Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2001

May
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
May 2001

A California song,
A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

Walt Whitman "Song of the Redwood Tree"

 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 22 Number 5 May, 2001
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s
Fredrick Zydek 4-5 Joanne Seltzer 22-23 Arthur Winfield Knight 33-34
Will Inman 6-12 Sylvia Manning 24-26 Albert Huffstickler 35-36
Ida Fasel 13-17 David Michael Nixon 27-28
John Grey 18 Paul Grant 29-30 cover photo by B. Fisher
Geoff Stevens 19 Don Winter 31 Frontispiece chromolithograph
(1864) by Albert Bierstad
Bill Roberts 20-21 Gerald Zipper 32

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes
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Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127
©2001, Ten Penny Players Inc.
http://www.tenpennyplayers.org
Nebraska Storm - Fredrick Zydek

It began with trees dancing

in the river's image of the sky,
the river blinking back the rain,
the rain weeping like lost love.
That loss went wild in the wind
until the wind wailed like a banshee.

Then the thunder came and its strange light.

That light cracked open the sky
like an enormous egg. The sky began
to thump and rage. Rage becomes a celestial
stallion trying to outrun the paramour
gods of wind and windy claws.

4
The storm drives us to the basement.
We descend the stairs like we do our lives -
several steps at a time. Time waits,
fills itself with whatever light it can.
That light shimmers through everything.
It is the light that keeps hope terribly alive.

5
 a tribe of being - will inman

this gasline i walk nearly every day

bears dust that once lived in tribal individuals.
all the events that made them a people
still live in each fleck of dust and dirt.
other
rhythms, runnings and leapings and restings
of coyotes, javelinas, pocket gophers, black
rainbow birds, owls, hawks, doves, dragonflies,
combine with human pulses to keep alive all
events among. my skin scrapings, now turned
dust — join these broken carriers. we
rise in
dances of dust devils, we soar with wind.
ancient mammoths
plod alongside us, we are
remembered in each other's scattered minglings.
6
starbursts made our single generations
possible: now winds impregnate god with all
we've been through.
voices of mesquite
and greasewood
tell our wordless histories.
alone or together, we are indivisibly one vast
process. spiders
spin their webs from our
stretchings, we born and we bloom each other.
moon
covets and enters motions of our sap
and of our blood. sun
humps and hampers
as we begin over and over again

first published in The Lucid Stone Winter 2000 #24

7
 a tree born - will inman

a tree born of love between a mountain and low country

a presence in whom all things are known and remembered
we cut her down, we chop ourselves, we emasculate
a woods god.
our dominion over comes a curse
laid on us by Yahweh: we were born to be
stewards of questions we must ask God, we must ask
ourselves

24 November 2000, Tucson

8
 a far place - will inman

under my feet lives a far place.

an acorn waits in a clump of grass.

i pull up the grass and cover the acorn with dirt.

what was i doing meddling with time and space?

why didn't i let acorn plant herself in her own time?

suppose something would have moved acorn to a better place

without knowing what it was doing. an acorn

growing into an oak tree is a slow volcano.

a rooted tornado. an avatar of a still elephant.

a cathedral where a raincrow calls her lies.

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does an oak tree live in air and earth?
do earth and air and light live in an oak?

does an oak tree live in a small plot of earth?

does an oak tree live in the whole round earth?

i used to hear raincrows calling in giant sycamores.

sycamores are white with large scabs of brown bark.

oak trees and sycamores sing groaning in hurricanes.

sycamore balls break into tiny parachutes.

i heard a wood thrush singing love in a dogwood tree.

a far place lives under my feet live in a far place.

From Earth's Daughters #57 2001

10
 black angel - will inman

Even in his eighties, he

climbed the lattice fence into our yard
to feed the chickens, bring in lightwood,
then logs, to start morning fires
in the livingroom fireplace.
Under
grizzle of hair and brows, his eyes
shone bright and kind.
I was eleven
or twelve when he took sick and died. He
was the only ex-slave I ever knew.
Worked all his life . . .
Never seemed to occur
to my uncle (behind whose great house

11
Henry Williams lived in an ancient
cottage) or my father — to retire him
on a pension. A kindness, they thought,
to pay him a bare survival wage for
chores.
Good upstanding Christian
whites took are of their
darkies. 'We'll all be white in
Heaven, Son,' Dad assured me.
Took me
awhile to take it in that That
was a good reason not to want to go
There.

