Making It Back, and: Correspondences, and: The Breaks

Making It Back

I left when a rose flushon the snow startedthe whole thing again anddidn't turn back till,moonlit, I was walkingthrough a sub-zero night,the world's frequencies lowas I stopped to listen,then followed some moon-deepened marks like Braillegoing in and through me butI was lost, soon reduced toprayers even if they wereonly notes to the self.Snow on bushes collapsedas I pushed through. Bones,bones, and more bleachedbones, trees. I tried topush ahead of myself toprove I was going forwardeven if I didn't knowif forward was the rightdirection, remembering thatin some of the cultures thatwere wiped out 'round herethe past was in front andthe future behind, but hopedI could come out the otherside by sheer persistence,along coordinates of guesswork.

Correspondences

The unity in variety,—which meets us everywhere

—Emerson, "Nature"

I'm reading Folsom with a view to a poemabout Daniel Boone because last week I rememberedmy childhood neighbor Mr. Boone the chemistwho had a shotgun and a pet fox and who lookedlike a fox himself, always in brown tweed orcavalry twill and deerstalker, and who was followedeverywhere by his unmarried daughter May,red hair streaked gray, whose dead mother was Welshlike Daniel's wife's kin. But I put the book down,look out the window and see what seem freshfox tracks in the light snow. I whistle, and thepine boughs whistle back, bounce, go quiet.I whistle again. Again they move and at my feetdead black flies drift along the white oak boards.Things are spare, but focused, consistent, responsive,and you can tell who you are by where you are,the way in Hebrew the verb to be has no presenttense; it's implied by circumstance.

The Breaks

Behind the rusted run of three-strand wire strungon bent steel poles he dips water from the troughand tosses it in arcs over his head,which aches. He shakes some off.Down by the gulch someone is singing a simple song over and over. Acrossstripped and trampled banks where willow,rose and snowberry once grew a light staggers.Nothing moves in this cow-burned land.He leans against a broken binder, hopinghe'll still be here when something happens.But now there's just crickets in dry patchesof bunchgrass, or just one cricket,impulse, fade. He listens to one crickethe can't see. Wet, he heads back in,reminded of his mother's old white dogshaking off water from the pond thatJuly 4 when the band played as the fireworksfizzled in the unexpected storm that madethe front of the house fly up like a tent flap,and above it all one cricket calling,a dry run of syllables between flashessaying something that made him sad,its pyrrhic trills speaking the stony landand a couple of flinty stars that stretchedto mountains from which thunder rolledwith the weight of old machines,while the radio crackled out a long sad songuntil drowned out, then wandered back again.