new graces

Feeling great, literally, in the birth of our first great niece, Zoey Marie with her folks in Missoula. Baby and mother Taz and father Zach all doing great, and here is a humble poem towards that: http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2018/04/today.html

Also, I've finished a smaller play than the ones I had written last year (Codex Orange set in Golden Valley, Echo Chamber set in Billings). This one is entitled "The Bereaved" and is set in Vienna, near where I teach twice a year. Any feedback and distribution would be welcome! https://meta-metaphysics.blogspot.cz/

wishing everyone a happy Spring, now that it's here!
love,
Dan

Where Poetry Fits In

The Waste Land, Lines 60-68

Real is a city.
Poetic maps it out.
Unreal paints it with brown fog.

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Real are the people.
Poetic sees them flow.
Unreal follows them uphill and over the river.

So many ...so many.

Real are the landmarks.
Poetic calls them king and saint.
Unreal casts them as characters.

London Bridge is falling down.

Real is the time.
Poetic counts with sighs.
Unreal begins at the final bell.

Hurry up it’s time.

Real is life.
Poetic feels the seasons.
Unreal sees death undone.

In my end is my beginning.

Real feels weary.
Poetic hangs its head.
Unreal fixes eyes to the pavement.

I would that I were dead, she used to say.

We live in the life of real.
We breathe with the power of a poem.
We wonder in the realm of unreal.

In my beginning is my end.

(For the continuing series, see http://simorghpress.blogspot.com/)

the emu

Anything? about the

passing of my days,

let alone the hubris that

I own them, anyways?

Okay. I saw the emu

west of Gloriette again—

ever scoping for its mate,

a now to codify a then.

You nod in recognition

as if the bird’s a star,

strutting to indulge

a sense of who we are.

Imagine that it knew

the gleaming of my eye

from when I paused

before, flighty passerby.

To think it’s moved a

thousand miles a year

within a chainlink fence,

to wonder why it’s here.

Wait in faith until a

hard-to-figure croak,

indicating something of

an early time we spoke.

I fear a future walk

will find the emu gone—

Schönbrunn swears to

God the glory will go on.

29 palms

Time travels in odd adjuncts—

today, say, being the twenty-nineth Palm

Sunday my father would have woken

for, had he simply stayed alive.

Robert Plant sang that count of

palms, in California—as I was on my way

to Central Asia, skiffs upon those still

waters of Psalm twenty-three.

Today, as Plant would say, I’m in

the mood for a melody I’m in the mood for

a melody I’m in the mood; and format

won’t fulfill a carriage of relay.

Joshua washes feet that, as Bono

might agree, have mired through streets of

no name. He does so, naturally, for his

fathers, who relish in reunion.

I’ve poeticized about these petty

things before—how “do what Momma told

me” translates to wisdom and free will,

a blanket “way it oughta stay.”

We may read twenty-nine palms

to note what lines are scarred and tried and

true; I live in dog years, walking circles

twice a day in memory of you.

--DMVL

Full fathom five

The way I wake up

is unusual, so

it has been said;

I stretch to find the

boundaries of the bed,

and, touching them

with curves of each

appendage, I slide

in glacial shyness

toward an unassuming

floor and tumble

in the bubble

wrap of blankets.

What dreams I’ve had

while falling (to sleep

and to this wake)

are touchstones to

a life that must

exist beyond our

give and take;

I meet my father

twice a year—

about the same

amount when he

was here—and

glory in the moment.

My dog wakes more

or less the same;

his boundaries

lack the trouble

of the coming day

(no messages to check

or bills to pay),

yet satisfy a

greater sense of

who he is and why,

regardless of his

father, who may be

me, for all we fathom.

DMVL

"Full Fathom Five" by Jackson Pollock, 1947

 

Madame Sosostris

Another reading of The Waste Land, Lines 43-59

Fame catches a cold.  Fortune clears her throat.
She tells whatever can be told
From stories Waite & Rider wrote.
Wisdom deals the cards.  She plays a wicked game.
The deck is short, the rules are hard,
The names begin to sound the same.

The wheel turns.  The world walks
In circles.  Thank you everyone.
A fisherman up on the docks
Appears with extra gear at dawn.
Lady Belladonna rocks.
The one-eyed merchant carries on
His back a blank, an empty box,
And here, my dear, your card is drawn:

A sailor lost at sea.  She tells me this is me.
Drowned in the place I ought to be
The most alive and free.
Each card she flips for me is contradictory
Or worse: they're random, cryptic and
Impossible to see.

The wheel turns.  The world walks
In circles in a purple dawn.
Lady Belladonna rocks.
Right here, my dear.  Your card is drawn.

