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  • The Day of No Fire
  • George Kalamaras (bio)
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George Kalamaras, The Day of No Fire, Poetry

Just looking at the hound makes a Chinese poem of me. Bootsie beside me, in front of the winter fire. Nights like this are all night long. 3:30 a.m. will soon be 6:00, and I’ll head to bed near the close of dark. But for now, Iron Goddess of Mercy oolong tea and the sound of freezing rain and snow all night on the roof. Wang Wei in my veins. The suffering of Meng Chiao. My hound dog’s deep breathing breathing me deep. Yes, Alvaro left the body in August. And years before so did Gene. Some think me weak for not using the word death. How can I assure them it’s only the body that dies? Where are the Buddhist pilgrims from Lung-men? What did they do with their limp? And why is my heart shaped in the sound a blood pheasant makes, lifting from an Indiana field at dusk, sun bleeding through its wings? There is no better way of saying I love you than to bury my head in the fur of my dog and inhale the world. One wrist scar is all wrist scars. One drop of freezing rain is all the world to see. If you want to hear the silence of drifting December snow, of the multiple warnings of winter, open your heart to the cold places in you that you know need warmth. It’s been too many years since I’ve read The Jade Mountain. Now, returning to it, I discover the flatness of Indiana rises and falls. Lord knows there’s part of me in the ash heap vased with Gene. Part in the star to which Alvaro traveled and gave his name. Guan Yin is the Iron Goddess of Mercy. So, also, is this blizzardy December night. The poems of my friends will never be lost in layers of white death. I read them aloud and hear them breathe. [End Page 330] Gene’s Dostoevsky & Other Nature Poems. Alvaro’s little brothof a train in the distance boiling down to nothing. This is not an elegy but a love poem. This is not a love poem but a praising of hounds. The day of no fire waits, here, inside wood smoke and snow. How can one dog and one man love an obscured moon so complete? The snow falls in puzzles. Piece by piece, a great breathing inhabits the trees, lays its weight where once fluttered leaves. [End Page 331]

George Kalamaras

george kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana, is the author of fifteen books of poetry, eight of which are full-length, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize, and The Mining Camps of the Mouth, winner of the New Michigan Press Prize. He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

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