The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Rosemary Winslow TRANSPORT Their instincts wholly bloom And they rise. —James Dickey They look ridiculous, lascivious coral unsnowed on wet Northern lawns. Or righted over the daffodils, going nowhere on dulled aluminum poles. When my sister married (the first time) she staved dozens around the little backyard pond. Champagne flowed, the groom got drunk, that night in the suite's cruel privacy, he injured her. She stayed seven livid years. Today in her red Mustang convertible we drive to see them live. Thousands flow around cerulean water under the pure zoo sky, thin stems stepping across wet sand the brilliant bodies a cloud blossoming and now a burst, a flare, a pair of black-rimmed wings fanning aslant in air. Now another. But someone has cut strategic feathers, they vector, veer, fall back next to each other, circle, squawk, settle. No heaven here: my mind her gaze: I want I wish WALKING QUAKER WHITEFACE ROAD I MEET MY BROTHER Yesterday a funeral, a bad X-ray, futile the guessing—a future? heart turns back, now ahead now back again walking the dirt road that ends at the meetinghouse by the covered bridge at the cemetery where the first settlers are buried, when over the houses and pine-quilled slopes a strange luminous fog opened around me floating the blue dark muscled onward the sun not quite gone over burning a bald rock face—bronze, red, then amethyst, high over the thickening white— too calm, I looked back, a quick wind troubled my sleeves. Once in my grief I saw something of my brother appear the night after the funeral as I walked the floors of the house. A place of whiteness, and sensed conveyance— it is all right. I am alright, I thought. A president’s funeral played on the TV, pictures of boys, brothers, husbands, my own, in jungle fatigues washed out in static. My brother, I said, not quite aloud, so long it had been I’d spoken his name. . . . . You were a quick throw, baseball bat in either hand, legs lean and fast. You worked hard, played hard, we walked the farm hand in hand, kicked clumps of dirt, inhaled the richness. What is it to lose a life you never had time to live? I wonder now, this thing in my chest, stone, or lapsed piece of flesh over my heart. That last night, all you’d been through, trying to justify your unwanted arrival, your life, then cancer, fifteen, the end. What did you see when you said, Everything is so beautiful . . . beautiful . . . that vision you had as we stood around you waiting, praying the night would not end, your words continued in the rhythm of our breathing, then you said—Do you love . . . ? It fell among us like an unfinished sentence. My heart turned around on its muscle. Right then I loved you mightily. That is what you became. . . . . Reddening leaves of maples falling into the gold birches and on the packed dirt road, leaves scattering like melody coming to rest, my whole body was pulsing. I got there in the darkness, passed through that light filled fog, went through the iron gate which leaned open on loosened hinges. Inside the stone fence the families’ hands had laid, who lay now in perfect quiet next to each other, I stood a long time, the day shorn, my feet hurting. I was going toward death, maybe. Yet I was happy. It was almost beyond beauty, pine-fragrant, fog swirling the stillness, the stones leaning, writing slowly vanishing. I stood there. I stood, wondering, a clear space. Michael, my angel, how are you? Emptiness overhead hurtling the stars farther. In Memoriam: M.K.L. THE ELEGY My husband is making a scene— a ladder about to tip over, pots of paint in disarray, and orange flames. His mother is dying. She is not in it, she is already gone, locked in the imbricated grays, the strewn oils on the floor, her empty chair near the center. And he is twenty again, pupil and antagonist, sprawled where her feet would be, his hands holding him upright. The background is the country town they summered in, same street, same houses, same church with steeple. The chair like the town is nineteenth century, bygone, a horseshoe arm rail with carved spindles. She is not there, and if you did not know her she cannot hold the painting together— what you would see is emptiness, longing, and fire. Which is what holds us together now. He turns to my staring, his eyes fly over me like blue gaps to the track lights on the ceiling. Where is she going? Where are we all? Next month he will be back at it, regarding then moving in closer, painting over the edges of flame. It will look more tranquil, and sadder. She will be gone. He will not have finished it. © Copyright 2006-7 by Cook Communication |