Live, she says, in fear that one day you will die
Within the stream that brought you here,
Without the time to wonder why.
Look while you still can at how your eyes will be
Like pearls buried in the sand
At the bottom of the sea.
Learn, she says, from this, and generally beware,
But as far as I can see, there is
No hangman anywhere.
Some things are forbidden.  Some things can’t be found.
The meaning of the cards are hidden,
Left for blank and turned around.

We, having our whole lives to read,
Would ask somebody blind to read us.

The wheel turns.  The world walks

In circles.  Thank you, everyone.

Metamorphoses

A reading of lines 31-42 of The Waste Land

Translation restating from watching to
waiting.  The wind blows fresh for home.

Translation substitution from dessert to
ocean.  The sea is waste and drear.

Translation swapping poison with potion
prince to flower boy to girl.  My Irish
child where tarriest thou?

Translation transition speech to silence
sight to blindness darkness to light.
Io non mori 'e non rimasi vivo.

We translate when we can't identify.
We recompose the script to comprehend.
We read to see ourselves.  We correlate

To see it through, if not to reason why;
To do or die, if not to understand.
We translate when we can't identify

But if we want to live more than to wait
Or when we wait to die but find we can't
We read to see ourselves. We correlate.

We fight against the fight, to make reply
To what we do not know.  We contemplate.
We translate when we can't identify.
We read to see ourselves.  We correlate.

(Frisch weht der Wind der Heimat zu
Oed' und leer das Meer.
Mein Irisch Kind, wo weilest du?
I did not die, and I alive remain-ed not.)

Something Different

Reflections of The Waste Land, lines 19-30

And still those voices are calling from far away...

I have no answer in this place.
I’m in the irony of space
Reinventing Major Tom
Every fifty years or so.
I want to hide from the sun,
Clutch the earth and feel it under me,
The dirt from where I come
To where I go.

I want to run. I want to hide
In the shadows of my mind
Of a morning stretched before me
And an evening closing in.
I can’t understand the voice
Calling me a child of choice,
heir apparent, prince of mortals,
Son of man.

I want to understand
But I don’t know what to say.
The sun has been relentless
Planet Earth is gray
And I haven;t got a clue.
And the garden’s far away.
I don’t know what to say
And I don’t know what to do

Show me
a hard rock world
or a mote in the universe,
a resting place
or a tombstone to tip;
Show me
a shelter from the sun
or a rock to roll away,
well-weathered pavement
or a cornerstone.

I have no answer in this place
I see wasted dessert space,
Emptiness and broken images,
No hint of life, no sound
But the whisper of that voice
Showing me a fearful choice
In the shadows as they shimmer
On the ground.

The Discontent of Summer

Here, and at http://simorghpress.blogspot.com, is the second installment of my Waste Land tributes.  I also revised the first installment posted two weeks ago.  I know, it is a little gloomy, but stick with it: it learns what to say and it ends in peace.

Coming over the Starnbergersee...

A continuing tribute to The Waste Land,
Lines 8-18

And once awake we cannot help but wonder
Who we are and what we want to say.
We feel the rain before we hear the thunder
Whispering a thousand miles away.
Our points of origin are torn asunder,
Separating us from yesterday.
Behind the walls and roofs, within and under
Which we live, we don't know what to say

But on the open surfaces are stories,
Images for everyone to see:
The nakedness of all our twisted glories,
The disgrace of our identity.
We know we ought to stand up and look forward
To the tales untold of dreams to be
But here we are, ashamed of being mortal,
Suffering and wanting to be free.

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep,

Mourning the loss of where we started from,
Starting to hear the distant thunder drum,

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep,

Unsure we want to see what dreams may come,
Laying awake when we would rather slumber

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul.

Eightieth Year

My eightieth year started rainy and gray.
So did my spirit, with husband's greeting
That "going on eighty" commences today.
Hey, wait a minute!  What's going on?

Though my head is white, not even gray,
This special designation comes too soon.
Yet joy in the little as in mountain array
Says I'm here, here right where I belong.

Hear?  A concert of rock music, 1968
All but removed my eardrums tonight.
I'll sit this one out, better never than late
And leave Dick sitting alone for a spell.

I pondered a gallery showing abstract art,
Resisting to admire any at first.
Then, absorbing colors, layers, depth, and plan
Their glory, abandon, and stretch upon me burst.

Our world I love, all the infinite, and
Persons who excite me in daily encounters,
As chords are struck, minds are met.
Eightieth year?  Heaven-bound are these hunters.

Jaeger means hunter, and seventy-nine is on the mark!

