In the Event

Poems

© 2011-2014 David A. Welch

Contents
Night Before the Fourth ................................................................................................................................ 4
Traffic Camera ............................................................................................................................................... 5
In the Orchard of Virtue ................................................................................................................................ 6
Certainty........................................................................................................................................................ 7
My Lord ......................................................................................................................................................... 8
Memory Lane ................................................................................................................................................ 9
Argument .................................................................................................................................................... 10
Alaskan Night, Early June ............................................................................................................................ 11
A Note Slipped in the Paper ........................................................................................................................ 12
Metaphysical Errand ................................................................................................................................... 13
Christ stubs His toe ..................................................................................................................................... 14
The Reader .................................................................................................................................................. 15
Inventory ..................................................................................................................................................... 16
Warning....................................................................................................................................................... 17
The Cardinal ................................................................................................................................................ 18
Amy Winehouse, Dead at Twenty-Seven.................................................................................................... 19
Side by Side ................................................................................................................................................. 20
One Foot out of the Pits .............................................................................................................................. 21
Threads ....................................................................................................................................................... 22
Animal ......................................................................................................................................................... 23
Hiding Place................................................................................................................................................. 24
Confidence .................................................................................................................................................. 25
Song of the Introvert................................................................................................................................... 26
Third Party................................................................................................................................................... 27
A Perfect Pair Precedeth a Fall.................................................................................................................... 28
The Routine ................................................................................................................................................. 29
Homeless..................................................................................................................................................... 30
The Lion in the Garden................................................................................................................................ 31
Dream Audit ................................................................................................................................................ 32
11 September, A.D. 363 .............................................................................................................................. 33

2
In the Backyard ........................................................................................................................................... 34
The Penitent ................................................................................................................................................ 35
Graduation Season ...................................................................................................................................... 36
A Sliver of Hope........................................................................................................................................... 37
The Hawk .................................................................................................................................................... 38
African Child ................................................................................................................................................ 39
The Hypocrite .............................................................................................................................................. 40
Facebook Poem ........................................................................................................................................... 41
Pumpjack..................................................................................................................................................... 42
"Who do you say that I am?" ...................................................................................................................... 43
Mother Church ............................................................................................................................................ 44

3
Night Before the Fourth

Of course there's nothing to fear

from those concussions rippling
distant air like buckled sheet
metal, haunting the treeline

of this otherwise quiet

suburban night. Godzilla's
not coming. No war's rumored.
Air steams and clings, jungle-like.

4
Traffic Camera

O heron, stiff-necked, cyclops downward eye

watching the waveless, hard, and white-striped lake,
plucking your fast-darting and fearless prey,
blinked dead with each quicksilver chance we take.

5
In the Orchard of Virtue

Having the fruit within hand, frail step ladder

Wobbles and lurches, the old flash of anger
Quickly comes over us, a fluster of legs
Upends the basket.

6
Certainty

Sure as rain hasn't come, we can mark

fulfillment of the one prediction
that was never in doubt: I have
disappointed you again.

7
My Lord

My Lord raises up
My Lord, like a sapling
in the desert.

My Lord raises my Lord

to full height, for the woodsmen's
good pleasure.

Sap, life-tree's blood, drips

down and down from bewildered eyes
of My Lord, My Lord.

8
Memory Lane

Whiff of bitter almond

More than once has
Been imagined

Weeping by the
Back gate tearing
Hair-roots eager
For leaving

Voices once
Coaxed the child
Out of nightmares
Later raised
And shattered
Like plates

Their fangs
Await the heels
That hazard these halls

9
Argument

The thing I hate,

I do. Pressing my thumb
on the edge of your
anger, I slide it

down. Now we're both

bleeding when all I
had to do was
let it slide.

10
Alaskan Night, Early June

How pleasant and strange

to walk briskly in bright
sunlight, blueness of
sky
arched
and emboldened,
though it is nearly time
for bed: ten o'clock at night.

Good night says the night clerk

behind the front desk. Daylight
bathes the lobby, dusts the bear
by the fireplace, neither of which
see much action these days,

this night, this perfect replica

of late afternoon.

11
A Note Slipped in the Paper

Hunched over the morning news, you've already become

an old man with sandpaper breath, spitting sawdust
at rainbows and frightening the dog. Intransigence
creases your face as we ring the changes. Your wife
doesn't enjoy looking at you. Are you with us?

12
Metaphysical Errand

Yesterday a bird attacked my head

as I walked from the dentist to the car repair.
I cannot remember if the sky was fair
nor shoo shoo away this hollow boned dread.

13
Christ stubs His toe

The shock of it
tested my human will
years before my Hour
came

Father
it is a small thing
compared to the immolation
you formed my patience for
and for which my Heart
burns

Grief
and mercy abound
as I contemplate a sinner
dashing his foot upon a
stone and cursing
me

14
The Reader

In the delicate derangement of broken lines

I sought obscure and fleeting signs
of other eyes in the mask I wore,
some kindred loss, evasive, behind the door.

