Poetry: Robert Lietz
Not the first to dream or make their case
for gravity — dreaming
of falling parts — and not the first to wonder
that their words could fail to tell —
marveling the Mayday snows — gossiping
April’s custodies — and
never the first but visible — keen
as they’d come to be
on doubt and circumstance — on
talking off the top —
thinking to make some what?
or anyhow stay put —
deciding — even as weathers
must decide —
to stand on their luck
and
boasts of good stock
simmering.
*
A man — polite among the forms —
surveys
the crimps and registries — seeing
what foods
these cousins like — inviting him to laugh —
or — saying what
someone thought of him — laughing
off the twists
/ the dream-frauds and hovering
commotions — those
tracks beneath the sills — those
barefoot tracks — where
certain bodies
floated up — presenting
themselves to him
like overnight
deliveries.
*
Matters of fact maybe — the breathing
pine made split
or blown apart to start a vigil — because
the blooms
were overgrown — because they had gone ahead
as told
/ reeling with the peppers
and engrossing
cloves — acting their own
stuffed selves
and x-ing vowels out —
assuming
this ease to match
the international
reporting.
And what re-seeded lots — and what
Suburban back-lots — left
to railroads –what foods these cousins like —
reveal less a world as is —
reveal the tricks where voices
seem to rise
from the construction — to speak
from the cement —
from the surfaces made to glow
with cosmetic bristling —
no longer exactly comfortable —
and always
a little out of touch –no longer
amused
in the old ways — to sharpen
brunch-warmed
alphabets — spooking
to glow
from spore
/ sprung desolations
and veneers.
Was it the altitude or the reactions of the shorebirds —
buttons / straps / or valves — a music
suited to the mix and open programs — to the light
on gemstones as the many currents fled?
See how the jokes take root — and the news
from access points. And — later —
in the caverns of the brew pubs — the dramas
root — so much as game-skills
would require — and chasing
after storms — leaving
the young men
partisans / the young men
counting down
the road hazards
and exits!
Maybe the experience seemed real — the panels
of light — imposed and pierced —
the period colors of the settings — couples
parked on the ridge road —
unaware of / under the close watch of the cruisers —
trouble-shooting love — given
the kind of day it’s been — and overlooking
water. There’s only this surface
anyway — ill-starred / charmed — so much
as you can tell — only
this bass-horn say — this cross-spiel
to account — wooing
their reedy likes –seeing
these lights turned out
for lengths of Scansion Avenue
/ scaling the gossip
with enforcement
and passing
blame.
The birds we’d fed for years will seem at least
themselves — and the dusks
unchanged — the playgrounds where wings met
unchanged after a fashion — except
in the words as shipped — suppers sown
and fleshed — and
in the art you think — or in the process
of refreshment — whatever
became of offices / of lives brought out by shots —
into the moving light they finally tire of —
into surfaces and less — where the umbrellas
turned / and seemed
themselves to make an answer — too
little to describe —
too little to think of minds
conceiving the likes of minds
all over — given
the kind of day it’s been
/ given the course
of the draft postures
/ and of the seas
where
the ghosts
float.
To find that ridge again — sunfire — herself
in that moment — unwounded
/ whole — October again — and the woods coloring —
the crickets murmuring conclusions to a summer.
Darkness — lifting over Hoytville —
I wake from the Dream’s antiphon — body curled
too long one way — wake to the sculpted grey
/ the cicada-pestered elder / the Sunday morning cant
of end-time pamphleteers. And wake remembering —
hearing ( again ) that slap — like roof metal
and stormcloud — seeing that streamlined thing
ripped off its chassis — and then
the night split wide — in the words
we searched / the fists we
put to search / punishing
butcherblock.
*
Then chestnut dawn — reckonings — the devilish
night-winds calmed — shreds of daylight
meandering out of grey — And so I plod toward Eucharist
/ thinking Christ — Mother of Christ —
as this one flares — as if alive and whole again
/ on her body’s raft — and one
among us here — like a sacred lamp –body and body
setting weave — candling these edens
of our daily tasks. And so I come to think her blood —
seeping from bone-pierced forearm
and left ear — Christ — and Mother
of Christ — the sun spoiling
that blood dripping there to blacktop —
her blouse and brassierre slit —
that horrible half-second of breasts —
again the gasped poor thing
/ the men I stand among
caught limp.
*
The life-flight lifts / vanishes. And Time
becomes not there. And eyes —
like this priest’s own — fix landscape’s minor rise
/ the corners bright with cherries
and with seasonal bon chance — as if that Christ —
like an absolute chip speed — that
sweet storm Jesus — crashing the ozone gate —
swept down millennia / swept
the windward panes and thrashings now of storm clouds.
I shut the windward panes to coming storm.
And at the eye of motion — caught suddenly
and flush — my own eyes
quickening — I behold that hand — drawn
across another country twilight
/ rebuilding the gardens in our flesh — and
feel its slap-start chill — and feel
the heart where one abides —
there in the flash and leaf-
cadenzas / the flutterings
and kept breath.