Contents
Moon watchers
Sparrows choke in bitter slush
Hours drip down foggy windows
Kind magic
The white burn of lightning
Hatred's hard eye glowers
Bringing dingy dusk so January early
To Millard Falls
Day slips like the thinnest wire
Half a brain and stiffened boots
Trapped in the dark moon's black
glass
Grateful fingers
His hot breath stirs the dust
Fur hung electric on liquid strings
A trumpet rusts in starlight
This morning is so long ago
Not a dream at all
No deep rumbling rocks your sleep
Red light of the scorpion's eye
Wind and whales and dark sopranos
Who dimmed these flames?
With our stone mouths
To halt the constant hum that hangs
What will silence the doom of
stones?
Home
|
|
|
|
Moon Watchers
Moon watchers stand in villages
Cloaked in dusty trees.
They turn their heads away from wires and papers
And lock their minds on pale truths
Dimmed too long by easy pleasure and small needles.
They seek only the next fact, the next second.
"The rest will come," their teacher said,
"True colors fasten and take hold in final times
Only under moonlight."
They talk in centuries, not sentences.
They swing under stars and laugh in creamy syllables,
Chatting in shadows
About alternate clocks and juicy sprouts.
They walk apart with painful eyes,
Carrying their own quiet light,
These moon watchers, comet watchers.
Sparrows Choke In Bitter Slush
When the lizards scratch their dry march,
Claws dulled by days of cold sand,
When the cormorants break their soggy flight,
Feathers dimmed by too much salt,
Too many dives without reward,
The clock strikes bottom.
Sparrows choke in bitter slush,
Shuffle in the litter of the street,
Avoid the sullen sky
Where clouds unburned, unbroken,
Rain gray in tangible drops
And wait for the new tilt,
The stronger light of spring.
Hours Drip Down Foggy Windows
When it storms time stalls,
Hours drip down foggy windows,
Swelling into drops that curve the world.
Faces freeze in that cold glass,
Flat leaves sharper than theory
Fall tiny on the sloping ground.
When it rains the earth relaxes,
Rocks don't push so hard,
The little tasks that had to be completed
Postpone themselves
While we wait with hot drinks
For dry streets and more light.
Kind Magic
What kind magic leads the crocus up
Through mealy earth still grained with frost?
For all save March we walk here thoughtless,
Stepping as our mood requires,
But now we place our careful shoes on certain stones,
Melting old snow with anxious glances,
Lifting from the melting ground that first petal
Crossed with sturdy green and fragile pink.
How winter skin bursts and flushes under a spring sun!
Stumbling drunk
Like an aging boar with broken tusks,
I missed your gentle bloom at first.
I could have crushed it
Bleeding under winter's last thin crust,
But scents of softer soil,
And brand new hymns from tighter, younger throats,
Dissolved my swine's disguise
And left me shaking in the glow,
Unfiltered now,
Of your potent blossom.
The White Burn Of Lightning
In the humid drip of a dragging August afternoon
I chant to the spinning fan for answers, for relief,
For something cooler than this thick soup.
I dream of a drastic change.
Lured from my sticky chair outside by thunder
Running in zig-zag leaps from cloud to towering cloud
I search for holes in the sky,
For the murky spot where the pale gray sun disappeared.
My eyes ache for the white burn of lightning.
The street sprouts a damp rash,
Retreats under the quick sounds of windows sliding shut
Against the first, hot drops of the rushing storm.
Who is always shouting as the wind rises?
What is the urgency?
Why not stand silent
And wait for the roar of the rain?
Then the flash comes down on a windy wand
Splitting spines with its terrible pounding voice
Sending cats under porches a mile away.
I stand in the awful noise.
A sour taste rolls on my tongue.
A violet stripe scars the smoking sky.
Panicked in the ozone echo
I cannot find the old scenery.
These wet shoes are not my shoes.
This wet house is not my house.
Where is a mirror? Where is my planet?
Where are the things that used to be?
Where is a doctor for this wound,
This heavenly burn that will not heal?
Hatred's Hard Eye Glowers
Wicked and brown like sour straw,
Untended grass cut too early in the day,
Hatred's hard eye glowers
At the idle far end of an empty pasture,
Framed in trees so old they cannot move
Without shedding bark and dry limbs.
Every storm calls another of their number to the ground.
Dripping hot anger, this dwindling forest
Searches its common paths for a focus,
Something to hit at,
Something to crush in the humid fumes
Of stagnant decomposition.
We hope it finds no target.
We hope for cleansing sunlight,
For new growth, somehow, in the old soil.
