La Patience (Balthus)

 

The drawn curtain and striped wallpaper
are an improbable contrast of commonplaces
while curtain and skirt converse
in the same green fabric
with black and rhyming folds
in a room where the Persian carpet
lies at the same skewed angle as the curtain
and seems to have white socks
when others are present
and thick books lie atop the wastebasket
where they belong
beneath a fancy copper box
hurriedly but not recently inspected
and an unlit taper and skinny deco pillow
point one at the bars of the wallpaper
and the pinned-up curtain
and the other at the girl's smooth sweater
which is orange also
and the closest thing to us
that player of patience
bent entirely too far forward
to be thinking about the game
and not herself as well
which is what patience is all about
in such a room.

Woman and Wind (Michael Antman), Sonnet #611

 

Eve listened to her heart and sinned,

Then passed out of paradise

Into paradise, clothed in wind,

Her mind unclouded as her eyes.

She found her husband hiding

Behind trees — he found her blinding.

They found each other in their arms

And recited a litany of charms.

They knew this world was not broken

And stood awaiting the awoken

Moment of their forgiveness.

Distant laughter beckoned them on.

As they walked beneath the midday sun,

The wind billowed her white silk dress.

Know 1

Some think trees know each other

As an unborn child knows its mother,

A receptivity to stasis and change,

Which continually rearrange

The molecules of a kind of mind

As they perpetually unwind.

“Some think” has become all

That’s left of the old universal.

I-70

 I wrote this about my trip from Colorado Spring to Fort Wayne in 1985. It seems an apt metaphor today for turning 70.

I-70

Chasing Kansas twisters, I interrupt

The moon floating above a thunderhead,

God pondering his coffee cup.

The locust lullaby in the trees

Is a song to stars, or to the dead:

Fireflies flash where I cannot see.

Above the hood, the shuffling storm

Is a man on his knees, fist shaking,

Roaring for his shattered arm.

Behind, the sky is empty and clear.

The earth recedes quickly, quivering:

Ground heat cracks the icy air.

Path (Michael Antman), Sonnet #610

 

The path into these woods begins

With tentative steps on bent grass

Widening for two to walk abreast.

The locomotives’ blaring tocsins

Grow infrequent as the years pass.

Few paths reach a place unaddressed,

Though many have been abandoned.

(Van Gogh’s led into wheat fields

Where all men’s souls are pardoned

With the harvest’s generous yields.)

It’s hard to walk on railroad ties,

The first too close, the second too far.

I walk into woods, perhaps in error,

On a path that offers no alibis.

Swallowtail (photograph by the author), Sonnet #609

 

The tiger swallowtail settled

In our Gomphrena Fireworks

Yesterday afternoon sipping

From dozens of pink blooms.

It became crazily nettled

And flew in wild fits and jerks

When a spicebush swallowtail, tipping

Its wings among the blossoms,

Exiled the tiger from its lair.

The wind pushed black wings apart

So wide they ceased to be a pair,

But held fast until the gust died.

The tiger landed like a dart,

But, like the wind, was again denied.

IF, Sonnet #608

If the end doesn’t end, what then?

This moment is already contingent.

I dare you to count from one to ten,

To ignore a found dime, even a cent.

Each moment just comes back to us

Like the wind in the tree’s susurrous.

We’ve never been here before to be?

Yesterday and tomorrow are empty.

If I walk around the block every day

The houses never look the same,

Flowers grow and trees disappear,

The sidewalk means don’t lose your way,

Signs say don’t misremember your name,

But nothing guarantees that I am here.