The Old Mule

Setting Off

I wrote this over a decade ago, in a shack of a house with a perfect window and a second hand desk and a cat so mean he went without a name. I threw out a lot of old stuff, but managed to keep a few pieces that I liked. I don't know why I kept this one. But about a week after I wrote this, I moved out to Oregon, and really started to learn about things.

--

There’s old bones
and they rattle
as I try to drift off
with the windows open
reeds rustle, shades catch shadows
at four in the morning
the hour is cold
between cracks in the house
and I am entwined, elongated
a single lizard rolled tight
under logs and moss
carried across the earth
in a dream of river
and if I had time to think
I would sail in to it
and be gone for the West,
mark a new trail, set out
as folks did back when
they would walk out,
kick the dirt, and press
out in to the country.

In Turn

"And then we went down to the ship"

- E. Pound

She splashed in the pool
with no clothes on
as I told stories of Arizona,
we had cold mint tea
decided to ride
the bicycle out where the owl
kept swooping across the road
maybe go down to
the crab hole, all those chicken
necks grabbed at on lines eased
through marsh spartina
as edge weeds kept
us almost hidden
and the terns and otters
and all the others
left us alone as we fumbled
and dipped back in. But this
was summer and pairs of people
swim wild when they fish. Net in,
minnows and game hung by the gills
so we threw back, listened to
the sink of weights through
low tide, a spring tide, our words
foam from the surf, an arc, out
of site, hunched at the side
of the marsh with a bucket,
our catch and other things.

Greene Street

You wore a red coat
and stockings

and waltzed across the
wood floor
above a family of hippies
during the middle of a snow

and we heard tea
on the stove through
our old metal pot

from second hand chairs
with ashes in the cushions,
eyes shut with the records

that would scratch and groan—
candles and smoke

and the last time
we turned on the oven
we burned the Sunday paper
trying to knock the cold off.

So this was our eight o’clock,
and by the time we got in
bed

wrapped in unwashed
sheets, socks across
the floor

there was little
left of the day
but red oak shadows
up from the back lot, and
you kept asking me

if the taps on the window
were just these branches
bending down.

Late May

This old field
is dry dust for the heart,
out near a deep spring pond
I walk around Sunday
tired of everything, slow of
spirit and drive. Is this the
new millennium – is this
the photograph of myself
painted up above my eyes
so that I reach up to the hills
and fall back, am wrung out.
Our quiet talks are gifts
now, bees down still rows
of vegetables and grain.
Turn, plant, water – where
were we headed when
day broke. I called
back from that thin
night, and you had gone.
So I walk around Sunday
and drive back to town
with the radio country
songs and windows
so the air comes in.

Underwater

What a fright.
The back porch
against sand and hot
oak. We floated above
your ground in a
submarine, knocking back
vines, leaves. A green shoulder
of rock, a wall of turquoise fish,
all the men full of ocean.
Swim, swim.

From Away

Your square window,
gale of granite and outside

cool for hiking. It has been
months now, and everything

in the forest is asleep beneath
pine and earth. I crawl out

toward a new vista–lanes of topography
and this pull of a different season.

Valley in the east, a cast of shadows,
runoff streams from solid winter

turned to May. I rest beneath pacific
dogwood: a white cup, a green eye.

In the midst of all this new, familiar
rooms are well-lighted by remembrance.

Bring me back a sketch of song,
the old way. I long for such comfort

but am too far out now. What a muddied
pace with the turn of this day, and now

tomorrow. How can we sing in foreign
lands, by the banks of such cold water. 

Going Away

Dublin, Christmas
and all I could think about
was the noisy stream,
the pitch of iced-through
hills, pots and pans, steam
from the sulphur pool up
state seventy-five toward
Obsidian, Sawtooth City,
almost to Montana, narrow
pass, black bear and fox
with their pelts still warm.
Our summer camp under spruce,
gone now, or resting. White
and wind. And crack timber
home, axe built to hold weather—
slant windows, stone mantle
iron bath. Our bed faces east
and the morning before we left
we curled like minks, our feet
in socks, listening to a new record
at nine o’clock, beveled
glass heavy with lead, a look
out in to day begun without
us, and really, then, we had all
the world right in place.