Bringing Dingy Dusk So January Early
Like seals from the deep black cold
Bursting steam from the holes they leave
As beacons into the frigid depths
Returning at the last gasp from the hunt
At the icy bottom,
Silver jets rising from crowded meals
At the dank basement of the atmosphere
Erupt from an arctic white surface
Of cloudy tundra blanketing the land
Arresting the sun in that last ten thousand feet
Passing only a dull gray
To the earth below.
Silver jets leap like seals into golden air,
Free on the other side of the glacial wall of mist
That intercepts the light,
Bringing dingy dusk so January early
To the earth below.
To Millard Falls
Eyes stinging in second gear we climbed,
We made the ridge
And veered with uncertain vigor
Down the dry slopes
To Millard Falls.
We sought the easy gate and lost
And marched corrected to the other easy gate
Where no fence was welded to the dusty mud,
Where no hidden hound was howling at our smiles.
We walked an easy thousand yards
To Millard Falls.
Strange how the August haze grew darker
As we scrambled closer to the water,
Strange how our path seemed haunted by companions
On the other edge of sane behavior.
(We wished they were ghosts,
But they were not ghosts.)
Strange how we shrugged and swatted
At the whine of tired mosquitos,
Strange how the tiny avalanche
Rattled across the creek.
Strange how the skeptical gaze of a sentry crow
Traced our path
To Millard Falls.
Although the torrent was a trickle,
The plunge a sprinkle,
We made our peace and took our seats
To listen to the quiet splash of water music.
Only the back of our necks remembered
The suspicious patrol surrounding us,
Spirits in a canyon with too many shadows,
Scrambling over stones that point
To Millard Falls.
Our guards did not forget us though,
They dropped like spiders from ledges,
They dripped and shook like dogs
In a pool with too many rocks.
They showed us their teeth
And the odd spots in their eyes.
We left with itching fingers,
Without regret,
With just a hint of fear.
We burned the map that shows the way
To Millard Falls.
Day Slips Like The Thinnest Wire
Vaguely green in the February fog
Day slips like the thinnest wire
Into canyon after canyon
Spreading small portions of warmth
Under winter's rainy veil.
A cell divides, a rock cracks,
An owl dips her beak in a twitching feast.
Even in February life throbs on southern walls.
What is the season on the northern wall
That never yellows under the sun?
What a cold, hard place for the pine to root,
To cling without desperation
As though this were the normal mode,
The common habitat,
To survive without hope
For the tall afternoons of windy songs,
For the crystal nights of fiery stars.
On the northern canyon walls
The melodies are short and shrill,
Repetitive and lonely as life itself
On the dark, northern walls.
Half A Brain And Stiffened Boots
Ghosts are more common in small mountains like these,
Puckered rocks beaching seas of human structure.
No trails here are lost or little used for long enough
To block the walks of yesterday's glad spirits;
They blithely scramble on these easy, short-dropped crags,
Dropping bits of incorporeal bread
While lingering at lunch on flat-stoned picnic benches
Visited by bird and butterfly
But rarely stumbled on by noisy humans,
Tethered by soft feet and city lungs
To wider paths, wooden tables built in distant towns.
These ghosts will chat, though,
As easy as a grandfather spills his tales
To wide-eyed children or his pals from other times.
Just leave the track with shirtsleeves buttoned tight
And water on your hip.
(Mountain specters' haunts aren't country clubs, you know;
Still, anyone with half a brain and stiffened boots
Can with small effort find them.)
Show their camps respect and keep your voices low.
Their atmospheric talks are better joined
By living lips that care for seamless silence.
Trapped In The Dark Moon's Black Glass
Trapped in the dark moon's black glass
Hanging on a spring above the mountain's face
I taste the day's work on my lips
I feel the day's long climb in my ankles
My socks still damp from that stiff plunge
Up to mid-thigh in liquid ice that defined cold
In a numbing new way.
(How can the speckled trout move?)
This is the black fire that runs between the stars!
It still clings to my blue wool and steals my heat,
Pointing to the earth at the bottom of the pool,
To the sandy spaces between the rocks,
To the red, running stone far below,
Insisting that I look, look, look,
To the planet's flaming heart,
To the chill skin of space,
Chanting rest, rest, rest
In frozen heartbeats.
How hard it is to hold the day's memories,
The pine dust of the trail blows away like smoke
And with it fly the faint records of June
On the wild, eastern slopes -
The elk's deep trumpet,
The distant, fading shuffle of the bear,
The sigh of the wind on the hot cliffs,
The knocking and singing of birds in the swinging trees.
At dusk my small fire cracks and spits,
A wildcat growls at the new summer thunder,
And around my head spins
The stubborn whine of a starved mosquito.