Marilyn Jaeger, February 15, 2018

The Sweetest Dream

See http://simorghpress.blogspot.com/  for my new blog, which will include all poems and projects as I go, and, eventually, another link to one that I will get to, a publishable form of my annotated Waste Land, already fully revised and refreshed since you saw it last.  The goal (the dream?) is to have that really published before 2022, the 100th anniversary of Eliot's piece de resistance.

The Sweetest Dream

We are such stuff...
Whan that Aprill...
Winter kept us warm...

A poem in honor of the first seven lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

When we should sleep, perchance to dream of rest,
We wake up in the middle of a dream,
And, face to face with all our restlessness,

We realize: the more we dream the less
We sleep.  Yet in our deepest sleep we seem
To seek the sweetest dream: forgetfulness.

To let the mountain memories of yes-
terday, the pushing pulling of the stream,
The ocean of tomorrow's wantonness

Be all forgotten: sleep without the stress
Of time and place or meaningfulness, dream
Beyond the tests of schedule or address

Or past interpretations, dream the dream
Of peace and find the stream that lets you rest.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

A winter sleep is warm and long and safe inside.  The doors are shut, the blinds are drawn and we are undercover and immortal, but

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

The sweetest dreams are moments of their own reality, unshaped by all that they are running from, untroubled by the great escape.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

But winter turns to spring, tomorrow misremembers yesterday, the morning breaks with business and all the sweetness melts away.

The Infancy of Memory

            We don’t talk too much, Winona and me. She don’t talk much to anyone, really. Winds blow through her in other ways. Her black eyes shine what she wants to say, and today that’s not too much. It’s a good day to close them for a while. Mine, too, but we’re still pretty prone to watch out for each other.

            The stove’s been working overtime; furnace has broke, and Mika’s been on the phone once, twice a day to get the Yellow Pages out here to fix it. Times are busy, they say. Extra miles costs extra time. “Heard the bison population’s on the rise,” one kidded her, “maybe you can hunt a couple hides.”

            “Did you laugh?”

            “He did. Didn’t matter what I done.”

            So maybe that’s a plan—bring my bow out to the snow-whipped coulees and let ’er rip, first kinda mastodon I see. Claim my off-season prerogative, and if somebody challenge that, take it to tribal council: fork-tongue furnaceman won’t come.

            “Pop, let’s go,” bids Winona, reading bluster in my eyes. In the next hour or so we wouldn’t be killing buffalo but tearing off usable planks for firewood from that jack pine house that burned up on account of (go figure) a furnace malfunction. Mika, waving us good luck, would hold down the fort and pretend not to drink. Touchy issue there for Winona—firstborn and only—jealous ’til she couldn’t be that anymore.

            I’m not her father for real—barely her mom’s paramour—but we get along alright as a family. Mika loved our mutual best friend growing up, like an older brother he was to both of us. He went Army Reserve to wait for her to graduate high school and then even helped pay vo-tech for her to become a beautician. He re-upped to go to Afghanistan, dying a month before Winona was born. His final letter he asked me to be there for Mika—Lamaze and all that—like he had a hunch. At the time I was on the other side of the state, studying pre-med; I guess being a doctor wasn’t in the stars—or something else was—and Mika pulled me back on her own terms, seeking him in me for as long as I could do that. Or as long as she could.

            The pickup’s half stacked with mostly fallen joists. Now we’re sifting through the carcasses of furniture, tee-shirts pulled above our nose against the lacquer toxins. Windows didn’t break enough to air out this oven, and we don’t need to salvage everything unburnt. Glancing outside, though, I’ll take that basketball hoop, hanging for dear life on a backboard of frozen ash. Didn’t come here to loot, but I could burnish that rim and put it on our own garage, teach Winona how to shoot, become a Phoenix Sun. Or ‘Mercury’, I guess they’d make her be. Fun fact, I’ll tell her: Kyrie Irving’s mom was Sioux. Or just ‘fact’—she died when he was four, the infancy of memory.

            Winona was four when I first took her spearing—just me with the spear, and she pointing at fish for the job to be done. I didn’t invite her, and her mom had second thoughts; but the girl threatened not to eat dinner unless she saw how the fish came out of the water. “Wina, it’s bloody, y’know,” and I showed her in the garage by baiting a hook with a squiggling worm. She looked intently at what I was doing and didn’t flinch a bit. Worms don’t bleed much, but, to further the point, I asked if she’d put out her palm and feel the struggle and slime. She did that, stoically, knowing from the styrofoam pail a lot of these critters would die on one outing.

            “Papa,” she said, also knowingly, “the spear never uses a worm.” She must’ve seen me practice my throws in the back yard, naturally never baiting the trident.

