poems by

Alan Reynolds

selected and recited by

Peter Crofton Sleigh
 Peter Crofton Sleigh

Reads
Alan Reynolds

All stories, poems and cover illustration

copyright © 2008 by Alan Reynolds

All rights reserved

including the right to reproduce this book or portions

thereof

in any form whatsoever.

Poems by Alan Reynolds are also published

in books

in US and UK magazines

and literary journals

and

on the Internet.

www.alanreynolds.nl
Preface
These are the poems by Alan Reynolds that Peter Crofton
Sleigh selected and read on the now sold-out and legendary
CD with the same title.

ACR
Monnickendam
Contents

Poems from the CD 2

Winter Fear 3
Our Song’s the Wind 4
Gold Rust 6
Killing Your Darlings 7
Found Sparrow 8
Two, Part Harmony 9
Afternoons Seem Early these Last Years 11
Mandean Sonnets 12
Solar Pact 14
Mediterranean Blue 15
Joining In 16
Beholder’s Eyes 18
Mud-flat Bat 20
Fly’s Anointment 21
Child Armies 22
Neighbourhood Imports 24
Padre among Men 26
Then 27
Shaded Statue 28
Sweet One-Hundred 29
Childhood’s Inn 30
Every now and then 33
Twenty Thirty 34
Two — in a Series of Six 36
The Heath, Stanza 1 37
The Poets’ Dilemma 38
Bienvenidos 39
Wayside 40
Old Dreams 42
Beauregard Afternoon 43
Cicada Song 44
Amazon Night Call 46
Dead Weight 47
Hymn of Veneration 48
Mesozoic Prophecy 50
Long Distance Blues 1
1
Poems from the CD

2
Winter Fear
It’s harvest time in Hades. Fingers pluck
at collars turned in vain against the frost.
Iced chances treated as eternal luck
end up in boxes pencilled ‘Chances Lost.’
The neighbour’s plan to take up honest work
gets archived under ‘J’ for Jest and Jeers,
and my own hopes for hedonistic highs
run close to Cancellation. Winter fears
chill feet that slip on pavement ice, one jerk
sufficing to recall my soul. To shirk
one’s chances costs the earth and its best buys.

3
Our Song’s the Wind
Who will score the songs we sang together
in rooms we gazed from, hungry for the tide?

Who will sketch excitement as we met it

in each other out among the dunes?

Who’ll portray the passions we succumbed to

by shoreline bunkers bathed in sunset’s blood?

Who’ll inscribe the laughter we enjoyed

on mist-filled walks along the morning shore?

Who’ll recall the whispers we released in

those years we stayed together for their sake?

Who will freeze the tears we shed in statues

that capture blues left over when we fought?

Who will style the times we lay still frightened

at sentences completing dreams unsaid?

Who will set a tape on for recording

the games we once imagined were our work?

Who will note the secret names invented

exchanging hugs for kisses on the beach?
Who will paint in wind the way I wondered,
fingers teasing roses from your hair?
4
Who will write the music that we danced to
down these dunes and out across the sea?

There’s little left here words can’t bury under

paragraphs cementing how we were.

There’s little left here words can’t bury under

paragraphs cementing how we were.

5
Gold Rust
The time that comes when gold will rust
is when I’ll want to leave.
Let’s argue then, enjoy now.
I’d rather hug than grieve.

6
Killing Your Darlings
Root up your favourites, post them somewhere else.
The land where you first planted them has died.
New settlers hang your mysteries like pelts
of squirrels upon their handlebars, and ride
across the melting ice floes where you dwelt.
They tan your loves they want to hoard inside
their ugly houses built on IOUs.
They desiccate your secrets for their news:

Young commentators analyse your words,

and underscore the syllables you used,
as signs to rustle thoughts you kept in herds.
They’ve cowed you now. The branding’s left you bruised.
Old analysts trawl gems they make absurd
and quarter your last hobbyhorse. Amused?
Retrieve your darlings. Loose them in those cold
and empty places dreams can still take hold.

7
Found Sparrow
A sparrow sits upended in the bath.
Some cat has left it there, the aftermath
of too much catnip, a half jerry can
that, sad enough, became the Rubicon
for this poor bird. The cat took but one swallow
and left the rest unmerrily to wallow.