27-28 August 1999 Tucson

12
 Conversations - Ida Fasel

A brown thrasher viewing the world from the phone line

is sending out notes in an order of song —
not the call, the field guide's catch-phrase
but an aria floated over and over, a ripple
and flourish of melody swiftly passing,
artful, intense, tiny, complete.

Is he saying from where he's sitting

Nice up here but no plan to stay?
Is he sending out first advertisements
flouting his maleness in advance of himself?

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He spreads wings, descends to the grass,
discreetly looks around. Approaching the house, he
addresses it with a bright cadenza full of detail.
What fellow bird told him I was a soft touch?
Is he telling me he's thirsty, he sings better
when the sprinkler arches a rainbow in its spray?

If our mental worlds could meet in that dimension

where movement, color and song are the language,
he would know my answer to his eloquence
is delight in the whorls of my ears.

14
 Messages - Ida Fasel

A sparrow is singing unseen. A mourning

dove coos, thoughtful, plaintive, peaceful.
Muscles chant me to the park,
the faint sound of TV following
from houses in the street.

The horizon billows with pennants

of crimson yellow orange gold.
Is it sunrise? Is it sunset?
It is east, and I am in love
with beginnings good for all day.

In the corner of my eye

a hollow in a tree I pass.

15
Once, an old-growth elm
gave Marie Frost and me free rental
of a postal box. How we flew, buoyed up
by crusty snow, pummeled by rain,
bruised barefoot on grass and twigs.

What breathless secrets did we

summon each other to hear, chattering
details in each other's house
familiar as our own?

How much harder it became

to be as sure as I was then
of the secrets of the world.
I held strong against the catch-alls,
the alternatives without root or crown,
the guidance of what's in, what's out.
16
Stuck in the mudbank of a college carrel,
I pulled out in morning water,
footnote-free.

In the repose of the steady, strenuous motion,

in the company of trees
whose earthly gift is my breath,
whose combined message is
To believe, desire is enough,
I pace myself home to a Bach contata,
its tones gold and after-rain green,
desire the mainstay, gates-of-heaven blue.

17
 Carousel Graveyard - John Grey

Once it rode the circle of music, It can finally see

followed the wooden tail the horse it followed
of a face it never knew. for so many bars of melody,
lying broken in the dust
Now, circus colors like a long dead thoroughbred
almost peeled away still waiting to be shot.
from rotting wood,
it's wedged in a corner,
away from any rider,
the whirling song
a phantom in its busted skull,
its three remaining hoofs
bent in a parody of speed.

18
I have found - Geoff Stevens

I have found it in Eureka, California,

that lumbering city of Humbold County,
its harbor a redwood shipping port,
its Sequoia Park a grove of Redwoods,
its very name a discovery of sorts,
the cry of Archimedes — eureka!

19
My Life as Captain Marvel, Jr. - Bill Roberts

Captain Marvel shared his magic word, Shazam!

that magically turned me into Captain Marvel, Jr.,
and we flew all over together, though never quite
leaving the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

He became invisible beside me, probably because

he didn't want to be seen with a scrawny kid
in a faded pink bathing suit, wearing a torn white
towel subbing as a cape cinched around the neck,

the towel imprinted with a blue "M," unless

I carelessly knotted it about my neck upside down.
Actually, we flew on streetcars all over town,
good thing my father kept me supplied with tokens.

20
We never solved any high-profile crimes together,
but I take pride in the knowledge that our mere
presence in a neighborhood, even though the Captain
was invisible, gave pause to many would-be perps

bent, no doubt, on committing unthinkable heinous acts.

I gave up the Captain Marvel, Jr. persona as soon as
I discovered the ink from the "M" got all over me
when I toweled myself off from my weekly bath.

21
 California Water Log - Joanne Seltzer

San Diego. Water served only by request

in every restaurant — including Anthony's
which offers french fries or pilaf with dinner,
then bilks me of 75¢ for a baked potato.
At the waterfront a homeless young man
begs carfare to the VA hospital,
slinks away like one of the zoo's great cats.

San Luis Obispo. With Swiss-Italian abandon

the Madonna Inn sells water by night,
but I freeload off Cousin Betty's
scant ration that she shares with tuberous begonias
and red peppers foraged by deer.
I promise to wash my hair in Cambria.

