A coho turns pink
at the fish ladder’s insult.
Empty longboat drifts.
Category: Morning Poem
Compass
The bear’s head points into the hills.
The horse clams sleep in Mutiny bay.
I drive a highway tight between the two,
I drive tomorrow into yesterday.
The boy found fire in the mussel shell.
The Thunder gifted him a spear.
I search for fire beneath my foot,
I search for Thunder in the gears.
The bullwhip kelp on the ha-ah-poos.
The whale flukes mute above the waves.
I find my fuel in their histories,
I find my future in their graves.
– With some help from the Klallam story of “The Offended Hero.”
Librarian
The orca’s tongue is tattooed in crowblack ink with the whole history of the Hoh and the names of Nisqually who hunted there in the sacred space between hawk and bear – hung to cure in a frozen smoke. In the blackfish grin, written on salmon skin, lives the library of the Lummi and the forgotten words to S’Klallam songs sung in the fog from which they’re drawn – then gone like a dream’s unblooming. But the orca speaks, too, the newer words of submarine and ferry boat and the sharp dialect of high skylines that replace the flesh with the crystalline – concrete terms being asked to float. A blackfin ripple loops cursive in the bay as the orca pens the Pacific tome and writes Sound verses beneath the surface in a Salish hand whose arc is perfect – the scrimshaw line of tooth and bone.
The Inward Aim
Who out there might I have saved and who am I to say that if I had gone and fought along they'd be happier today? Which among them would have marched before adoring mortars and towards their final chance to Meddle with the Honor of their chore? Who out there might I have saved and what would that have done but reinforce the enemy on the ever-growing front? Which among them would have marched until their soles knew every grain of every dune and cratered ruin that compelled the inward aim? Who out there might I have saved and who am I to say that the lives I would have handed out were better than the graves?
Lawful Thievery is the Rule
“Behaviour lawless as snowflakes…”
Still Walt Whitman, still Song of Myself
It’s been that part of the movie, where we’re all in the operating room, staring at the screen on the EKG while the tone flatlines and the doctor says “clear” one last time. Five, ten seconds pass, there seems to be no hope, and then there’s a blip:
The house has the heartbeat that it’s been missing. The last piece went in yesterday – I let The Boy nail it down. Obviously the baseboards still need to go back up, but the big chore is complete. And after I cleaned up and put the tools away, I had the Spring Break feeling of freedom, of vast expanses of unclaimed time laid out ahead of me. I immediately folded laundry. But nobody told me how to fold these two garments:
They have a knack for teleportation.
I release this one annually, a small revision or two each time. It’s the sort of poem that “real poets” would not “take seriously.” But serious poets are generally a sad lot, and afraid. Maybe one day I’ll stop messing with it, I don’t know. It’s a little late coming this year, but reading the “lawless as snowflakes” line from Leaves of Grass made me realize that it was time for theft:
Summerthieves Autumn starts for me like this: an evening's cold, capricious kiss, chiding me to stay alert that I don't miss my turn to flirt. Leaves come down like lawless clocks along no route that rules can watch. They’re shouldered first, then tickle sleeves - those brittle-falling Summerthieves. Ah! Here the hub of town comes near, with its public houses pouring beer colder even than the air. But it's so close and warm in there That I go inside against the cold, where I like to think we're men of old, and on every wooden bench and stool sits a girl - an honored golden rule. The Boys can leave their coats on hooks - The Girls will keep them warm with looks. Suggestive stitches, hopeful hems. October stalkings, autumn gems. In here we work with noble tones toward a sense of coming home. Because man is tempted to his best when woman is so smartly dressed. When everything to do's been done, we wrap the prizes we have won as close to us as we are able, and leave the rest upon the table. Warm within and cold without, It’s easy to forget about The weathers we're supposed to know, And on our brazen way we go.