8
Two, Part Harmony
Investiture (she says)
It’s not the sex per se I am against,
but body heat, your weight, and how you yell.
I fancy breathing distance, violins,
discussions of the higher things; a well
of cosy friendship, cordial times we share.
I always try in my own way to please;
work hard to make us an attractive pair.
I trust in you and never mean to tease.
To me you are My Man. Our better friends
advise me age and long walks calm men down.
I’m pushing out all my, our, hopes to then.
When we turn forty (milestone and a crown)
we’ll be mature, together, and serene.
Come kiss my cheek. I’ve scrubbed it rosy clean.

9
Divestiture (his lines)
You asked me could I wait and, yes, I would,
while heartbeats we might share left in the night.
We waited while you sought the perfect mood.
I tagged along, pretending you were right.
I hoped you were. Near-blinded by your charms,
I tried to buy your proper world, its deeds
and charities. I crushed you in my arms,
apologized for being me. My needs,
you told me gently, coolly pulling free,
would bring us bliss when civilized. A kiss,
and I’d be left alone. Thin ecstasy,
I thought. I waited patiently. I miss
you less each day, and nights can let it rest,
for passion banked soon loses interest.

10
Afternoons Seem Early these Last Years
The cleverness of Eco
and the grave
contest for equal time
this afternoon
as shadows chase the lizards
from the walls
and damp obscures the sun-cracked
mountainsides.

A writer writes a book

a reader reads.
A frightened smiling mother
seeks her child.
The circus tents fold early
in this town.
Menageries have lost
their post-war pull.

Closure in a model
life needs style
to generate a meaning
for its length.
Failing that, a
glorious sunset
provides ersatz atonement
for the dark.

11
Mandean Sonnets
Life requires less consciousness than drive.
A baby, Aristotle, and a rock;
and all the bees in every extant hive;
and, through a closet, darkly, Mandy’s sock
employ simple compounds (CO2
and thinned glutaric acid or some such)
to set up store, and eat, and grow, and screw
encouragements to sticking points that much
resemble little souls as they ascend
the rills of time to rampage in the sun
and then to die. We watch their cells descend
to molecule and atom when they’re done,
their drives expired, their dreams returned to stock
for others’ use when others wind the clock.

The clock, call it Creation, or a curse,

ticks on for eons making no one wise
including those who notice it in verse.
Its whys elude the lawyers who advise
the rest of us, for money, about how
its bells toll telling tales we all ignore.
A moot point, Mandy. Stand, and take a bow
and pull another pint, then come and bore

12
your own way to eternity; come tell
us what you know of how the sweet life’s less
than permanent for people and for shells
while being still immortal. I confess
your wisdom shines, although you are inept
in finding terms for life I can accept.

Dawkins calls Creation ‘little steps’

that, building on each other, can progress
without a large Creator’s hand to schlep
evolving life along: the scary mess
of living things (old Greeks from CO2,
and rocks that talk, and mammals who eat eggs
of crows who eat the eyes of lamb and ewe,
and two-faced singers prancing on two legs).
Stop listing, Mandy. Dawkins made his case
and does not need our twitter to confirm
he might be right. But, when I watch your face
as you tuck in our children, I affirm
there’s more to life than science can discern
and love’s a gift no deeds can ever earn.

13
Solar Pact
Don’t rush
to write or paint
but watch the ageless rocks.
Ask ants and spiders what they know
of life

This rock
is not the same
as yesterday at dusk
when setting sun drained warmth and life
away.

The sun
comes up with life
it lavishes on ants
and spiders, stolid grateful rocks,
and me.

14
Mediterranean Blue
Down here in the Midi
where the Med is crystal clear
and everyone has perfect teeth
though some have wrinkled toes
I take the sun and practice
how I will say good-bye.
Good-bye to love and summer
and to the sun down here.

Down here in the Midi

where the Camargue ponies run
and siestas are for loving
and the evenings are for wine
I forget the Calvinism
that the Jutes confused with God.
I’d say good-bye to home and hearth
if you would stay with me

Down here in the Midi

where the silver olive trees
love to hug each other
like you are hugging me
and the only thing a missing
is a reason for my blues.
and the only thing a missing
is a reason for my blues.

