The Curvature: Speedboat

The river runs straight behind my home.

An iron factory spews coke down stream

And the ashes and willows were rippedw

Into the water by a derecho last summer.

I sit with my sister on a concrete pier.

Tomorrow is her wedding day — resignation

Is a philter poisoning her halting speech.

The speedboat comes like a swarm of bees,

Yellow with long stripes of scratched black.

A man waves as he passes and ignores

My gesture to move right to deeper water.

He passes under an iron trestle and turns about.

Now he’s much too close to his right shore,

Is soon airborne, a flightless bird in flight.

(He’s hit a partially submerged concrete pier.)

The boat, now vertical, drops him backwards

And hits him with its stern as it comes down.

We hear shrieks like seabirds, see flailing arms

Try to move him toward the opposite bank.

The boat is caught in a tight circle and strikes

The man twice more before moving downstream.

My sister and I push a canoe into the water 

And try to paddle toward the thrashing man,

But the churning, circling speedboat blocks us.

People on the other shore wade in and grab him.

He has no entrails and they watch him die.

The speedboat continues to circle — as my sister

And I return to dock — to circle and circle

Until it runs out of gas and courses straight,

As though the steering wheel has been unlocked

By the empty tank, unbending its curve,

So the boat can crash, vertical again, on land.

The Curvature: Hobo’s Island

Hobos’ Island is surrounded

By shallow rapids, water on stones,

Its murmuring constant, dulcet.

I jumped off the train into woods

Banked a hundred feet above,

Onto a grass flat worn bare

By countless boots like mine,

Mud-caked, broken strings

Square-knotted, but no holes.

The climb down to the river

Was treacherous, muddy slick,

From constant spring rain,

But safe enough as I grabbed

Willow and poplar trunks.

When I stepped into the river, 

My feet felt cold and clean.

At first I saw three campfires,

Which went out as I portaged

My light, half-empty backpack.

I heard shouting and curses

And guns fired, I hoped,

Into the clear darkening sky.

Men crashed through trees

And ran through the rapids.

I laid down in cold shock,

Began to float downstream, hearing

Shouts rising through the woods

I’d just before descended.

I knew that was no way back.

Something bumped my shoulder —

A section of old picket fence.

I grabbed it, but didn’t climb

On until the fracas was well

Behind me. I lay on my back,

Not bothering to steer, just hungry,

The bread in my pack inedible.

The river deepened into silence.

A kind course, it stayed me from shore

As the banks curved right and left,

Like the creases in my palm.

I remembered there was a dam

Miles downriver, through town,

But I wouldn’t worry about 

What came next until it came.

 

The Curvature: Escape

Here, the river, my river, argues.

It speaks with whispered nouns

That name the parts of the word

I have come here once again to hear.

I say parts since the water cannot adhere,

As if having lost the battle to live.

(The old coliseums were flooded

And filled with elephants and lions

Who couldn’t drown but drowned

Even the gladiators who could swim.)

The waters are silent as ice tonight.

They are coming for me, getting close,

With their pikes and slung machetes,

And I’ve no place to hide — I dive,

Feel my ears fill, my lungs burst,

And, like all escapees, swim upstream.

They stand on the trestle looking down

And do not see a ripple in darkness

I swim deeply enough not to disturb.

When I’m alone again slipping I climb

A clay shoulder at the river bend.

I cannot rest, nor stray from the shore.

I marvel at the constant curvature

Of muddy banks. Nothing is straight.

I stop again and wait, a stone, hearing

Faint assurances I am here, now,

Just this once, and that’s enough for me. 

Green, Terzata #50

This is all I have to say of green —

Not the perfumes or the taste,

Nor all its nuances I have seen.

Green, not red, is the color of haste,

As with all of life,

Little completely faced,

Yet the opposite of strife,

Which is hope (no, not blue),

The blunting of the knife.

Nothing, nothing is quite true.

We act before a green screen.

I speak and act only for you,

My love, scene after scene. 

Note: This is the 50th and last

of the poems I've written in a

form I invented, the Terzata. Below

are numbers 31to 50 in the blog roll.

The first 30 are here: 30 Terzata

The Enlightened, Terzata #49

He woke and ate his freeze

With little sips of fog.

He’d forgotten how to sneeze

Having slept under a log.

He wandered lonely as a cloud

Like a surveyor his Magog,

As the ants stood and bowed.

He smiled with teeth of sun

And blinded the empty crowd.

He’d count to zero and one

The memories he could squeeze

With brains of no and none,

Gulping himself to the lees. 

Nest, Terzata #48

The owl fell from its nest

And cringed among roots

Yards away, fanning its breast.

We couldn’t hear the hoots

Of his mother. He made no sound,

Afraid of raptor brutes.

He was lucky he’d been found.

I took off my shirt.

We wrapped him round and round,

Carried him to his tree, unhurt,

And let him loose. He didn’t rest —

Rising on claws, he girt

The trunk with wings up to his nest. 

Tending, Terzata #47

The oak limb in the yard, bending,

Close to breaking,

Required careful tending.

Upon my waking,

The tree was on the ground.

I hadn’t felt the earth shaking

Or heard its falling sound.

In a few days it was gone,

Its thick stump ground.

I planted another one,

A sapling depending

On me like father to son . . .

Already ascending.