Tristen, and: Cockle Stove, Breny-Haus, and: Schmerikoner Riet, and: Lease, and: Snow Prognosis

Tristen

All flesh is grass,

And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field

isaiah 40:6

      III      III      III    Grass  monuments,  anomalous,  squat columns of tamedwild hay the winter train runs by—  I want to call them sad things,    “Tristen,” but that is slippage  and these are set secure and sureas helmet hair, hugging the upright,  marking what was. The man saysif you see them now it’s because    someone’s asserting tradition    like keeping up a turn of phrase  when everyone’s forgotten,    or making this fleeting poem:    machines mean change in practice    the pushing out of strangeness.      Surely the people are grass.    These Tristen need translation  if we are to read them, not white    them out under greater salience  like the fact of fields and mountains  robed in snow, the coming of snow at all.

Cockle Stove, Breny-Haus

Name’s a mutation—not the coquillesSaint-Jacques of the pilgrims’ waythat runs through this townnor the warmingof your heart’s cockles—just the Kachel, or tileit’s plated in

though that does form a shellso we come full circleexcept it’s square, intractableas a stubborn foreheadcan fill whole rooms despitelow lintels, little stepswith overbite that trips,the way a thought can dominatewithin the skull,what hell

How peoplescrimped on woodbefore coal and gas and oilbefore we did what we didbecause we coulda route we might have taken

The fire is hiddenor even gonebut the heat goes ona subtle releaseyou can sleep along itegglike, regressive,

built in like a futureyou nestle inthe afterthoughtyour dreams are normal

That you obsessat such a juncture,as this, it’s obvious:good servant, bad master

The cockle stove holds backtells its radiant potentialonly slowlypersisting like starseven after the heart’s burnt outthe source is lost

Schmerikoner Riet

Late in the world’s beautyreed always cutbog drained or planted out

Fen must cede groundto soccer field, newt-pond yieldto dog-walk & leashes bridled at

It’s no good being RomanticWhat use is lament

Old map shows a wetlandthat ran from lake to lakeImagine it—that’s all you’ll get

Old map already chafing at the bit

Lease

Maybe she sensed it was due:she’s been gifting youover the last monthshistoric surprises

from an archiveyou were unaware of,old photos like jewels to smuggleon her behalfto another life,

school yearbook from the 1940s,just the one.

She was never a hoarder—lets go lightly, it seems,but the clockwork is hidden;

there’s always beenthat suitcase others might think uselessto a woman of minimal travel,

once east, once north, and onceto Europe for the last son’s weddinglate in both lives. Unrepeated.

Where is the case tucked away?You glimpsed it onceunder her slight bed

pulled out like a portable drawernoted it held little items left after the first son’s early death(as if he’d simply forgotten them)

like emergency luggagefor quick departure (in what disaster?

What fire?)

Years she’s slept over itbroody though no new mother(mother of eight)as if she were going thereand could take it with her

just to visit, mind you,(never been morbid)

never even driven, so feet firmly planted,a walker’s view of the world,this world.

With everything whittled, memory’s nextbut keeps names and faces, storyof her life—only procedures fade,how you make tea, or meals, left off

like petty luxuries. Doctor saysthat won’t come back, the hospital loves her—never complains, so easy.The tag on her bed reads: Small Adult.

Rent bleeds away on an empty housefrom her pension.There’s still time on this lease—the landlord is antsy. [End Page 117...