15
Joining In
‘No member without member’
whimper men
who haven’t seen their own since
way back when;
and, scared of women’s bite,
attempt to bark
that only males can come
in from the dark
and break bread in this
sacred service club
you’d think was Heaven
from the way they dub
their fellows with grand
titles like ‘The Chair’
(who is, I note, grease-graced
with locks of hair
grown by his ears and
combed across his pate
and, when the wind blows,
oh-so-shiny pate);
or ‘Chairman’, who’s a master
of debate
on points scholastics
cherished long ago
that even now impart
an eerie glow
as ‘Sir’ and ‘Senior’ sit
to celebrate
16
that they’re inside (of what?)
and think they rate.
The women outside will,
succeeding, learn
that joining this club
cannot, will not, earn
them potions of the
earthly relevance
that men and women seek
in mortal dance.

17
Beholder’s Eyes
This garden where the blackbird lightly reigns
has lured me out of bed before the dawn.
I occupy the dark green bench, see stains
of captured flies that spider webs have drawn
and spider teeth have quartered. What a yawn
to contemplate when you are fly-speck small.
The spider’s eyes, so many, may enthral
its mate, but mainly make me want to run,
retrieve some counterbalanced spider maul
or get a laser-sighted spider gun.

Remembering how bears approach their work

(They gather food the way their mothers taught
them to as cubs, dig where the best grubs lurk;
glean each wild green precisely when they ought,
learn lightning swipes by which the salmon’s caught.)
I lumbered through the Swedish marsh at ease
inside, in tune with ponds and broad-leafed trees
reflected in the shallow water there.
I might have lingered until winter’s freeze
had I not stood on menu of the bear.

18
Imagine if you will a standard foot,
say yours, or Sue’s. Most any foot will do.
Think of attire in which it can be put.
Forget the foot: fix focus on the shoe.
Imagine sitting quite alone, shoe hung
by laces from your neck, sole on your lap.
It moves a little and you see its tongue
protrude some more each timid time you tap
you finger on its toe. With some alarm
you feel its damp weight shift. It opens wide.
You make a fist to fit it on your arm
but just before you move to reach inside
the insole splits; threads fail to hold the seam.
A foot-size spider lumbers out. You scream.

19
Mud-flat Bat
The crescent moon hangs south, above the sea.
Out here in the Camargue the mud-flat bat
flies higher now. The atmosphere, you see,
has lightened. Insects lift, ensuring that
the mud-flat bat’s own mouth and mine won’t splat.
He flew so low on Wednesday that I feared
I’d swallow him in darkness, furry-eared
and sonaring the night. It scared him too.
Mosquitoes, ones who Wednesday rudely jeered,
become his meal, malaria his stew.

20
Fly’s Anointment
This silent spider’s legs are long and bent.
His body’s small. I sense he’s sentient.

I shudder but my dew-chilled wings prevent

my taking flight. Some sullen glint

from his eight eyes sedates me. It is meant

that he’ll have me for breakfast. Strangely spent,

I scarcely even struggle. There’s the scent

of sadness in these flowers. Sacrament.

21
Child Armies
I am not well. My soul’s not dead but sick.
It cries for leeches; bloating, would be bled,
or freed in modern fashion from the toll
extracted here by Caesar’s rule; and there
by children scratching at the scabs they grow,
or would, would warlords let them once just be.

These children! They should sit in school or be

away at summer camps: get cramps, feel sick
a bit from biting melons that still grow
along the edge of fields. (When these fields bled
young brother’s blood filled up that ditch, and there
lay sister’s hand, she’s eight years old: the toll

of yet another spat.) These days the toll

of burial bells rings every noon, let be
at dawn, at dusk, at night. And over there,
across the cove on neighbours’ ground, the sick
hunch down: they’re scratching out the stumps of bled
and blasted fruit trees blown away. Here grow

no more the shady tops and trunks. Here grow

instead cracked rocks, some not tilled crops. The toll
among the children’s even worse. Who bled
their eyes of tears, daubed out where there should be
a sparkling glint of healthy fun? Eyes sick
and cynical: lies Lucifer in there,

22
where babies harboured happiness? It’s there,
among these baby brawler minds we grow
(yes, ‘we’) as fodder for a farce more sick
than serious or grand, I hear the toll
of hope’s demise, of what these tots could be.
Their bodies grow in spite of us (who bled

resources, poisoned what was left; who bled

these children’s humanness away). Is there
no place they can retreat, no crèche to be
created in once more, and, cuddled, grow
in graciousness, avoid the warrior’s toll
that levies suffocation, makes them sick?