Leaves rustle in the dark moonlight,
Dodging the first warm drops of rain.
Grateful Fingers
Be careful, tiny life!
Such desperate urgency
Will not stop this dark day's marching
Nor push back your tiny death.
Rest a moment
(Hours for you, I know,)
And find a peaceful perch here,
Yes, on my grateful fingers.
How else could I know or hope to know
Your own warm fingers,
Your racing, baby heart,
Or ask in such terrible proximity
For a song to set this day ringing
And throw the giant from his horse.
His Hot Breath Stirs The Dust
Crouched mean and hungry
In a warm garage so safe
That children last night slept here
A stinking cousin of cats hides
In shelter from the hunt
His hot breath stirs the dust
His feral stench recalls the days we spent in trees
Hanging from hairy arms we waited to drop
In screaming rage when he prowled too near
We learned bravery shaking the shrubs
To warm our blood
To chase away the red-stained teeth
Waiting in the shadows for our clumsy arrival
He knows what rifles mean
But does not fear us now as we feared him then
As we fear him now.
Fur Hung Electric On Liquid Strings
Some cats pour down stairs,
Fur hung electric on liquid strings
They freeze in mid-step, hot sculpture
Carved on the spur of the moment,
Melting away at the hint of a hand.
Try to hold them.
Try to hold mercury.
Others stilt on stiff legs a thousand years old,
Their smooth tail curves kinked,
Bent in small angles.
They drank long ago from bowls in Egyptian tombs.
Don't touch their experienced whiskers.
Don't ask them to chase a dangling string.
A Trumpet Rusts in Starlight
Ten years ago
This black stone fell smoking on my roof.
"That pesky squirrel again?" I thought.
But then it rattled to the ground,
Scorching seedy grass,
Sending shocked beetles scurrying, singed.
This was no mammal trick.
It dropped flaming through frowning clouds
And left no answers, no iron messages,
Not a whisper of its primal codes translated
For those who seek messages from on high.
This old mystery, old before any primate puzzle,
Before any protein bubbles drank their first water,
Shot red-white from the dawn sky
To beat the earth like a hot drum
Fell silent after screaming that fiery arc
And speaks no more.
Gathering earthly dust and fiber
This rocky guest sits on my desk
Mute and gravity-trapped.
I cannot throw it back, of course,
Cannot free the songs sealed up
In its hard, metallic heart.
It beats a cadence strange to salt seas
And salt seas' offspring.
I cannot make this music of uncertain rhythms
Itching for structure.
I am used to tunes that fit a human throat
On nights when a thousand rocks like mine
Flare their brief incandescence.
In such hasty glare
I carry only melodies my ear can hold.
I tell my rock:
We were born in the same star's death!
Speak! Sing our common music!
In your silence a flute cracks,
A trumpet rusts in starlight
Waiting for your song.
This Morning Is So Long Ago
There in the blue-black of a sky
Unlit by lamps of smoky oil or burning wire,
A green flame hangs on heaven's back,
A star that died before our oldest mother
Stood and looked at any star.
Without houses, without knowledge,
Without the haze of civilized numbers,
Speechless lips bathe in green light
And cry for the first taste of words.
We stand among our ancient brothers
Dumb like them, empty of prayers,
Incapable of equations,
Our tongues still thick;
Our teeth worn flat.
This morning is so long ago
The old lights die.
In the dawning brush
A sparrow jerks and jumps,
Looking for lost feathers,
Singing for the coming sun.
Not A Dream At All
Twisting, stretching like larvae
We want out
To grow up and find
That bit of rock
That flash of fire
That knew our bones before our mothers did.
Wriggling, thrusting like turtles on a beach
We search so desperately with primitive torches
For that opening
(Just a crack is all we need)
That leads to all our airy dreams
And awful nightmares
And, among these scenes,
Our terrible maturity.
Not a dream at all.
When we put our pitiful matchlights down
And find new flares
To light the ways of daughters and sons
Now steaming in our future pulse,
And they in turn shine still brighter lights,
No one,
No one can forget a single thread
And leave it loose.
Though our fires in fact be stars themselves,
We cannot let our fingers tremble
Or drop a single note
And leave it singing without care.
The price for this is blindness on our backs,
And no voice
To tell the darkness of our pain.
No Deep Rumbling Rocks Your Sleep
Garnet gleam dull in the southern sky,
Ruddy rock full of fiery secrets,
No deep rumbling rocks your sleep.
A sigh, perhaps,
Lost in black vacuum and stretched
Over eons of awesome turning,
But no thunder, no voice at all
To pluck your story from the myths
And foolish fears,
To make the lives of distant stones
Important memories to be written down,
Fixed in the hard wax of history.
