Parramore Island
for Tom Horton
Under a shoal of stars,
the Atlantic surf
murmurs like ghosts
on the sandy
coasts of the barrier islands
east of Wachapreague and Quinby.
Parramore Island sails the troubled
eons of nautical history like a ghostly schooner
of the mind, appearing, disappearing
…at the edge of the world, Tom Horton says.
Edges abound, everywhere
with life, with fecund migrations of fish and fowl.
One finds the deep-down
natural scurrying of briar and shell at the edges
of seasons,
at junctures of forest and field
where startles the owl and the white tailed deer,
in the deep periwinkled
and oystered mud where the salt march
and sea converge, in the exhalations
of the booming deep-sea drum.
What fish may swim on the edge of sleep
and wakefulness?
My son, my son,
Where have you gone in the wide world?
The Atlantic surf murmurs
of hole and bar and reef,
as Tom Horton says, in a subsonic voice heard by gulls
on the Barbary Coast
of Africa.
Edges live everywhere
in the latticework of the mind.
The gulls hear each murmur
of the moon-drenched surf
of every salt creek and curve
of Parramore Island as shadowed vibrations
in bone and skull.
Age-old migratory paths
rush from Africa to the Chesapeake Bay,
as Tom Horton says.
It’s an awful world to wander in
when you are young and have lost your bearings.
In the hush of ambient
twilight at Parramore
amber foxes detach themselves from the dunes’ shadows,
finding in their earthy haunt
the secret edge of poetry.
. . .
Lighthouse
Lighthouse from the mist with the sun in its tower—
Soft poem, above the rocks. Oh, greater than the shallows
Freighters hauling ore, packet boats, trawlers
If I were to love you it would be with no reservations
Night spills of the sea, white nurses in moonlight
Breaking, O breaking, steep in their caps, rising
Flotsam from the sea, dream riding dream, hail!
Fine waters, deft shadows, evening-- bring you to me
. . .
Occohannack Road
It is easy to get used to the smell of horses
and urine-soaked hay
With the Chesapeake behind it…dung in the stables
Stars in the pasture….leather
and spring rain
Your whole body slips
into the confluence
Of hoof and sail, withers tremble
Easy Clifford plods paths of sojas
and boysenberry
Trail dust settles softly
on the waters of the brain
. . .
The Murdered Girl
Murdered girl, curled, in frost
Naked to the rumpled air
Moonlight slips through expiring leaves
Finding strings of shadow
Never have you lain alone
In your grove of Shot Bush
Speckled Adler
Shadows plunge in excitation
To the primal gut, racketing
Leaves from Trees of Heaven.
Never has there been
Human hurt not shared
By raving man
In communal blood
Worms oscillate, descend
Within the shadows’ curse
To drill time’s crust.
Church bells chime their
Random notes. Dimensions
Unearth and Black Elders, shaken
Drop flowered
Rain
Light bends around your weight
And all things declare their eternal fall
Through shelves of space
…to where you are
Forever and ever
We are all murdered: all
. . .
Odysseus
In a winged conviction
Black rictus of wind and spiraling eye
The curled sail is torn from its clew
I know the manhood of this weather
The spinning mirrors
So much for Ithaca, New York
The bloom is off the myths
Of rose. The fall is due. I cannot swim
I am sixty one in February
Who shall string my bow?
In my tired room, I think
To drudge from bed to computer screen
My kidneys bleed and the gods play drums
The shells! The mud! My paper gulls!
In acid rain slumps the albatross
I have dined on Penelope
Telemachus, son! Look toward home!
Spied through the fat end of an extended glass
The dolphin devolves beyond the carnal stone
Beginning or ending, the music’s done
I preach in college, having
Won my fame in the bowels of a horse
What stygian suds floods this shingle
Where I’ve landed? Achilles warned me
Hector’s curses hang like laundry
Ajax’s suicide is oddly duh rigueur
Pound’s old bitch, gone at the tooth
Is mad with grinning. Epically speaking
My children mock me moan for moan
I take a small step, as if to cross my room
Circe plays to ears of wax
In the shadows, the moon finds me
Uninteresting, naked and alone,
Prufrockian. No proof of disc nor dat
A pale expanse of ghastly illumined skin
Fly Hades’ bireme, Myrmidon
Of my soul, to storm the citadel of poetry
My feet, at least, are on the floor.
I’m standing. The stars descend, dropping
As snow on an isthmus mooring
Nobody remembers Homer’s children
I tell myself. I’m a horrible father,
Vilified, no less, by those I haven’t left
What long ship bears an old man’s shields--
Blindness? Frailty? Love of sleeping?
Drifts of meaning? What nexus?
Meaning drifts, as in—before my eyes
Even as a child, I sensed overwhelming
Complexity, pantoums…was more or less
Certain God didn’t know everything…
Thought Moses a fool after the bloody
Foreskin brawl and rescue by Zappora.
Achtung, Jehovah! So grew I, No One, a blister
A boil, a stake in the eye, filled with loose taunts
In a shaky boat on the eventide
The bottoms of my pajamas rolled
Trickster, I, begin a shuffle across my room
Where poetry thrives in counterfeit
Verse that must be completed, then rehearsed,
Then spoken aloud before the mass(es)…
My people died in storms at sea
Of rocks, stones, smoke, fits, and slaughter
But I’ll sail, praise Woe, lachrymose, but better fed
On honey dew, to scops’ fjord
On ashen knarr by way of prelude to my hollow
Not Valhalla! Alas, Ted Hughes
If crow could see me now, taking a pass
On the mystic synergy of the universe
My hair not black, nor set in root by blood
But languid, sprawled, about my head
In crystalline cacophony. Don’t I hate
This foolish sundog, now I cry!
Thumbing concave back waves like a jinn
In the morning I break up, mend all the afternoon
Aw, these ugly boomers, hurdling by
Coins from my eyes will pay the boatman
On the other side. My computer weeps
At news I’m coming. I’ll stop at nothing
Mix my metaphors, jamb my ends
Leap caesuras pause amend
Savant, at sea, at last, neglecting daughters
I’ll cross this water, put pen to paper
Metaphorically, in other words
Employ said computer to end all wars
Crying out, I am Odysseus
Poet of all men finned and born
To swim in thrall ad infinitum
And never make it home in a timely fashion
Here, then, is my apologia. I’ve been old
For more than twenty centuries
I’m rotten wood, crumbled stone, and
Forgotten ash, blown to must and gory
Verse by verse, in obtuse tomes of ancient poetry
All singing’s holy. Dreams of the rood
Engorge the channels of my blood
It’s no fault of mind that I’m not dead
Blame the furies. Overrated jerks
Who’ve lost real interest in their work
Whither have the sisters gone?
All night long blows Cape Sable’s horn
I wonder why. I wonder why