These children warriors we have bred are sick.

Beheading them lets us postpone the toll
that nature wants as populations grow.

23
Neighbourhood Imports
When Lisette came to live here as au pair
our neighbour’s wife was furious we’d dare
import a beauty (and Lisette’s nineteen).

Her husband managed soon to tear our screen,

insisted he would fix it, brought his tools,
and talked ‘their’ language to Lisette. The fool.

Had schools, he asked her, changed since he had left?

Was nicking bikes still not considered theft?

Like me a decade older than this girl,

he as a writer has the time to whirl
around Lisette, take our kids to the lake
accompanied by her, hot dogs and cake.

When we come home at six, or eight, or nine,

she tells us how ‘Monsieur’ has been so kind
to hold a ladder while she saved a cat,
or pump a tire he showed her had gone flat.

His wife, who works in Fairfield selling art,

has told us she’s considering a part
in Westport’s next production of ‘The Shrew’.

She can rehearse at home and be with Hugh,

the Labrador her husband gave her when
he had no time to train it anymore.
24
I hear that he’s inspired and writing more.
His newest work is foreign: ‘Je t’adore’.

25
Padre among Men
‘That’s not the way we men make love, my friend.’
The Captain’s words on open intercom
astound the crew at Mass, make Padre’s thin
hair stand on end as if a whistling bomb
had whispered up his nape. His famed aplomb
recedeth like his part. ‘The knave is pissed,’
he hisses loud but rising winds persist
and hurl his words to God above who bids
the Padre’s mind know peace: it seems he’s missed
that the Captain but harangues his tank of squids.

26
Then
I believe there is something important
beyond this universe we see.
And that it is our purpose in life
to unite with that Something.
I can’t see that Something, but when
I try to talk to it —- to think with it —
Then Something happens, and flows
into our universe, and gives
it and me some Peace.
Then, I feel Good, and kick up my heels
and dance joyfully to
heart-filling, beautiful tunes.
Even while I feel, and am, in that moment,
Serious and Brave and, humbly, Wise.
Then, when that Something is sensibly for me happening
Well, then —
Well, then, and why, then, I know I am safe
and my restless head is at peace;
And all those people and animals and trees
and rocks and sun and snow and sea and stars,
I love them all!
Then, and only then.
Amen

27
Shaded Statue
Dry tears
that no one sees
crack furrows, fragile lines
in cheeks that no one touches with
kind hands.

28
Sweet One-Hundred
Our geriatric acrobatic dance,
our subtle art, goes sometimes undiscerned
by passers-by. And by you too. Your glance,
pale pilot flame from passions banked, has turned
my head for decades, and today. The trance
the nurse assumes I’m in is one I’ve learned,
to masquerade my yearnings. They run sweet,
while I doze sitting, silent and discreet.

29
Childhood’s Inn
It was without relish that he disrobed the whore,
saw flash burns scarring flesh that had
ignited senior hearts and been a sign
of what the wretched Tigers wished to win.
‘She’ll live,’ he thought, turning attention
first briefly to the bearded dead
ambassador and then back to David.

David bled from bent-back fingers,

through the fingers. Bombs had found
here oh so many men by now, in meetings that were cause
of nothing but agendas acted on by agents
filling diaries for decades now it seemed.
The doctor stitched, staunched where the digits
joined, jammed iodine, juxtaposed
a nail against a naked joint.

