The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane

Dusk Sequence

Dusk Sequence i An early dusk, snow-gathered, fades the greys of spruce and poplar, twig and branch, erasing shades and shadows with its brush. The out-of-doors has emptied out, the brooks in marble silenced, and, among the faded berries, claws sleep-locked, a bird, a stolid tuft, enters the stall of nothingness. The sun, diminished, a souvenir, a shade of white forgot in white, might like the moon be absent. Time sags for a moment, sprawling in these boughs. But the old bus goes creeping past, as locked in its grey duties as the bird’s foot, bud-spike, next year’s bud. ii If this white field of brambles speaks (if in another tongue) it speaks the willing of all things, their unified disunities, the names of all requiring this long field. It speaks of fractals foliating in inconstant balances, drawn in for winter what expands and will be drawn a different time in difference. Meanwhile, the wind proceeds upon its linelessness. Yet everything is counted and let fall, even the brownest specks of snow, the grace notes, the ephemera, complete. 60 / The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand iii The sky and the trees are darknesses below which the white armour blaze of this white yard (nicked here and there by blackened scrub) is diamond hard. No child’s foot, cat’s foot, squirrel foot, wing, or light touch of an aspen’s dust could tarnish this opacity, this local lunar opal whose bright shine darkens the darkness over it. Consider the wind a jeweller’s sand. For all the trouble we endure we may be left imprinted with no imprint, witnesses to the abundant scouring of all things, nicked as we are, and burnished by that sting. iv The Porlock Purrson enters at this point. Turn, poet, to particulars! (In this case, fish.) It seems a useless talent, meagre lamp, to keep like St. Jerome a pet: this pen, which like the cat it plays with runs away. Yet still the cry for good, for care, persists. The abstract sentence falters, is replaced with things more needful, solider. A plate, a lap. Yet Art retains its use. To mean much more than elegance— the placing of one’s tail, perhaps—may seem a trifle, but, as opportunity for grace, this life may serve. The Poetry of M. Travis Lane / 61 ...