One knuckle tapping, I sound the rhymes

for vicarious confession of my crimes.
Hand traces wood, but no sliding grill
through which to pass, agreed, the token ill.

Speak easy, ghost, your guilt to shrive,

my faculties are limited, but I will strive
to breathe what sins of yours might pass
through lit enjambments, odorless, like gas.

15
Inventory

Too late your realize

life bleeds out
all this time.

Who you might have been

hurries after, catching
it without hands.

16
Warning

Don Bosco in vision's excess

Sees the souls of all his boys
Tumbling out of time, cast
In moulds time's mirrors
Froze them, poses unflattering
And forever painful: Pride,
Envy, Impatience. I hear
Empty anger in winter wags
A bony finger at a fall that
Still might be prevented.

17
The Cardinal

They called him "the Cardinal"

when his bony knuckles would turn white
from gripping the velvet armrests
of his virtual cathedra. With

his canons and declarations,

bulls and condemnations,
anathemas woven into a seemingly endless thread
of Facebook disputations, he was quite
the lark, this full-throated defender of the Faith,
but really just a shrike
on a stretch of barbed wire, pecking
patient friends to death.

18
Amy Winehouse, Dead at Twenty-Seven

Bees hoarse in ferment drowned

a towering hive torn down
dawn found the river of her panther hair
and the sweep of her neck along
it thrown

19
Side by Side

You say your eyes are old and squinty

I say blackberries glisten with moon’s
delight keeping sun’s deep secrets

You say your face is long and lopsided

I say a vessel of cream flows between
my hands and holds its purest shape

You say nothing you wear fits anymore

I say the river knows better than
the shore how perfect the bend

20
One Foot out of the Pits

When I took my son to see

The La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire Boulevard,
He was already an adult, yet I was just
Starting to grip the memory of his childhood
In the greedy hope of stretching it beyond
The Pliocene Age and back,
Forgetful of the tiny grain of sand
That is the full extent of human history
Reflected in the fading aperture
Of a dying mammoth's eye,
And of how that cosmic swirl
Of elephantine immensity
Holds such common and delightful
Fascination for both
My son and me.

21
Threads

I should be nicer to my wife

Do I think she owes me
Something
The appropriate tone
Appreciation of my anxieties
A hall pass inside my head
Instead of just being
With her when she wants me
To listen attentively

From the back porch

I see the warped boards
Separating from the fence
Where the nails have given
All they have and just let go
Their threads exhausted

Come in we're eating now

Yes this is your chance

So straighten yourself
And repair
To table
Without murmuring
And pick up the thread
Where she left off

22
Animal

Hey turnkey can you hear me

Banging this cup
Back and forth across
The bars of my mind
I'm rattling the cage
This side of my eyeballs
Hollering for the warden
Call the governor I'm
Dropping my appeal
The burly guards kick
Me to the floor again
Another night down
To the hole another
Dream I won't remember
Groping to light gnawing
The bars of air

23
Hiding Place

Finely crafted evasions of personal investment

in these lines are more than a dilatory strategy

it is bright fear of sudden discovery

boots gutturals fists door broken

open then dragged onto the landing

down the stairs neighbors peering

he writes poetry well he did but now

they will teach him to go out during the day

24
Confidence

Judge not
Lest your eye fall
In the cold soup

Store up dust
That never fails
To your own credit

Eat manna fallen

From moth's wings
And you might live

25
Song of the Introvert

Saturday morning on the

Path through the greenbelt, dog
At my heel, leash loosely held, no
Reason for tears in this glassy
Fragment of summer, Whitmanesque
Waves of walkers, bikers, joggers
Breaking into joyful sprays of color
Against my stone sea wall,
Good morning, good morning,
And why should you not
And why should I not? except for my long
Apprenticeship in the art of avoidance.

26
Third Party

Every time I call

you spread misery like black jam
on bitten crusts of obligation

and again joy

who we bled out years ago
through the spider vein of the

calling wire we
force her to listen to our brittle
reproaches but she cannot hear

27
A Perfect Pair Precedeth a Fall

Gaunt master of the dressing room,

Our man Pride surveys the ladies
With coin slot eye, while clinging Vanity
Trembles and giggles, fingering
His impeccable cravat.

28
The Routine

Assiduously
I rub the lens
With a tissue between
Thumb and forefinger
Holding the eye glass
Up to the light I see
Inexplicably
A thumbprint
So it is even
With my vices and
Frequent confessions

29
Homeless

Neglected prayers wander between long

mournful notes of passing trains by night
and stars grown invisible by morning light
their beards fall asleep in abandoned song

30
The Lion in the Garden

Be at peace with what you can't control

Some mayhem was always in the
Pattern of well ordered earth
The wildness you cultivated
Watches your gloved hand

31
Dream Audit

The worries in their thin black ties

gather at my bed in the hours before dawn.
They have assembled the facts and done
the analysis. The residue of troubled sleep
accompanies the précis of their report.
Life is reduced to food, the body
to clothing. The margins are too narrow
for breath. They leave the black binder
on the bureau with a thump. I lay awake.
I need to fire those guys.

