Test for the Old Smile, they’ re going to roast it —
it’ ll have to keep its ends up all night,
for the secretary says she finds it creepy,
and the golfing partner says you got that right,
and the rival says it’ s fake, and the ambitious
junior makes his point with a few slides,
and the protege the Smile was always sweet to
walks up and says it turns his insides.
You plan an uncomplicated path
through Colorado’ s red dust,
around the caustic edge of Utah’ s salt flats
a single night at a hotel
in the Idaho panhandle. Our plans change.
It’ s spring, we are two Indian women along
together and the days open:
sunrise on a fine long road,
antelope against dry hills,
heron emerging from dim fields.
You tell me this is a journey
you’ ve always wanted to take.
You ask me to tell you what I want.
Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
tucked away somewhere.
a whole room full of bones!
A scattering of hair and cartilage
bits in the woods.
A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank.
A purring cat, crunching
the mouse head first,
eating on down toward the tail--
She wears the run-down slippers of a local
and in her arms, five rare protea
wrapped in newsprint, big as digger pine cones.
Our hands can’ t help it and she lets us touch.
Her brother grows them for her, upcountry.
She’ s spending the day on Oahu
with her flowers and her dogs. Protea
Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though cold and stark and bare,
The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.
Thy mother’ s treasure wert thou; — alas! no longer
To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be
Thy father’ s pride; — ah, he
Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.
As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’ d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play’ d, so charm’ d, so conquer’ d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’ d that day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
When all the sky was wild and dark,
When every heart was wrung with fear,
He rose serene, and took his place,
The great occasion's mighty peer.
He smote armed opposition down,
He bade the storm and darkness cease,
And o'er the long-distracted land
Shone out the smiling sun of peace.
She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.
Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?
Please think of this as not merely a piece
Of writing that anyone would fully
Appreciate, but as plain and simple
Words that attempt to arouse whatever
Appetencies you, especially, depend
Upon language to fulfill; that drench you
In several levels of meaning at once,
Rendering my presence superfluous.
In other words, welcome this as a poem,
Not merely a missive I’ ve slowly composed
And tucked under your windshield wiper
So that these onlookers who saw me bash
In your fender will think I’ m jotting down
On Antiphon Island they lowered
the bar and we bent back. It
wasn’ t limbo we were in albeit
we limbo’ d. Everywhere we
went we
limbo’ d, legs bent, shoulder
blades grazing the dirt,
donned
andoumboulouous birth-shirts,
sweat salting the silence
we broke... Limbo’ d so low we
fell and lay looking up at
the clouds, backs embraced by
the
ground and the ground a fallen
wall
