SPEAK AND BE DONE
We say the hawk rides the wind, but isn’t the wind carried, too?
When veering close to granite cliffs, which one fends off death:
Wings thin as shadow or the air lifting that strange angel?
Robinson Jeffers sits atop Hawk Tower in the raw morning
To stand watch over the day’s creation: thunder in darkness
As the ocean booms, then light and a thousand worn cliffs.
He savors the godlike savagery of carving form from nothing.
The Milky Way eddies out, river-vast and ribbon-thin,
The stars eternal as stones, meaning they too shall be worn away.
In the cadence of the surf are the cries of man and animal alike.
Gray whales migrate through the ocean’s endless emptiness,
Sounding their own elegies in the cathedrals of their bowed skulls.
He would like some shard of happiness for his granddaughter,
But he is an old man, not a fool, and knows the decided ends
Were made before time by winds deaf to any petition.
He loves the hawk cruising steep cliffs, for it needs no pity.
He loves the waves, for they cause no doubt. The prophet shall burn
In the candescence of his words, and need only speak and be done.
THE BLESSED UHT
The mind at morning is a mist still clinging to the ground.
It awaits the evaporating light and faintly hums with change.
But the slender knotgrass won’t relinquish its hold, not this hour.
Imperceptibly, the moist air changes, until perception begins.
Poplar leaves bat in a breeze, robins plunge to the grass,
And the fox remains colorless under maidenhair ferns.
Uht, the Anglo-Saxons called it. Not dawn, but the moment before
The light finds its proper object, before fogs have scattered,
When Grendel lopes back to the fens after his midnight hunt.
This is what the light says: when you become a father, your own
Father can protect you no longer. You become the shield for your child,
The broad plate that protects the warrior by making itself vulnerable.
Back out of all memory is the feeling of someone carrying you,
A fingerprint on the contour map of the soul that marks even orphans,
Who recall the mother’s oceanic tides, the father’s roar and calm.
Back to the mind. The light gives way to what the light reveals.
Cold moss, a whippoorwill on a branch, mist tangled in trees.
This is what the light says: you must forsake yourself in order to bless.
SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SOUL
What does the soul weigh? Does it differ from person to person?
Does the kingfisher, rattling over the river, possess one?
What of the staghorn beetle? The Douglas fir? The Himalayas?
If I looked through the deepest microscope, could I find the oak
Coiled within the acorn? Could I find my own death within me?
Would it be fine-grained, like sharkskin, or jagged as the Himalayas?
From what are we saving daylight? Are there telephones in the grave?
Did Nijinsky remember his dances as a phantom limb feels ghost pain,
Or as a snow leopard considers the valleys far below the Himalayas?
Tell me, what fills the sleep of whales? Do they dream of their lost feet?
Of the empty air as they breach skyward and crash in fountains?
Do they look at us as we look at clouds scattered above the Himalayas?
Why is there no vocative case for god in Greek? If god is not a noun,
Is it a verb whose tenses we have not yet learned to master?
Is her skin godding the sunset? Do cranes god over the Himalayas?
Since Keats always began or ended his great odes with questions,
Should we assume he only found answers in the midst of life?
What does the soul weigh? As much as a flower? Or the Himalayas?
Originally published in Chronogram
A PSALM BEFORE HEALING
A bowl of noodles with oil and sesame on a drizzly night,
A mug of scalding coffee, a braid of chala from the neighbor,
These small services uphold the firmament of stars, selah.
Never forget that the dove grieves but won’t share her story.
The hunters never understand. When she bolts skyward,
She is the skiff the exile rows through morning rain, selah.
How lissom the homerun swing of the left-handed catcher,
As if his bat had caught a comet’s arc and made it shine.
He shall never read this poem or know his own grace, selah.
With its notched legs, the Jerusalem cricket can’t help but sing.
The Alps can’t help but storm. The corn can’t help but grow.
The world is a second language we can’t help but speak, selah.
Once healed, the blind must be taught the ways of vision.
Diamonds in a green cloud are sunlight showing through leaves.
They learn, but dream of seeing in the dark once more, selah.
Just when you think you’re coming to the end of these poems,
Of your life, of a bowl of noodles, there’s an unexpected sweetness,
A last trace of oil you can sop with a handful of bread, selah.
Originally published in 32Poems
A RABBLE OF BUTTERFLIES
The Greek psi, first letter of psyche, the word for breath,
Resembles both a windblown iris and a butterfly drinking nectar
Through its uncurled proboscis before the light wind bears it away.
In his favorite photograph, Whitman sits with a butterfly on his finger.
Yet those dark, iridescent wings were cardboard, Whitman’s own cutout,
For the soul, he knew, was made from bright scissors and an old man’s hands.
Lorca dreamed Whitman’s beard woven with ribbons of butterflies.