32
11 September, A.D. 363

By decree of Jovian, Emperor of Rome:

If you worship demons,

if you pinch incense to Ares
or Athena, the war comes
to your door today.

If you practice magical rites

in public temples (those that remain
unconverted, for now, to
use of true religion) or inside
your homes, if you eat flesh
sacrificed to idols, remember

Julian is not here to protect you.

On this day
Jovian the pious
welcomes you to terror.

*******

NOTE: On 11 September, A.D. 363, the Christian emperor Jovian issued a decree that anyone who
practiced non-Christian rites, in public or in private, was subject to the death penalty. Jovian's
predecessor, the emperor Julian, was an aggressive persecutor of Christians.

33
In the Backyard

With me everything
Is an emergency.
The hand wheel on the
Propane cylinder is forever
Stuck in the on position.
Life's moments hiss out
Threats of perpetual disaster
Until the tank is empty.

34
The Penitent

"Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the
Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and
began to bathe his feet with her tears." (Lk 7:37-38)

Voluptuous, the jar

of perfume I cradle
and press with trembling hands
against my breasts.

I bought it within an hour

of hearing that He was there,
in that house, where my name
is completely despised.

I am possessed
of an idea that is quite mad.
I will push my way past the servants.
I will carry this shapely

vessel of nard, uninvited,

into the dining hall. I will throw
the curtains wide, and as my shame
like a prow precedes me,

the righteous will churn

in my wake.

35
Graduation Season

Late spring the seeds

of the flowering weeds have
flown caps swirl in the air
the time
of planting and tending comes
to an end

wild winds rip the plains

freedom’s bell
troubles my
sleep

36
A Sliver of Hope

Amused angels of the impossible

transmit their invitations to the
tip of my spine where they quiver
with a Nabokovian sob. So certain
these things are not meant for
me I seek leave through side
doors of familiar fear, where now a
grinning angel blocks me.

37
The Hawk

"Behold the sower went forth to sow. And whilst he soweth some fell by the way side, and the birds
of the air came and ate them up." (Mt 13:3)

Out walking today I saw a hawk

lording over a patch of suburban lawn.
He turned his head and stared at me.

As I made toward him a brazen step,

he danced aside, releasing from his
talons a dead bird in the grass,

which only that moment I noticed.

My attention now fixed on the broken heap
of feather and bone, the hawk made

away to the periphery of my sight,

and waited. The dying day was overcome
with his grey elegance and fearsome eye.

Bereft of seed or memento of the wise,

I turned and left the victor to his prize.

38
African Child

There is in his world a happiness beyond

The comprehension of Western aid.
It condescends to embrace
Our greater poverty, confounding
Our inconsolable sympathy.
He who has will receive more
And from we who have not
Even that is taken from us.
He lives in a hut in the Boma
Made of manure, ash, and mud.
He steps inside the hole of a door,
His back to the camera; toddling
There, his garment is clean
And blue as the Serengeti sky.

39
The Hypocrite

Spiritual connoisseur,
he could hold forth for hours
on the vintage of sanctifying grace.
The sound of his own voice intoxicated
him, until, weaving into traffic
afterward, the graves burst in his ears
and the unquiet dead descended like
hail into the goblets of his eyes.

40
Facebook Poem

Doctor says I have to stop writing poems

on account of my self-absorption,
this indigestion of soul that is aggravated
by a surfeit of objective correlatives
feeding on my free form anxieties.
Social media was mistaken for a cure,
What's on your mind? the analytic cue.
Like this poem. Your friends. Make public.
Who are you with? Odd, I cannot tag myself.

41
Pumpjack

In burnt fields following spring fires,

drought grips the hard-land
with grey hands that must be pried from
flowered sheets stiff with fearsome sweat.

In this pastoral desolation, monks

chant the dry hours. Their long, cowled heads
pray over flapping pages of dirt and weed
as the eternal wheel spins behind their knees

and a long, taut cable keeps the measure of beats

binding each monk’s brain to a hole in the ground:

Rock petrus petrol

Petrus rock petrol

Petrol petrus rock

O
core
graciously
hear us.

42
"Who do you say that I am?"

Doubt him,
Deny him,
His question is patient,
Watchful,
Long of tusk.
His corner of the room
Explosive whiteness.

43
Mother Church

Mother, dear
leper you are,
those celts you converted,
your intentions perverted,
those children you burned
at the stake,
these your flesh-rags,
your pustular milk-bags,
unclean mother dear
you do stink.

Leprous mother,
oughtn’t I choose me another,
say an earth-mother kind
and smooth-skinned?
These stones are smooth,
they fit well the voices
who prompt me to pelt
your vile flesh.

As I pick one up
my horror’d eye lingers
where now are no fingers
and skin flakes remind me
of you.

44