Poems – Page 19 – Poetry Out Loud

    I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel
    to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.

                                                            —DUCHAMP

I had the happy idea to suspend some blue globes in the air

and watch them pop.

I had the happy idea to put my little copper horse on the shelf so we could 
    stare at each other
all evening.

I had the happy idea to create a void in myself.

Then to call it natural.

Then to call it supernatural.

I had the happy idea to wrap a blue scarf around my head and spin.

I had the happy idea that somewhere a child was being born who was 
    nothing like Helen or
Jesus except in the sense of changing everything.

I had the happy idea that someday I would find both pleasure and 
    punishment, that I would
know them and feel them,

and that, until I did, it would be almost as good to pretend.

I had the happy idea to call myself happy.

I had the happy idea that the dog digging a hole in the yard in the twilight 
    had his nose deep in
mold-life.

I had the happy idea that what I do not understand is more real than what I 
    do,

and then the happier idea to buckle myself

into two blue velvet shoes.

I had the happy idea to polish the reflecting glass and say

hello to my own blue soul. Hello, blue soul. Hello.

It was my happiest idea.

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.

Strand. String.
In this dream,

the paths cross
and cross again.

They are spelling
a real boy

out of repetition.

•

Each one
is the one

real boy.

Each knows
he must be

wrong
about this, but

he can’t feel
how.

•

The fish
and the fisherman,

the pilot,
the princess,

the fireman and
the ones on fire.

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can’t find them. Someone’s terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

Copyright Credit: William Stafford, “What’s in My Journal” from The Way It Is. Copyright © 1991, 1998 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed—or were killed—on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

Copyright Credit: William Stafford, “At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border” from The Way It Is. Copyright © 1975, 1998 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.

       ^{for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters}

One of the women greeted me.
I love you, she said. She didn’t
Know me, but I believed her,
And a terrible new ache
Rolled over in my chest,
Like in a room where the drapes
Have been swept back. I love you,
I love you, as she continued
Down the hall past other strangers,
Each feeling pierced suddenly
By pillars of heavy light.
I love you, throughout
The performance, in every
Handclap, every stomp.
I love you in the rusted iron
Chains someone was made
To drag until love let them be
Unclasped and left empty
In the center of the ring.
I love you in the water
Where they pretended to wade,
Singing that old blood-deep song
That dragged us to those banks
And cast us in. I love you,
The angles of it scraping at
Each throat, shouldering past
The swirling dust motes
In those beams of light
That whatever we now knew
We could let ourselves feel, knew
To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—
O Tree—O Gun—OGirl, run—
O Miraculous Many Gone—
O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—
Is this love the trouble you promised?

At the airport-security checkpoint on my way to visit my grandmother, I am 
asked to drink from my water bottle.

                    This water bottle? That's right. 

                    Open it and drink from it.

At the airport-security checkpoint on my way to visit my grandmother, I am 
asked to take off my shoes.

                   Take off my shoes? 

                   Yes. Both Please.

At the airport-security checkpoint on my way to visit my grandmother, I am 
asked if I have a fever.

                   A fever? Really? 

                   Yes. Really.

My grandmother is in a nursing home. It’s not bad. It doesn’t smell like pee.
It doesn’t smell like anything. When I go to see her, as I walk through the
hall past the common room and the nurses’ station, old person after old
person puts out his or her hand to me. Steven, one says. Ann, another calls.
It’s like being in a third-world country, but instead of food or money you are
what is wanted, your company. In third-world countries I have felt
overwhelmingly American, calcium-rich, privileged, and white. Here, I feel
young, lucky, and sad. Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for
our country, it’s been a martyr for the American dream, it’s been neutralized,
co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it
takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a
channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant
dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy; it meant exceptionally bad, deplor-
able, shameful; it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant
falling heavily; and it meant of a color: dark. It meant dark in color, to
darken. It meant me. I felt sad.

I play the egg
and I play the triangle
I play the reed
and I play each angle
I play the lyre
and I play the lute
I play the snare
and I play the flute
I play the licorice stick
and I play the juke
I play the kettle
and I play the uke
who ever thought of the triangle
who ever thought of the clarinet
the castanets the cornet the
discotheque the harmonium
the euphonium marimbas and
maracas harmonicas
tom-toms and tatas
I play the fiddle
and I play the jug
I play the washboard
and the washtub
I play kalimba
and I play the koto
I play the organ
and I play the banjo
I play the fool I play it cool
I play hot and I play pranks
I played your mixtape
forgot to say thanks

After D.H.L.

Your first thought when the light snaps on and the black wings
clatter about the kitchen is a bat

the clear part of your mind considers rabies the other part
does not consider knows only to startle

and cower away from the slap of its wings though it is soon
clearly not a bat but a moth and harmless

still you are shy of it it clings to the hood of the stove
not black but brown its orange eyes sparkle

like televisions its leg joints are large enough to count
how could you kill it where would you hide the body

a creature so solid must have room for a soul
and if this is so why not in a creature

half its size or half its size again and so on
down to the ants clearly it must be saved

caught in a shopping bag and rushed to the front door
afraid to crush it feeling the plastic rattle

loosened into the night air it batters the porch light
throwing fitful shadows around the landing

That was a really big moth is all you can say to the doorman
who has watched your whole performance with a smile

the half-compassion and half-horror we feel for the creatures
we want not to hurt and prefer not to touch

To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day
have gripped you
                     To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
               To tear the husk
like cotton padding        a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
                              To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully       without breaking
a single pearly cell
                     To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling       until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
                  so sweet
                             a discipline
precisely pointless       a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause     a little emptiness

each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without