley's

comet exist; hosts exist, hordes
high commanders, hollows, and within the hollows
half-shadows, within the half-shadows occasional

hares, occasional hanging leaves shading the hollow where
bracken exists, and blackberries, blackberries
occasional hares hidden under the leaves

and gardens exist, horticulture, the elder tree's
pale flowers, still as a seething hymn;
the half-moon exists, half-silk, and the whole
heliocentric haze that has dreamed
these devoted brains, their luck, and human skin

human skin and houses exist, with Hades
rehousing the horse and the dog and the shadows
of glory, hope; and the river of vengeance;
hail under stoneskies exists, the hydrangeas'
white, bright-shining, blue or greenish

fogs of sleep, occasionally pink, a few
sterile patches exist, and beneath
the angled Armageddon of the arching heavens, poison,
the poison helicopter's humming harps above the henbane,
shepherd's purse, and flax, henbane, shepherd's purse
and flax; this last, hermetic writing,
written otherwise only by children; and wheat,
wheat in wheatfields exists, the head-spinning

horizontal knowledge of wheatfields, half-lives,
famine, and honey; and deepest in the heart,
otherwise as ever only deepest in the heart,
the roots of the hazel, the hazel that stands
on the hillslope of the heart, tough and hardy,
an accumulated weekday of Angelic orders;
high-speed, hyacinthic in its decay, life,
on earth as it is in heaven

-from Alphabet, Inger Christensen, 1981

I don't usually reveal my sources, because usually they aren't very interesting, but I stumbled upon this poem through an article called "7 Poets You Should Be Reading" and Wednesday poemday seemed an appropriate venue to share the link. And the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving seemed an appropriate time to share this particular poem. It has an interesting story of its own, which you can read here, along with some of the other stanzas, if you aren't too busy enjoying the holiday.

New York City today: Central Park, Times Square, Chinatown (because you can't visit everything in eight hours)--starting and ending in Grand Central Station. I took the commuter train in and out of town, and now I'm quite sleepy and my feet are sore, as they should be. Right now, that's the beginning and the end of my thoughts on the matter. I probably should have waited to post this until tomorrow--but here we are.

The Sandpiper

Across the lonely beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, but by bit,
The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud, black and swift, across the sky:
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white light-houses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,
One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye;
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My drift-wood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

-Celia Thaxter, 1883

Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

-Elizabeth Bishop, 1965

I haven't written much about my new work here, and I suppose it's high time. Although I'm working at an arboretum, it's really more accurate to say I park my computer at an arboretum. My job has to do with 'regional conservation', which means we do a lot of work with land trusts and also partnerships of land trusts trying to conserve more land in an organized way. This weekend we went to Wells, Maine, for a meeting of regional conservation partnerships that my boss, along with the other intern here, organized. My work mostly centers around making maps that will help various groups with their efforts, so I just got to enjoy the fruits of their labor (and videotape the whole thing).

I have off work today because it's Veteran's day, continuing my current employer's tradition of giving me the day off for illegitimate holidays. I went down to the Westport Farmer's Market, largely because their website promised tamales, and the boy working the stand told another worker the library was closed because it was "veterinary day." Fair enough.

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

-Ted Kooser

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

-E. E. Cummings, 1923

On Halloween, we went hiking in the Hopper, which is haunted (not really) (maybe).

By Immersion

To get a pure pumpkin,
one with sweet, smooth flesh, you had to
pollinate by hand and tape the blossom
closed. Otherwise, the plants would cross,
get fertilized by any squash around.

Black horses wouldn’t stop rolling
in the dust, in pleasure,
legs up and out from under every load,
until their intestines tangled.
Or, at least that’s what was said in warning,

like they said Hellbenders,
two foot long, slime covered salamanders
that filled the river, were evil.
Hellbenders breathed through loose skins,
filtering that water for decades,

and I swam in it, I went in deep.

-Rose McLarney, 2010

All Wet and Shine

It sounds like the cracks and clicks of the house settling

as the room warms in morning, it sounds like a fan

whispered up. It tastes of wood smoke--sweet and then stale.

It looks like the curve of a mountain

under streaked sky, and everything pale blue

just before sunrise, everything translucent,

even stone. The stone is blue, it tastes, after all,

like tea in a glass cup, it feels like wanting a

blanket on your lap, nesting, hovering around

a wound, no a break, where the mountain opens,

wanting to heal, to soften the gap, to close it,

like an empty room inside of me, and I want to give it fire

and fill it with humming, and make it hum

and vibrate--the resound of a chamber

opened and filled with air--with beating.

