Passage III
cold birds
still sing
a bright sun
chill air
snow entombing
precocious crocuses
tricked
by a spring
now
falsened
❏
cherry trees ...
Good Friday ...
—treatise: on the use of trees
❏
a flyblown carcass
in the underbrush below
the cypress in the cemetery
: the dead above
: the dead below
❏
like a Fantin-Latour
the clutch of flowers
in your hand
and apple frothing the air
❏
the life you're not leading
the blood you're not bleeding
the knot you're not kneading
the mouth you're not feeding
the earth you're not seeding
❏
they're grooming the lawns
for the graduates
and the proud parents
and meanwhile the yellowthroat sings
unconcerned—
cherries just gone by their faded blossoms
thick against the
insurgent leaves
offer the very figure
of spring melancholy
o I missed
when they were fully in bloom
& the season
& the time for the
perfect spring
haiku
to hail another winter
survived
where among the redbud blooms exploding
along the thin branches
is my death written
❏
earth conspiring
against me
have a child
to load
the earth
with vines
with lives
with signs songs & cries
❏
insistent crow
cardinal whoop
peepers booming open the night
stabbing life into your heart
the odious air
reverberant
❏
that was no song
but an alarm call
❏
the rhythmic thunk of the basketball
thwacking the tarmac
at the little park a
block over
. . . boys . . . calls . . .
and the rain holding off—
a May nor'easter
deferring the fullest spring
we might have had but leaving
the lilacs to extend
their delicate
thrusting
into the air
the boys birds and blossoms share
❏
say that a heron perched
immobile
until
alert the head
turns
❏
the weather is far more violent
here and present
or so it seems days
one's attention is open
to the cloudthrottled air
lit by a near-equinoctial
sun—the nights
too extend to a farther
horizon the stars legible
in this particular sky
to those able and wishing
to scry, too many years
looking inward thinning
the lexicon of the visible
world its oracular
reality sounding
itself all along
these maples
that stone
that garden fountain
the mists rolling in
over the mountains
disguising the sky
the world
gone slate
its greens drained
as that fountain
before the first frost
the rain is passing
and the lilacs
the thunder
the day but what
have you held
beheld beset
as you are
by yourself
❏
signing
my best
beset
instead
reveals
itself the key
an extra e
lone vowel
tiny howl
I did not do
what my hands did
❏
wavelap and lakeslap lick
the ear; the air carries
stripes in the
low precincts of sky—
a mower blares somewhere
above A and
shuts off a
shock of
silence
into which the wave-
slaps surge
❏
to enter the water
in Mayan
to die
❏
over there the gray
gathering
sheath meant
rain
but our private sun
continues to sign-
post a clear day at least
for us.
an earthquake
in China
means
precisely what
to me
wondered Adam Smith—
the world disappearing
the instant my tooth aches: Sartre
my skin some days
extends
as wide as the sea
and the waves of the world
roll through, equable
terrible
but I am living this narrow
life and no other
except yours I imagine
some days we're graced
or grazed by a shared bullet
❏
today no thrush silvered the air
in the woods
the wind blowing hard
against the bike
passing a stretch of field
where tractors for miles around
come to die
the iron congregation rusting
faithful as the grass,
the cows at Saywards Farm seemed
too confined
why aren't they grazing in the field and why
are their calves
wired in—
late last night
after the sunset
I did not see
the lake took on that babyish blue
I so love and I saw
a sole balloon aloft lifting over Vergennes
puffing by Camel's Hump
and heading east—
we have harnessed the air
for our pleasure
our leisure a rhyme
with the weather
clearing as if the
skies cared
or could
❏
radios and weathervanes
conduct the air
disperse manes
❏
mountains deforested
by distance
Hokusai shapes cut
against the
sky the clouds
address just
so
and through the same air
the radio pours
its usual brew of cheer & death
what wonder little schizo
you reel so
in the fractured world
the sky bends to my way
and to yours and to home
sweet home
❏
my soul marching through
the open fifths of its salvation
shapenotes shaping
me home
❏
not the sun but the sun
in the river
not the moon
but the lake-swallowed moon
the stars cracking open the black paved road
where immortals strode
Maureen McLane, "Passage III" from World Enough. Copyright © 2010 by Maureen McLane. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: World Enough (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)