A Song for Fog
Captain, do not curse the fog. It is the lullaby of the Blackfish. It is the glint eddy at the wing of the Sbaqwah. God-blue, long as a Black River canoe. Captain, your horn is heavy like blood in a ghost. What can it do? The fog is a child squat over a snake in the longhouse. It never knew you. It does not hear you. The osprey tear herring over a broken cedar. The salmon scowl at the ladder and die. Your boats are wrapped in ancient names. Kittitas and Chimacum. Issaquah and Wenatchee. Only the words are quiet on the water. The engines scare an owl from the head of a bear. The bear scares crows from a picnic table. It watches you bleed cars into the hills. All head and no flukes, you pilot the ghost without much rudder. You think you pilot the ghost. Captain, do not curse the fog. It is the white noise of the Salish Sea. You are the brother of the Chinook. You are the white throat of the Blue Heron. Trade pilothouse for smokehouse. Dance the deck from wheel to wheel. The lullaby of the Blackfish will be your song.
Apheresis
The easy part is the digging – snowsilver spade slicing steamsoil. Dirt hardly parts – but sighs! Eucharine breath, epicene oil. The lissome lisp of shovel slipped into winesoftened silt. The easy part is the digging – straight-grained shaft stung by stone, bonequiver knock on bone and out the crown emptied unto Heaven with every chuck and throw. The easy part is the digging – brute-sunk shovel in soil. Psalm-sung singing of sinew. Instrument to sentiment. Lie-less rhythm without end. Monument to sediment. Lie-less rhythm without end
The PVP Diaries #59
“A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it?”
– The Elder Zosima, The Brothers K.
Here’s a reprint for a day that’s simply one too many:
Soft Armor Guard against the joylessness - the shout the sloganed cry. Guard against the chanted curse and truthful-seeming lie. Guard against the joylessness - against the sheepish fright. Guard against the mirthless marches that wilt without the light (a truly righteous Army thrives even out of sight). Guard against the joylessness - the hunt the blue bird’s noose. Guard against the flashing placards that turn a lynching loose. Guard against the joylessness - against the textbook heart. Guard against the low momentum of the classroom’s faded arts (the ivory’s crumbling fastest at the over-polished parts). Guard against the joylessness my son, my girl child, by suiting up in Mother’s grace and by wielding Father’s smile
Found Poetry
I’ve never read any Kerouac. There’s a short section of this poem dubbed into a song I’ve known since forever:
…America and Steel civilization rushing by with San
Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough
time to be disdainful, they’ve got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all
the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the
railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above
the following hotshot freight trains–it’s all in California, it’s all a
sea…
Wait a little for it, but listen until you get there. It really isn’t all that bad:
I rode down to the tracks
Thinking they might sing to me
But they just stared back
Broken, trainless, and black as night
Climbed out on to my roof
So I’d be a poet in the night
Beat the walls off my room
I saw the big room that is this life
This is my condition:
Naked and hysterical
Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at
This is my condition:
Desperate, alone, without an excuse
I try to explain
Christ, what’s the use?
Read and I felt so small
Some words keep speaking when you close the book
Drank and just about smiled
Then I remembered us in that bed
Put my ear to the door
I just heard hot rods and gunshots and sirens
People kill me these days
There’s keys in their eyes but they locked from the inside
This is my condition:
Naked and hysterical
Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at
This is my condition:
Desperate, alone, without an excuse
I try to explain
Christ, what’s the use?
The Butler Rises
I’ve always had a hard time writing to a specific theme. I could come home from a hockey game and write a better poem about baseball than hockey. All of this to say that I don’t think I have a specific Mother’s Day poem in the archives. I do have this, written in 2012, when the kids were still 1 and 3 years old. I was only just starting to get good at this dadding business, and their mother’s work travels left them very much longing, and I with my hands very full. I was still working full time then as well, so it was a whirlwind. We celebrated her returns:
The Countermeasure
Mama’s coming home today!
In anticipation, the pancakes fly
From the children’s plates
To the dog, through the sky.
Mama’s coming home today!
The sun makes noise to celebrate!
In obeisance, the butler rises
To quiet the household’s gears
With oils, and compromises.
The sun makes noise to celebrate!
Mama’s coming home today!
In preparation, a runner’s sent
To deliver the angels’ praise
For surviving, and keeping up the rent.
Mama’s coming home today!
………
She hasn’t traveled for months now, and that is what we celebrate. Here’s to a world waking itself up to travel, and a love that never leaves home.
Andy Havens 