I want to fill the gap

but it keeps opening, pressing

inside to outside, unhousing

and unseeding the husk of me.

I am not a house with an empty room,

a broken window in a wall.

I am not sleep battered open by a dream,

not even a mountain turning solid again

as light rises, I am not a cave in the mountain. I

am not I--that's what it feels like

today, waking alone in late winter. A spider

hanging her web in the doorjamb, spinning in three

dimensions--to catch what passes,

trembling with capture, all wet and shine,

moments when everything is a door.

-Cynthia Huntington, 2010

For cold(er) weather: 1 song 2 ways, neither of which is the original. But sometimes that's okay.

Essential Beauty

In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be. High above the gutter
A silver knife sinks into golden butter,
A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and
Well-balanced families, in fine
Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,
Even their youth, to that small cube each hand
Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs
Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars
(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats
By slippers on warm mats,
Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
Who now stands newly clear,
Smiling, and recognizing, and going dark.

-Philip Larkin

This is where I live now: in a valley where I don't get cell phone service, at the end of a long dirt road that has been deeply eroded, in a house built for an artist who spent half his time in Paris and bought by Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-grandson in the 1970s.

I should probably note that I never know what I'm going to get when it comes to housing--it's always a gamble. You can get a glimpse of where I was living previously here, but the short of it is that I was living in a trailer home (singlewide). And now I'm living in a questionably-constructed log cabin that looks like it was decorated by someone's grandmother, complete with afghans. But we have an extra room. Come visit.

I had the day off for Columbus day, which is just one example of how much more lax this position is than my previous one. Of course it was necessary there--the cranes needed to be fed and cared for, regardless of what Christopher Columbus was up to in 1492. It's funny, too, because I'm not sure when the last time I got Columbus Day off was. Probably elementary school.
After picking up apple cider and cider donuts at a local orchard, I went for a little walk in Saugatuck Falls Nature Area, a local park tucked between the highway and some snazzy powerlines. It's interesting to think about what makes a place--Connecticut, in geology and plant life, recalls New Hampshire, but the difference is the people, their prevalence and density. The resulting land fragmentation changes animal life, too, which probably explains why the only animals I've seen here are squirrels and chipmunks. The roadkill is almost entirely squirrel and raccoon. That's part of the whole of a place, too, because place exists somewhere at the juncture of geology and climate, which shapes and biotic life, and culture. These are pictures of where I am now, but that's not the whole of it, and maybe not even half.

Nothing Ventured

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?

-Kay Ryan, 2000

Good morning from the east coast. I'm once again living at the end (well, not exactly) of a long dirt road, but that looks different here. But I'm settling. More thoughts on life and the whirlwind change later, maybe.

Bring in the Gods

Bring in the gods, I say, and he goes out. When he comes
back and I know they are with him, I say, Put tables in front
of them so they may be seated, and food upon the tables
so they may eat. When they have eaten, I ask which of them
will question me. Let him hold up his hand, I say.
The one on the left raises his hand I tell him to ask.
Where are you now, he says. I stand on top of myself, I hear
myself answer. I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life
is spread before me. Does it surprise you, he asks. I explain
that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot
see our lives. Because we are inside of that. Because we can
see no shape to it, since we have nothing to compare it to.
We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.
We don’t know the names of things that would bind them to us,
so we cannot feed on them. One near the middle asks why not.
Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living.
Why is that? she asks. Because we are too much in a hurry.
Where are you now? the one one left says. With the ghosts.
I am with Gianna those two years in Perugia. Meeting secretly
in the thirteenth-century alleys of stone. Walking in the fields
through the spring light, she well dressed and walking in heels
over the plowed land. We are just outside the city walls
hidden under the thorny blackberry bushes and her breasts naked.
I am with her those many twilights in the olive orchards,
holding the heart of her as she whimpers. Now where are you?
he says. I am with Linda those years and years. In American
cities, in Copenhagen, on Greek islands season after season.
Lindos and Monolithos and the other places. I am with Michiko
for eleven years, East and West, holding her clear in my mind
the way a native can hold all of his village at one moment.
Where are you now? he says. I am standing on myself the way
a bird sits in her nest, with the babies half asleep underneath
and the world all leaves and morning air. What do you want?
a blonde one asks. To keep what I already have, I say. You ask
too much, he says sternly. Then you are at peace, she says.
I am not at peace, I tell her. I want to fail. I am hungry
for what I am becoming. What will you do? she asks. I will
continue north, carrying the past in my arms, flying into winter.