Not even a whisper of this.
Sandy candle,
Let our tiny songs be your singing voice
Calling our infant messages together
Across galactic canyons, binding
Our pebbled past, our solar roots
Deep beneath the skin of the sun.
Our oldest wisdom babbles like a baby.
Red planet, join the blue!
Thrust your dead giants
Into these webs of alien, biped music.
Let your deeds loose
In the dust between the stars
And watch for us.
We come,
A splash of fire under a cold sun.
Red Light Of The Scorpion's Eye
All night dancing closer, closer,
Antares' ruddy spark finally slides reluctantly
Sun-side into the moon's morning crescent,
Ice-white, glaring hard and bright,
Evading a precise collision
Behind the scrim of a turbulent, urban horizon,
Avoiding the timekeepers' question
When did we lose the red light of the scorpion's eye?
Dodging the query of the ancient child
How can starry fire be dimmed by such a cold, modest rock?
In the slightly bluer darkness
I hold a hand from the hot past.
Together we marvel that the sky does not cool
At the loss of the scarlet star.
I think we two are the only ones
Who notice the dimming of the light,
Who wait anxiously for the crimson leap of flame
From the dark side of the moon,
The restoration of the awesome black balance
Of energy and empty vacuum.
Wind And Whales And Dark Sopranos
At the hem of the vast blanket of time
That falls unmarked in shadow
Between the dusty specks,
Between the worlds that loom so large
At the close range of a lifetime,
A tone, a sound, a melody!
Softly hammered strings,
Impossible by all the laws,
Beat silent rhythms on the skin of space
Into the vacuum ocean,
Into the soundless, unbounded black.
Who set these shining notes free to wander
Through the thin gas that threads the galaxies?
Who sang for all the cold, grey planets
That have no song?
Who cast this hopeful tune so far into the empty sky
No ripples reach our shore?
Our wet, blue planet sings its own rare songs
Of wind and whales and dark sopranos,
Birds and symphonies.
We want someone to take this music
Where there is no music.
Who Dimmed These Flames?
Dusty lights
Stained with soot from wars and sorry games
Plunge in mighty circles to the sun
And back across the moon to farther black
And back again.
I grasp their rhythms tight in baby hands
Already old,
I reach and hope for other hands
To hold my wonder, quench my skin's fire,
Wash the salt from my weary visions.
My fingers' bony shadows rule the night
Like lonely trees, darkening distant lamps.
Who dimmed these flames?
Who paints the sky with such harsh makeup,
Veils all eyes with oil and grime?
Some must journey days to see the stars.
With Our Stone Mouths
In the deep rivers winding under mountains
Where the earth splits,
Where hot stones roll and bubble
In the stunning dyes of sunrise too vivid
For eyes opened under the dim star that glows,
That flickers through mist pounded tree-high,
Sprayed to the sky by the slow, sturdy feet of glaciers
Far from the roar of rocky birthing,
Far from the furnace door
Spreading water, spreading stone
Across this groaning planet,
Burns a jewel, forms a gem at the joint
Of the boulders that form the joint
Of our lives. We intersect here.
We join knowing that the rock will crack,
Knowing that after endless cycles
An end will come at last a time will come
When the fracture born when the sun was bright
Will yield and send us tumbling
Down frozen slopes,
Across unused, crumbling roads,
To rest apart in separate canyons.
We will cry stone tears.
We will dream of our home in the mountain
When we were the mountain.
We will call our former names with our stone mouths.
To Halt The Constant Hum That Hangs
A tone pervades the world.
A dull buzz permeates the definition of silence.
It vibrates every stone and quiet corner,
Resonating in the stiff sleep of squirrels and old men.
Have you heard this drone,
The infinitesimal murmur of a cooling universe?
Some of us beat on walls, hammer on frozen ground
To halt the constant hum that hangs pestering always
In the back of the room, in the back of the mind.
This noise betrays disorder underfoot,
It whirs the long downwinding of the starry clock.
What Will Silence The Doom Of Stones?
End of the day.
End of the light.
So cries the wind
On the restless ocean.
At the edge of the ending of all
A brother of trees kneels
And waters a sterile seed with his weeping.
He fights to hold a dusty memory,
But the cool touch of her sleeve
Fades like a butterfly.
Who will say he earned his exile?
Who will know he walked awake to his prison
Of gray sand, gray sea?
What will silence the doom of stones
Raining from a red sky?
End of the day.
End of the light.
So speaks the earth
In the final season.
Tom Vernier
|
|