            “Yeah?” I had to agree, but wondered what else she meant. Can’t remember if she said anything more—just my guess, then, at her calculation that eating a fish shouldn’t mean killing more than that fish. There’s a passage in Hamlet about a king going through the guts of a beggar, via the worm that et of the king, etc. Well, I wasn’t going to bring all Hamlet up to a four-year-old—she hadn’t even seen Lion King yet!

            So we went together spearing, every year since, usually down by the culvert spilling out the grassy side of our reservoir. We ice fish there, too, on the other side of the road, but early spring was when we could spear the highest yield, pike heading inland to spawn. It the white man were there, sometimes with a megaphone and vigilantes, we’d move on to a quieter tributary, or the edge of the slough if the ice had come off. They knew we could spear before their opening date, and they hated that we had first picks. “Hey, squaw,” a drunk yelled back then (these days, he’d call her ‘Pocahontas’), “imagine you bein’ one of them pikes—you gonna let your daddy spear you like that?”

            She didn’t say nothing.

~~~

            There’s land enough on the reservation to almost disappear, months on end. Lack of internet means the WASPish world can also almost disappear. Some memories, though, are hardwired.

            Mika’s brother, Chayton, was a Division-I recruit for basketball, probably headed to Laramie to suit up for the Cowboys. It was in a summer camp for All-American prospects that we saw him on TV—satellite, so we had to go to the tavern to get the feed. First time ever he wasn’t a starter, and so we saw him just seconds here and there sitting on the bench, wrenching his hands to keep them warm and limber. Coach put him in the second half, the other team up by twenty, and Chayton made a three right away, dished out four assists, another couple mid-range shots and suddenly his team’s down by only two buckets. Other team calls a time-out, draws up a play and, wouldn’t you know, Chay picks off their pass and races down the court, defender with him stride for stride; Chay jams the ball and hangs on to the rim, hinged to take even twice that force. Instead, the backboard shatters, Darryl Dawkins’ style. Camera’s gone crazy, trying to get the grittiest angle, and the one they keep replaying was of the hoop coming down to collar Chayton, along with a shower of fiberglass shards. It was like the rim and him were intertwined, the net a wedding veil. Some trucker at the tavern burst out laughing—“he’s fucked the poor thing”—and soon after, the color commentator did the same. Chay was evidently okay, rubbing some blood from his scalp, and was about to get the hoop off by himself, but the coach had something to say that stopped him. The commentators took liberty reading his lips—‘you didn’t listen!’, it was judged—while the referees huddled to declare the game forfeit, winner being who was ahead. Chay got credit for a technical foul—‘unnecessary hanging on the rim’—and a call-out by the coach in a post-game interview: “we had ’em on the ropes, if Chief Bromden there coulda just slowed down.” Commentator asked him to clarify. “Well, he does his job okay but needs to listen—I said on their time-out that we had one left, too, and we need to call it on a rebound or turnover. I’m not saying he’s dumb, but maybe playin’ deaf.”

            Chayton didn’t go to Laramie, but he’s since turned into a decent coach for urban youth programs, another galaxy away. Maybe this netless hoop I found will lure him back a week or two, give his niece and me advice—even get his sister out to play.

~~~

            Sure, I can get despondent like anybody out there. You gotta feel something for that albino deer that crops up every so often, probably a token one for every stretch of national forest. It may know itself as special—sacred even, depending on the tribe. It was born white in a tawny world, and, wouldn’t you figure: it’s off limits for hunters. That’s not to say hunters follow a collective conscience, let alone the DNR’s rules. But the creature’s so beautiful alive. And sure, so is any northern pike.

            A kind of deer I’m talking about was Smokin’ Joe, a minister of a couple spread out chapels on our reservation. He’d come by every blue moon at least, but we’d more likely see him down at the tavern, at high school games, lobby at the clinic, wherever the wind blew him. He was actually tawny for the sake of this analogy, but albino unique, too. Well liked, he didn’t mind being lonesome—told me as much, last time we spoke. My uncle Mato was having a hell of a time with hidden problems come to light—gambling, mistress, meth, you name it—and found himself lost to humanity, a loser of a human being. “Stick with the former,” Joe told him, “and be lost—the lost will be found, eventually. But dump that latter—the loser determined by others just as lost, or more.” I wondered if that was enough for Mato to wake up to, and asked Joe if he’d check in on Mato once in a while. He said, “sure, and”, tapping ash from his Muriel air tip, “his spirit, too, can check up on mine. That’s one way to define what prayer can do.”