-Jack Gilbert, 2009

Tomorrow's my last day of work at Necedah. That's really all I had to say here--on Wednesday I start my trip to Connecticut, where I'll be picking up a new internship. And we'll see where things go from there.

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

-Robert Frost
The first three lines of this poem was my senior quote for my high school yearbook, mostly because in the last minute I decided against the first six lines of the first poem in this post and happened to have those lines from "Directive" committed to memory. Plus, the lines and the reference fit within the yearbook's limit (for whatever reason, the yearbook staff choose not to include the reference, and I'm still a little annoyed with them for that). The quote didn't make much sense then, but it makes more sense now--the yearbook itself brings us back out of all this now to much for us, back to a time made simple by the loss, of detail, burned, dissolved, or broken off. Why else would we have it? But don't just read the first few lines--my disappointment that the reference was left out of my senior quote derived from the fact that I think the whole poem is worthwhile, so dive in.

So this is the third Robert Frost poem to be featured in Wednesday poem day. He's got everyone else beat (Wendell Berry is in second place, with two), demonstrating what an effective job the New Hampshire public school system did of convincing me that Robert Frost is some sort of poetical genius. And I was only in their care for six years--I imagine this blog would be entirely Robert Frost poems if I had stayed any longer.

The Last Wolf

The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowned highrises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless

Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I hear his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched

He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered

Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.

-Mary TallMountain, 1990

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

-William Stafford, 1975

Testament

The cat wants to be a strong thing—a hand, a tree.
The girl wants to be a pirate, in a tree.
The tree wants to be the pond with its face of shining.
The pond wants to be the sun who dumps its sugar on the grass.
The grass wants to be the foot, its sole, its heel.
The foot wants to be the brain who always gets to choose.
The brain wants to be the feet dumb in their shoes.
The shoe wants to be the buckle that the girl shines with a cloth.
The buckle wants to be the magpie lifting what shines.
The magpie wants to be the egg in the nest touching its brother.
The egg wants to be the feather.
The feather wants to be the mite, devouring its plume.

-Connie Voisine, 2010

It's come to my attention that I haven't actually written a blog post in a long time. So I've compiled a list of excuses. Take your pick.

My excuse is...my life is boring, or at least it seems that way, because I do the same thing every day
My excuse is...I have a crane brain now.
My excuse is...I use the internet while sitting in a Chevy HHR, and it's hot, and sweat gathers on my body like condensation, and I always forget what I intended to do online and do something else instead.
My excuse is...don't you like the poems?
My excuse is...my computer is running out of battery.

Anyway, the news from Necedah: 6 out of 11 chicks have fledged, I'm moving to Connecticut in October, the Whooping Crane Festival is fast approaching, the mosquitoes are still terrible, a weird alarm started going off in the house the other night at 1am, I saw a barred owl and was closer to a wild porcupine than I've ever been in my life--and did I mention that the chicks are flying?

I Go Back To The House For A Book

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me —
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.
But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in synch,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,
but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.

He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,
shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —
I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

-Billy Collins

Before Dawn on Bluff Road

The crow's raw hectoring cry
scoops clean an oval divot
of sky, its fading echo
among the oaks and poplars swallowed
first by a jet banking west
then the Erie-Lackawanna
sounding its horn as it comes through the tunnel
through the cliffs to the river
and around the bend's of King's Cove Bluff,
full of timber, Ford chassis, rock salt.

You can hear it in the dark
from beyond what was once the amusement park.
And the wind carries along as well,
from down by the river,
when the tide's just so,
the drainage just so,
the chemical ghost of old factories,
the rotted piers and warehouses:
lye, pigfat, copra from Lever Bros.,
formaldehyde from the coffee plant,
dyes, unimaginable solvents--
a soup of polymers, oxides,
tailings fifty years old
seeping through the mud, the aroma
almost comforting by now, like food,
wafting into my childhood room
with its fevers and dreams.
My old parents asleep,
only a few yards across the hall,
door open--lest I cry?
-------------------------I remember
almost nothing of my life.

-August Kleinzahler, 1998