22
San Simeon. No water flows in the castle
Hearst devoted decades to unbuilding.
Cary Grant, playing the favorite guest,
in deadpan called this a splendid place
for an unemployed actor to spend the depression.

Monterey. Shops have taken over Cannery Row

where Steinbeck's books provide local color
alongside wearable interpretations of
sea lion, sea otter, dolphin, seal and whale.
At the aquarium a well-fed shark
shares the mock ocean with selected fish.
Why the sardine stopped coming nobody knows.

First appeared in Earth's Daughters

23
 Panes - Sylvia Manning
You were already beauty
when we came to this place
where now each smooth framed
piece of cooled sand vidreo/glass
whether meant to be mirror
or only become so
for right action, reflection,
gives moving chiaschuro prints
in greens from somewhere without,
beyond these walls.
24
Where once only hot calich
shone a body wanders safely
through shaded rooms, coming
only once upon a photograph of you
but often to sole tree or branch
in panes placed once
for mere utility ,
as though you said to all that
might reflect, in time, "Stay here,
stay square. Shine back what green
growth comes when I am gone."
Before you took your brilliance off,
leaving black and white photograph,
leaving.
 We Have Systems at Center
Sylvia Manning
Not high tech,
more appropriate than such
to the dust we will become
when we become
ourselves when we be
long when we be life-
long siblings in filial
system.
I search the colored egg-
shaped Roma fruit,
tomatoes of a vine
we never planted
(volunteer, as our grand
mothers said, from left over
seed on hamburger wrapper
dogs drug up to litter,
near silver king artemisia,
shade from dusty pre-Spring heat)
hunt these carmen colored
ovals now days before
Semana Santa, Pascua,
Easter, resurrection,
season for new growth
elsewhere, time for dying
here unless your seed falls first
beneath protective shade.

25
We are systems, we are the dirt
from whence all sustenance
occurs, we are what the dogs
drag up, we are left-over seeds
on greasy dead beef wrapper,
we are the volunteers on a tier
of Life itself, and we are
tears for those we loved
whose flesh became embono
(as border ones say
compost) long ago.
26
We are sprung from dirt,
not Aphrodite's foam, but
we survive, with these systems,
appropriately home. We save
each scrap of daily bread to feed
again our mother who fed us;
we become layer of design
the rushed and hurried others would not
see in their grandmother's gift of
piecework.
We are rose-hued symbols of rebirth,
hidden, in silver-king shade,
at moist and seeded (systems-cooled)
center.
Pockets - David Michael Nixon

I have been sitting at the window,

writing poems about broken glass
and the still forms of dead birds,
and as I sit here,
still writing,
another billion dollars
enters Bill Gates' pockets,
so much gravity in
his bulging pants
that he can never soar.

27
All around him, Then they could settle
poor people without pockets into the lower air
begin to rise from the earth and float forever,
and bob up the air high above Bill's head.
toward the thin atmosphere,
which they hope will be
so light it will not hold
even their weightless beings.

28
 Time-Clock - Paul Grant

Ash case. Brass works. Hands

bent away from their pivot points
so the arms don't catch on one another,
but even that's not enough: it's finally stopped.

Whether a fried field mouse

has grounded it out, or the motor —
depression-made and faithful
through three wars —
has burned itself to ghost
no one can tell. Time. It just won't listen.

So what if there's truth in this world —

it obviously doesn't want to be here.

29
Isn't native, has deliberately
made a point of never learning the language
& even makes faces at our efforts to
commune with it. Keeps to itself
as much as possible.

Still, the hands are frozen

At 10:20, almost as if
someone in a story died
then, and something —
some elaborate analog mechanism
we cannot deconstruct —
down inside it all

actually cares.

