The Literary Review
Still Life
Like the 9th circle of Lucifer’s realm,
all is silent and frozen and white
against a studded darkness. At first it is as if
nothing can break free of this stasis,
an icy silence like I once
broke out of in panic at its grip.
But I look and listen for more.
Indeed, the pastels of windsock are florid
against such a lack and the yellow cap
of a finch feeder makes a splash.
A fret of high branches moves.
Or is this only hope?
Some god can surely trace
all this circuitry
back until Cain’s treachery
revives Adam, sends him walking about
once more, as the dead still awaken memory.
In what vast buried vault lies
all the never-again thoughts of lost moments?
How we drop this, our cosmic litter,
thoughtlessly, intent on something else
like a careless mother come home
from market without her child.
Published in Edgz, #5 Wint/Spr 2003
A Stir of Briny Scents
He mails me the works of art and stories
of his coastal St. Andrews childhood,
days when we lived west of the old city
down streets outside the ancient gateway,
we young adults. I wandered the same
rough streets where he played, daily
went for provisions to small shops,
the baker, the greengrocer, the butcher,
the fishmonger. He hung around a little café,
one I never noticed, picked up odd jobs
from the weary staff, his home
surrounded daily by fishy odors
until the evening’s frying of fish cakes
and haggis puddings filled the air
with the scent of hot oils. Early mornings
the fresh catches arrived from the nearby
fishing villages, Anstruther and Pittenweem.
Sundays found him at mass with his parents
while we spent those morning hours
in the simple chapels of these fisher folk
when not in the ancient Holy Trinity in town.
With each congregation we watched our cold breath,
clumped vapor of our musical exhalations.
In the city, the lofty gray stones
and high pulpits where the beadle latched
the pastor in to impart heavenly wisdom
from above marked that day of rest
as loftier than in the simple chapels
of the sea harvest families.
These places have all changed
over these years, with heating now,
some easy hot water, several touristy hotels …
but the scents and simplicity of the fish-dealing folk
linger with him, an old man now,
and with me, an even older woman,
and the stone walls stand forever smelling
of ancient brine to awaken in us again
a bond of our youth and other days.
Haute Cuisine
He mails me the works of art and stories
of his coastal St. Andrews childhood,
days when we lived west of the old city
down streets outside the ancient gateway,
we young adults. I wandered the same
rough streets where he played, daily
went for provisions to small shops,
the baker, the greengrocer, the butcher,
the fishmonger. He hung around a little café,
one I never noticed, picked up odd jobs
from the weary staff, his home
surrounded daily by fishy odors
until the evening’s frying of fish cakes
and haggis puddings filled the air
with the scent of hot oils. Early mornings
the fresh catches arrived from the nearby
fishing villages, Anstruther and Pittenweem.
Sundays found him at mass with his parents
while we spent those morning hours
in the simple chapels of these fisher folk
when not in the ancient Holy Trinity in town.
With each congregation we watched our cold breath,
clumped vapor of our musical exhalations.
In the city, the lofty gray stones
and high pulpits where the beadle latched
the pastor in to impart heavenly wisdom
from above marked that day of rest
as loftier than in the simple chapels
of the sea harvest families.
These places have all changed
over these years, with heating now,
some easy hot water, several touristy hotels …
but the scents and simplicity of the fish-dealing folk
linger with him, an old man now,
and with me, an even older woman,
and the stone walls stand forever smelling
of ancient brine to awaken in us again
a bond of our youth and other days.
North Star-Pole Star
The rhinestone studs
of night used to enchant me,
so full of the ancient stories
to enliven for the children
and the drives to darkest skies
to join the expert ones
trying out my giant Dobsonian tube
that my astronomy guy, Steve,
could never quite get to hold
its proper calibration, to sweep
up clouds and clusters
of far-away fire. Magic dances
on the crisp edges of mystery
again twirled on the dawn
of a Bolivian solar eclipse
high in the Andes.
Old now, I take such sparkly things
out of the jewelry box,
re-live the years when we,
the sky and I, could
dance together all night
Lucky Strikes
Our classroom in the old building
was carpeted and the only window
was of an upturned slab-shape
easily covered from the big rolls
of colored butcher paper stored
in the dim hallway. Our children came
one day a week from 16 schools, they gifted
our individually-administered oral tests said,
classes small, from 9 to 18 or 19.
We’d turn off the lights and lie on the floor
on our backs listening to Cassette tape
of an old 1940s radio program, “Suspense,”
I think, not my own childhood joy,
“Inner Sanctum” with its horrible creak
of an opening door. The story was called
“Sorry, Wrong Number,” a one-woman show
recorded by Agnes Moorehead. We watched
ourselves turned to terror by sound alone
and our own sensation-deprived brains,
an hour of group-think and bonding.
The old tape, though, began with a ubiquitous
thought-shaping commercial: “Doctors recommend
Lucky Strikes three to one.” The ad appealed
to ladies admiring the sultry puffs on screen
of Joan Crawford or Lauren Bacall.
and to veterans addicted by free cigarette
handouts to combat-facing troops.
Lucky us, though, together,
thinking, wondering …. how far
can just words go.
Looking Into Last Lights
Ellen and I, entranced, lifting
our contact-paper-covered
toilet paper rolls into twilight,
sought out the sparkles of the setting
Venus surrounded still
with daylight deep in Texas desert lands
where the vultures lined up along the fences
every evening before our long night
of sky watching …. or my call to her
in an Upstate New York hospital
room, she, the nurse said, staring out
a west window at the sunset,
called her to talk with a far-away Carol
… “Oh! Do you know Carol?”
she asked me, the closest approach
she managed to recognizing me,
she there in the shine of another last light.
But there was always wonder
in her voice, and I, I kept
wondering
wondering at all
l the things
those unseen black holes
swallow
up.