The whore, Sri Lankan, wiped his eyes

and asked when Clarke had called to check.
‘He hasn’t,’ the doctor hesitated.
He wondered should the worst be told,
that neither would knighthood be Clarke’s
nor were whores welcome at the wake
of reputation of the resident surgeon’s favourite,
the writer who raised readers’ minds
to Jupiter, jump-started juvenile brains,
inspired the Argosies of astronauts,
and gave the globe great pleasure
30
with more than HAL — this was Hell.

‘It isn’t fair,’ the whore said, fainting

half away and haltingly returning.
‘He had it all, and less, and now these lies!’

The doctor thought the truth may never out,

remembered flights in twice forty books.
Could clandestine Clarke count
on amnesty, amnesia of the world?
Had he done nothing harmful? Was it hate
accusing him falsely of fancying boys?

The crime of paedophilia, so perverse

its practitioners should be paid in pain
and penalized with penitentiaries,
could Arthur answer his accusers?

The doctor hoped devoutly so.

‘Here for forty years we’ve loved his yarns,

our people,’ the whore said, pathetically.
‘Only one newspaper, nosing evilly
even hints wrong-doing. Wrongly!

‘You’ve learned I am no girl!’ he lapsed

back in the world of the internally injured.

‘David, you’re dying,’ the doctor said,

but softly, knowing sayings hurt.
31
The whore, not hearing, head back, hurried,
adding that Arthur actually was innocent,
was almost worshipped in Platonic ways.
‘We, our people, knew him perfectly
as thinker, writer, wonderful being.’

Night caught his words: ‘I never knew him as a man.’

32
Every now and then
Every now and then I do feel Irish.
Every now and then I am alive.
I think of the music called Irish.
I think of celestial jive.
And I dance my small own roundelay — oh —-
I dance then my own celebration.

33
Twenty Thirty
Twenty
‘I spooked your dad there, saying I must score.’
‘He’s read of drugs. Don’t say that anymore.’

‘What must I say, I’m going ‘to make my mark’?’

‘Who cares? Dad drinks. Let’s go down to the park.’

‘I’m serious. We got what, five years more?’

‘Perhaps you do. I’ll just be twenty-four.’

‘I’m two years older. Betty, I’m a man!’

‘I know you are. I learned that with my hand.’

‘Time’s flying, Beth. We’ll get a Porsche next year.’

‘Or front porch. Babies. Get on over here.’

‘I’m good in Sales. Chet says I’m boss as gold.’

‘Chet’s thirty, love. Don’t ever trust the old.’

‘I love you, Beth. Your body. God, you’re grand.’

‘I love you too. I want to start our clan.’

34
Thirty
‘Thirty-two? That’s not an age. A calibre!’
‘A small one, too. My man, you’re not Excalibur.’

‘That’s cool, like you. Watch me romance the stone.’

‘Go start without me. ‘When you’re all alone…’’

‘‘Call Rotor Rooter.’ God, you’re funny, Beth.’

‘It helps to stop my crying. I fear death.’

‘I’m thirty-two. Big deal. I got the raise.’

‘Cindy’s got the measles. Jeff broke his maze.’

‘When she recovers, they go to my folks.’

‘I like the baby-sitting, hate Dad’s jokes.’

‘We’ll get away, like bandits, in our Ford.’

‘I’m thirty, too. Who should I blame, the Lord?’

35
Two — in a Series of Six
Hole in a wall, holy you all,
I think like a buzzard
I’m just gonna fall
Up, down, back, through
And all over you.
I took down your name, I’ll bring you some fame,
Eight seconds foreplay then burn like a flame
Up, down, back, through
And all over you.
Love you so much, thrilling your touch,
I need your sweet hugs like a gimp needs a crutch
Up, down, back, through
And all over you.
Smoke in your eye, it looks like you cry,
I can’t say good-bye ‘cause I think I would die
Up, down, back, through
And all over you.
Frog in the well, oh bloody hell,
I know I should leave but my love starts to swell
Up, down, back, through
And all over you.

36
The Heath, Stanza 1
The old man’s sing-song whistling empties night
of promise, hope and passion, even breath.
Inside his skull, his left brain tries to right
itself, remember when her lisping ‘yeth’
had brought him rapture. Rupturing his sight,
a scythe recovers moonbeams. He meets Death.
But Death for this old man holds no more fears.
He’s walked here whistling for Him forty years.

