Embarkations (1)

Early spring , summer '31

Snow then soot-snow layer the pond ice,
hump up on the molded ponies and brass ring.
Like a finned thing, trying the stones

where homes stood up, he conceives the crush
of civilizations on a child, cleaves
to himself, and to this shuddering longhand,

(by which he means to disappoint the sisters,)
his name set in the blue, marbled barrel
of the Parker, and in its tilt worked toward

the pinched finish of his sentence:  Chambers,
Roland C., who will contrive in 5 cent apples
his months' loaves, charmed from child death

and from divorce, roused from the day-squared
dreams of 2nd marriage, the tinkerings
of churchmen like smalltime gods.  Lost in his own

reflecting at pond's rim, he hears the scratching
of winged things, remembering midnights put to use
to calculate free fall, the lip-fire grappa,

the custodian's pot-shots dropping
that plump beast off the rolltop, spoiling the walnut
in padlocked dark.  He tries the looks

of that, page over folded page, the expression
of this one, drumming at ship's rail, a whispering
given shape then vanishing.  And then, behind

the smoked glass of her leaving, he finds himself,
among these lives lost in matinees, quickened
by the sudden arousals at their reach. 
July                                                             

comes soon enough, and Love's residual calypsos,
scores the sizzle and buzz, snap at product line,
a man's postponements of his temperance, adieux

haunting that face wizened with career,
and that face brushed with powdered leaves and twilight.
Her personal script, like a kind of dancing

into triumph, leaves him his work unturned,
the quirky wheel of his praise, off-hub, caroming,
at large among the large-scale structures

of night sky, taking her absence to his own,
her billowy cottons and weepings on percale,
applications of new color, of crushed stone

and dissonant moonglow, himself this so
-mirrored tilt, sober for tonight, in soaked leather
coursing stones, a creature contriving

survivals for its kind, toughening
nubs that had seemed walking, to suit
the next dry run.

 

© Appetite (2)