30
 Eugene's Drive to Work
Don Winter
The hiss of the storm door trails him
to the car. He cranks the engine,
cranks it again. Maybe he is
just like his father:
same shift at Hamtramck Auto,
same bottle of whiskey,
same reckless fights.
He backs out of the driveway
and begins to drive, but turns
and returns like a thought.
He thinks of arguments he might have used,
his tongue rolling them out
31
like dead stars. He looks in at the light
of the bar, watches it fall
from the back of the rear view mirror.
Squirrels, buzzing question marks,
scamper the bridge that leads to the plant.
He thinks of all the arguments,
of all the times he's wanted to leave,
and he remembers: half a city
and half a shift apart makes them friends,
or at least makes them tolerate
crude moments they spend like that.
He remembers by forgetting
everything else. Nightly, boards up his eyes.
Round here traditions are kept
like husbands, like wives.
Mealy-Mouthed Morality -Gerald Zipper

I'm sick of all this mealy-mouthed morality

people are either good or they're bad
or they're just people
like us.

32
 James Dean: Maila - Arthur Winfield Knight

They're mine: the people who hang-out in all night cafeterias and coffee shops like
Googie's. The drugstore cowboys, the conmen, the prostitutes. The blue, the lost, the
lonely. They keep the night watch and never seem to sleep. One of them calls herself
Vampira, but her name's Maila. She sits across from me in a back booth, whispering. "I
knew these were my people the first time I came here. It's strange, because there
weren't any places like this in Finland." She's wearing a black body suit, and her face is
stark-white, layered with pancake make-up. "I used to serve drinks at a club on the Strip,
but I got tired of it. Hosting old horror films on late night TV is better, but I'm getting
tired of that, too." "You get tired of most things," I say. "I'm already tired of being a
movie star and it hasn't even happened yet." We met in the parking lot outside Googie's.
She'd arrived in a hearse. Leaning against me, she said we were destined for each other.
Her long black hair was dusted with cobwebs, and she talked incessantly about a coven she
belonged to somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. She asked if I'd like to see a photograph
of her — naked — standing next to Valentino's grave, holding a red rose. She was bleeding
from the thorns. I told her I'd never liked Valentino.
33
 James Dean: Billy the Kid - Arthur Winfield Knight
From SWIMMING IN SAND, the imaginary autobiography of James Dean

My mother taught me to pretend, but she died on July 14th

when I was nine. We'd played games every night before I went to
bed. I knew I wanted to act. Sometimes — now — I pretend I'm
Billy, walking toward the darkened house where Garrett's waiting.
I'll be dead in minutes, but I don't know that. I don't want to
know. It's July 14th, hot out. I know that. In a few minutes it will
be midnight and everything will be over. There's a circle of light
around the moon. Garrett's sitting on the edge of Maxwell's bed,
his pistol cocked. I feel breathless in the burning night air. Mexican
women will light candles for me and cry when I'm laid out, but it
won't matter.

34
Transcendence - Albert Huffstickler

What I'd really like in my old age

is an all-night diner across the street,
breakfast twenty-four hours, good coffee,
smoking in the back. I don't sleep long
most nights. Years ago, when I knew Keith
the baker across the way, I'd wake and
walk over to the bakery and visit with
him in the wee, small hours, maybe have
a toke or two, listen to some weird
flying saucer, interplanetary, aliens
among-us show on the radio and then
say my good night or morning and wander
back to my place and back to sleep.
It was good. But what I'd really like
now is an all-night diner. I could
climb out of bed at two in the morning,
35
cross the street and into the light and
smells of early morning, truck drivers,
newspaper workers, cab drivers, (I
worked in a place like this one) and
find my booth in back and sit watching
and maybe writing while I drank my
coffee and smoked, feeling the night
outside, not a harsh night, a benevolent
night, guarded by the city cops at the
counter, a sheriff's deputy or two,
everyone caught somewhere between
sleeping and waking, a good place to
be. We need these places and they're
fading fast, eaten by the chains,
the mass-producers. They're getting
harder and harder to find and I very
seriously doubt that I will find one
across the street from my apartment
36
before I die. But it's a nice dream.
Sometimes I wake in the night and
stumble to my bedroom chair and my
last night's cold cup of coffee, light
a cigarette and sit there half-asleep
dreaming of just such a place. And
the dream takes on cosmic proportions
and I find myself floating upward
through the ceiling out into the
star-cluttered night and I'm walking
along a road that rises up into the
sky and far ahead, its lights out
shining the stars, is my diner, my
cosmic diner, arms outstretched,
just waiting for me
First published in Nerve Cowboy Austin TX,
Number 10, Fall 2000
ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979

very limited printing
by Ten Penny Players, Inc.
(a 501c3 not for profit corporation)

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