37
The Poets’ Dilemma
A cri de coeur can’t be a work of art.
Its zealousness drives sense away, pulls rhyme
to moon at June and here (I’m sorry) ‘heart.’
From paucity some poets may try on ‘clime.’
Aboard the wagons of the criers’ band,
the preacher’s prattle petrifies the mind
that tries to get away with sleight of hand.
We throw away the melon, eat the rind
when’ere we ‘press a thought down for the counts.
Because, as poets, we’re prone to masquerade:
we lose our raison d’être in petty flounce,
or lose our audience — it’s quick to jade.
We could express ourselves in prose that’s terse,
but then we’d be believed, and that is worse.

38
Bienvenidos
The last day of the first month of this year.
The oranges growing outside boost my cheer.
The olive branches fuelling cooking fires
contribute to the haunting haze that spires
from chimneys to the cemetery’s plots -
that thicken in the evening’s dream — that clots
imagination. I’m a Moor in Spain,
my family’s loss the Latin Christian’s gain.
Today, returning after many years,
I sniff familiar soil. Birds prick my ears
with song they taught to prototypes of me.
I’ll stay next month out. Look and listen. See.

39
Wayside
‘You must believe enough to kill, or else
it’s not a faith with content you profess.’
He praised his gods and roasted flesh and bones
of passers-by the odds had sent his way.
‘Pass-over bread’ he called the grim meal ground
from pilgrims shriven, freed of soul and baked
to slake the hunger of his tribe. They lived
among us not so long ago, his tribe;
in fact, their ways instruct us still: we kill
for oil, and other reasons we invent
to justify existence, on the wayside, in our tent.

‘I differ. I won’t let it be that way,’

my Esther tells me, angry-eyed in Ghent
abhorring all the gore that’s eulogized
in this cathedral’s stained glass panes. Yes, ‘stained,’
a word that’s perfect to explain the tales
these windows glorify, these escapades
of lopping limbs for Lords that favour blood
to irrigate paths to the Holy Grail.
We call them High Crusades on Holy Days
and glorify their crimes in history books. ‘That’s wrong,’
my Esther tells me fiercely, ‘we’re not like that anymore.’

40
We cared enough to kill still in Kuwait,
with rockets, rifles, flames: bulldozers shoved
hot sand and buried boys stashed far from home
in ditches they hand-dug to stop our tanks.
I’m sure somewhere some parson offered thanks
to Mammon or more modern names of gods
whom we invent to take our garbage out.
‘You said we should!’ My troops are sick with rage.
‘You said Hussein must lose no matter cost,
or else, like Hitler, he would kill us all.’

‘Of course I did,’ I answer, from the wayside, in my tent.

41
Old Dreams
What dreams survive the dustiness of age?
Why, all of them! In ageing they go prime.
While teenage angst is best at muffled rage,
and young adults excel at hustling time,
it’s old decrepitude that’s fit to climb
beyond the cage of flesh and sniff the stars.
Dim-eyed beholders see best what is wild,
anticipate where wheelchairs outpace cars.
It takes the wear of years to free the child.

42
Beauregard Afternoon
A French breeze teases through the garden trees
that shadow half-done paintings standing here,
where I, who would learn drawing, take my ease.

I should be working: What to do is clear,

but How and Why elude my grasp this year.

I say ‘this year’ as if some future day

I’ll yet discover how I too can play
the magic notes real painters all can hear
and capture on stretched canvas or in clay.

I take my ease and tell myself, ‘Next year.’

43
Cicada Song
I hear old news: each new cicada’s song
repeats scraped notes with no change I can hear.
Fidelity a million years can’t wrong
rings through the muted trills that reach my ear.
When dinosaurs watched forest birds appear,
cicadas sang this song. These are the notes
that serenaded Celts who shaped these moats
in years when Rhone and Nîmes had Stone-Age names.
While I react to terror’s newest ‘votes’
cicadas string their chants on ancient frames.