They eddied among his whiskers, dappling Manhattan streets,
Clothing and uncovering the thighs of men and women with rainbow silks.
Should we be surprised that Nabokov’s blues are almost patternless?
They radiate the cloudless cold of April, though their underwings
Are studded with silver, the tucked-away blossoms of Solomon’s seal.
Perhaps we might honor the mayfly, too. After two years underwater,
Subimagos molt and rise so quickly they leave their mouths behind.
No song, save onionskin wings humming desire, desire, desire.
There is no end to the rabble of poets who write about butterflies.
After the long chill, they taste spring leaves, become chrysalises,
Finally unfurl into the flight that sketches rosettes upon the air.
Originally published in Virginia Quarterly Review
Note: the following poems were submitted for the 2008 Creekwalker Poetry Prize for which
Mr. Cone was also a Finalist.
Love like the Wild Geese
If you do nothing else with your life,
you can do this, you can love like the wild geese.
Because they are simple,
they do not even know what calls them
to the snow-clotted fields in spring,
only that their searing bones
light the way. Because they believe
they are immortal,
they rush over mountains, foothills, meadows
in waves of frightening speed,
since no one wants to live alone forever.
To feel air pulse beneath their wings is a blessing.
To watch two glide on a still pond,
another blessing. Even to see one
flying alone, shorn
of its mate, a kind of blessing,
because they join with their whole lives,
and even in loss cannot be rid of that
outline, always shimmering
at the tip of their outstretched wings.
Originally published in Considerations of Earth and Sky: Poems (Parallel Press, 2005)
Loons
Between the islands, our canoe drifted,
a single stroke, now and then, keeping us
poised over the sandy, limb-tangled shallows
that dropped away into fathomless dark.
We couldn't hear waves splash ten feet away –
some trick of sound - but a mother squirrel
chirring in the pines seemed almost as close
as the bright orange vests piled at our feet.
The wind went still. Sun on the nodding lilies
lining the shore softened their yellow heads.
I felt hard words from the night before
spread like ripples, diminishing, then gone,
into the cold water that swirled behind.
When the first loon surfaced, it scanned the lake,
dove back, and rose again with another,
a little farther out, but content, at least,
to let us watch them: velvety black faces,
the throat a band of stripes, the wings a road
speckled under heavy flakes of snow.
These were the ones we heard calling at dusk
when our voices had softened: long, low notes
someone could easily mistake for cries
of grief, if they hadn't heard them before.
Originally published in Considerations of Earth and Sky: Poems (Parallel Press, 2005)
The Recipe
calls for flour, beer, salt, and sugar, a bread tin, and other ingredients, as desired. I twist the cap off a
bottle of Yuengling porter, sip it first, a few drops like honey in my beard, then
pour the rest in a pot over clumps of flour. The foam bubbles, then seeps through, and the batter
thickens. A tablespoon of salt. Two of sugar. Garlic buds, peeled by hand and crushed in a press,
the yellowish curds, almost blue, squeezed into the pot. Had you come in the kitchen then, you'd have
seen me clean the press of the papery pulps of garlic, rinsing my hands under cold water. But you
waited till I'd snapped shut the oven door, then snuck behind, circled your arms around my chest, your
mouth against my shoulder, breathing warmly through my sweater. I could almost turn back to smell
your hair, but ran my hand instead from your hip to your ribs, pulled loose your shirt and brushed my
fingertips against your side. When we opened the oven, the elements burned red as tanagers. You
took the first slice from the loaf, still too hot, and mumbled, mouth full, words escaping like steam,
My God, it's wonderful, wonderful bread.
Originally published in Water-Stone (2001)
Considerations of Earth and Sky
Begin talking through the pain, not with it.
Point out the nail in the stranded post,
rusting, fenceless, like despair. Or the cows
who obey thunder's psalm by kneeling down.
Give it a name. Any name. Try creek-flood,
brush fire, snowstorm. You compound suffering
with the plain beauty of a world we're not meant for,
and you get suffering. Compounded.
Try words washed clean as pebbles. Think fjord.
There's a keen redtail up in yonder spruce.
When old men drive by, don't try to match their stares
that measure you like a dipstick does oil;
just notice how the Chevy's prime and rust,
shining through the white paint, correspond
to an Appaloosa's spots. Horse of stars.
Bless anything well-made, the north wind says;
don't romance without a good four blankets.
Hunger's a challenge at first, then a joy,
then a tool you remember to carry
everywhere. Almost ordinary, till one day
you're walking an empty highway, past rockwalls
maybe ten million years old. You look up –
granite stained with bird-lime, lichen, freeze cracks –
and realize you could eat the goddamn clouds.
Originally published in Wisconsin Academy Review (2003)
All Poetry © Copyright Temple Cone. All rights reserved.
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