Shearsman 51

William Gilson from JUNKYARD

 

 

 

 

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1 June – Cambridge, Mass 8:15 a.m. specific, to the time             air-drift thru open door Sliver of wood under the palm skin Last of coffee,                   in the black cup                 Memory? or wishd Her face close       at eyes’ closest focus limits Closer         Length of Never before so, O Ocean, Now the size of it             Ice                                               2   Police Officer Kills His Lover and Himself Three Men Die on Mt. McKinley of a Sunday Morning     hammering, and                             jet aeroplanes                             (my father spelt it) Fiber optic light pulse under ocean where snouts of the creatures, sometimes sharks bite the cable leaving shark tooth dents                   While love, in voices As love, on pages this waiting & remembering bodies’ touches/Vision up close                                           3   maple trunk grey curve, slow curve, leaves’ soundless shakings Dirt Megan gave me, in 2 buckets on the flat pebbled roof outside my fire escape door, one with pea seeds an inch deep, other with pole beans; black flat wet dirt, now How’ll you like it? You there in   morning presence,  5 hrs lost Build something Shelf, box, bookcase. For the feel it gives Officer Key followed Ms Singleton into a supermarket, dragged her out onto the pulled the trigger       Why?                                             4 breeze, and pulls at leafage mass         As if under water Pulls at us all Inside we move, in the sway of water Root to us Stem “She’s down in New Haven having chemo” (kee-mo, now our word) my mother said on the phone, about her friend “It’s not just in her brain” Mouth stomach throat With age, acceptance of ghastliness       The Scythe On a lovely day, like this one, sliding the whetstone along the blade, a day’s work In it. I’m                                           5   Daylight uses itself up. The rough-cut boards as if waiting, there where I’ve set them, leaned them     Sandpaper (3 6-D) to take the roughness off Pulling myself, my body, and kicking, thru water Chlorinated     blue-green Little tiles, numbers set in For you, my love           In the bathwater naked I sat on the floor      we shared a can of Guinness Walt Whitman: “The press of my foot to the earth         springs a hundred affections” Unseen, in some woods, the purple trillium blossoming/missed                                             6   “Jottings” “mostly pencill'd” Baby crows, first seen today high up in the nest in the maple tree; Small crow voices demanding backgrounded by jackhammer Sun on skin           pleasure                                       pressure              Telephone;     & voice’s textures Wuthering Heights, I'm puzzled over these characters, Heaton, Hindley, Nelly Dean, Catherine and little Catherine; go back to the beginning, make a list Lockwood dragged the little girl’s wrist across the cut windowglass. Vein of sadism (it’s true) in this weird book, and the warmth of fire-warmed rooms; flame light and warmth Sun in this time now         Sun on skin                                             7 Millions of Maple keys like a green pond on the flat tar and grey pebbled roof, the neighbors' supper meat stinks in the smoke off the little charcoal grill in the jackhammer’d summer hot air The small square envelope Envelope, from England Her hand touched pen, pen-tip to move to make the directions, to here, & my name her hands. A week it takes     O come                                          come on                                          over Tiny pulse at the wrist's underside. To watch each other sleep Help each other, against Noise/noise out there, &                                               8   Dreams          just before waking “Possibly prophetic”  a lean man, city man     with combed-back brown hair moved my car, my red Rabbit diesel without asking. When I     looked inside, something   was different This I got while climbing the dream-rocks, where the hand can pass through the rock and suddenly the black crow, against bright green                The wind         bent the limbs back, so bent Why didn't they break?    How did the small crows stay in the nest?                                                   9   China bullet faster than its sound Human tissue torn Blake's wheels of blood, men inside iron       Killed his lover,           then himself with his .38 caliber off-duty gun; fired     four shots into her chest Hareton, he put the knife           in Nelly Dean's mouth   (she said she wasn't scared Who's scared? 3 men dead on Mt. McKinley                          Accidental/bones Will it rain today? Drop water onto roof pots                     Will body’s all part’s                 function                          so nicely May she be well this minute in sun in England May she be all right Her body               Narrow the way, thru chance     William Gilson is an American living permanently in Cumbria. Junkyard is a long poem-in-progress.