I’ve read a plane’s been downed, all fliers dead;

each death a tragedy surviving news
that seeks and signals madness, till it’s read
and superseded. Widows take first views
of loneliness, and red-cold rage pursues
newly-childless parents as they wait,
unseeingly, at the arrival gate
for this, another flight that won’t arrive.
Cicada song and human news both grate
upon my ears, and ask why I’m alive.

44
I walk alone into the careless wood
and claim some shade, sit on a rough-stone wall
I share with ants and katydid. I should
find peace. It’s hot. Cicadas call
in rhythms in which angry bombers could
imagine calls to action; or a parent might
hear announcements cancelling that flight
her children should have missed. They’re dead.
Old news. Cicadas stop their song at night:
the silent time that we survivors dread.

45
Amazon Night Call
Creaking! Central heating or her husband?
She kept eyes shut and tuned in on the sounds.
Radiator? Knuckle pop? FM band?
Perhaps her middle-ear bones. Coffee grounds
that gurgled in the drain? Sleep slipped away
and Susan gave up, sat up, switched the light on.
She wished she hadn’t when she saw what lay
much on the rug and more still on the transom:
an anaconda lounging in the light.
It didn’t speak, she thought, but Susan heard words
and Geoffrey wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Back home, where snakes were smaller and slurped
songbirds,
had never seemed so far away. She screamed.
Would Geoffrey reappear and say she dreamed?

46
Dead Weight
The women wander chained here, in no queue
but loosely shackled, they all whirl in drifts
of thwarted rage that’s punctuated through
with laughter, love and dreams: quick sudden shifts.
Their chains (not foisted on their sex as ‘gifts’ —
all men must wear them too) will never rust,
yet there will come a day when they, now trussed
(and all the men) will slip away, fly free:
escapees catching up on wanderlust,
unfettered by iron bonds of gravity.

47
Hymn of Veneration
If suns set into graves and did not rise
or if they hung continuously in skies
we’d think them less than we this moment do,
impressed as we are how our Sun swings through
its constant orbit that revolves round us.

For fifty-thousand years, old human tribes

wrote history picture books in which the scribes
inked pens with blood of brothers killed for wealth
they redistributed by force and stealth
but we’re enlightened now and so we’ve stopped.

Today democracy is how we rule

and every girl and boy enjoys perfect school
and learns exactly what they need to know
and finds in happy work their chance to grow
so they all end their long sweet lives fulfilled.

We’ve learned that judges settle our disputes

so everyone finds fairness and recruits
his colleagues for endeavours and high pay
in satisfying jobs we do each day
now no one is too rich and no one’s poor.

48
Now everyone of us resembles God
as we portray Him: He’s well-dressed and shod
in golden slippers that reflect the Sun.
He shows His Face and makes sure everyone
is never sick or lonely or afraid.

We study history to remind us how

the animals: the horse, the dog, the cow,
were made for us by God so we could eat;
and every sundown sees us singing sweet
songs celebrating how our deeds are good.

49
Mesozoic Prophecy
We stand,
proud dinosaurs
in grass. The asteroid
that will obliterate our reign
locks on.

Look on.
Attend that Roach
who waits, wrapped in black wings,
to dog our doom. You think he waits
his turn?

His turn
requires more time.
He’ll bide, while mammals teem
this earth and steam our place with their
hot blood.

Odd, blood.
It’ll course in veins, emend
to humans’ time: they’ll chime
the knell for all they’ve left to board
their Ark.

50
Fair spark
from reddest eyes
of Earth’s unknown true god,
the Roach, will call in friendly fire,
as now.

51
Long Distance Blues
When I think of all those times I called long distance,
all those words I said and meant along the wires:
a love with such emotion that it choked on its own motion.
I’m going to paint my next truck blue, named after you.

Silly me, consuming credit renting ‘phone lines,

bubbling happy like the gargling of a goose.
In your quiet I got the notion that we had the magic potion.
I’m going to paint my next truck blue, named after you.

We had a lot of liking, love; lots of longing

for a magic world each thought the other knew.
At our best we were a Nation! Now we’re mutual sedation.
I’m going to paint my next truck blue, named after you.

When I think of all those times I called long distance,

all those words I put on picture postal cards —
not aware what we were riding was a train stuck on a siding.
I’m going to paint my next truck blue, named after you.