            Smokin’ Joe tried to kick the cigar habit several times—once when his buddy Calvin gave him a springer spaniel pup to make him walk it. He named him ‘Homer’ to be a reminder—you gotta be home pretty regular to walk your dog, or take him with wherever you go. Joe would do that sometimes in his Plymouth Reliant—bring him somewhere to run wild—but Homer needed his namesake and preferred the gravel road in front of his house. Someone else—not Calvin—gave Joe a kitten, promptly named ‘Jethro’ to keep Homer company indoors; that lasted a week—Homer played Jethro to exhaustion before extinction. Then the farmer next door came to ask Joe about some disappeared chickens, and maybe Homer had some knowledge of that. “No, no” Joe assured, retelling at the tavern, “a springer spaniel only soft mouths ducks, by instinct, and chickens—even if he got into the coop—would be the same.” On cue, Homer wobbled from behind the house and seemed to want to say something, barfing up white features and gristle to maybe get it off his chest. Farmer gave dog a small chiding and Joe a free cigarette, chuckling not to sweat an apology.

            Animals, in the end, didn’t stop Joe from smoking but got him to appreciate the breeze they shared. He died of pneumonia after setting two days in a sweat lodge, partly to honor my uncle’s invite to do so. Could’ve made him sad, Mato, to lose such a friend. But “he aint lost,” Mato said, “he’s the white deer we are lucky to sometimes find.”

~~~

            Winona likes to color, even that albino in a fog—not to change it into something else, but entertain its aura. Mika thinks she’d make a great tattoo artist, something she’s not licensed for but does for extra cash. Winona’s just fourteen—too old for coloring books, too young for Mika’s clientele. “Never too young for spearing,” I hear Mika say, and I say back, “but I don’t take her to E.R.”, where I work, driving ambulance. It’s not an argument—more an indication we don’t know what guides the way the wind blows, and how to worry about nothing.

            Her teacher called me in some time ago—called Mika first, but she got scared—and so I come in thinking they don’t like Winona’s way of keeping to herself, doodling, what-you-will. Or maybe smoking, sneaking out, something even social. Teacher’s done this all her life—you see it on her forehead, which bobs down as she pages through a notebook. “Do you know,” she starts, barely having greeted me, “what’s in my hands?”

            A test, I thought—for me. Instead of yes or no, I simulate her posture—sitting, opening my hands book-like, and read.

            She lets me do that, silence for the both of us to kind of let the afternoon have its presence felt. One of Wina’s notebooks, true, my upper eyelids reach and start to flutter. I think of her dad waking up in an Afghan valley, wondering if they’d have rain to keep the desert plans at bay. I’ve talked of him to her, of course—hours of angling lends to that. She once said “I remember”—must have been a thing I told before—I can’t keep track of all I said. “Mom, too,” she decided to reveal, grace that tends to mystify.

            “Your daughter,” teacher measures out her words like that, “Winona,” flipping to a drawing of a box turtle, “writes,” of course—we know she’s good at cursive—“what to me she does not say.” I want to burst out neither laughing nor crying, just something—and I know I’ll hide it badly. “Don’t fret,” she follows, “what she writes is,” turning to a page she’d dog-eared, “memorable.” She slides the open page toward me to take, and I read in liquid blur:

These crayons, they make them

sound like something playing

on a lonely dream. Color ‘manatee’

in ‘tumbleweed’, and see if any

body sees. I could use the paper

holding ‘indian red’—it’s more

honest than the wax that’s meant

to be my skin. Give it ‘blush’, or

maybe take that to my mom,

who beauties people as they bid

‘maroon’. Tell my dad I won’t trade

‘sunset orange’ for ‘outer space’—

next year they’ll try ‘inner space’

but fail to dream the crayon I crave

to make: ‘daybreak’—maybe in

a dozen shades, depending on the

weather, what designates a day,

and how a thing might break.

I would love that color constantly,

and share it with the sharpener.

            I forgot what else the meeting was about. Just that Winona had a voice, beyond what anyone had imagined.

~~~

            Coming back from the jack pine house, pickup starts to stall. Gas still at three-quarters, not so cold to clog the fuel line—just gotta chalk it up as an ageing vehicle. Hauling all those planks couldn’t help, and it would do no harm to jettison them, lighten the truck’s spirits. That’s at least what I propose to Wina, who doesn’t seem to have an opinion on the matter.

            Instead, we hoof it towards the tavern, knowing there’d be a phone there at least, and warmth. Wouldn’t you know, Mato’s sitting on a stool when we come in nursing a Mountain Dew and chatting with Pezi, who runs the place. “Hey,” he says when he sees us come in, shivering for effect.

            “Hokahey,” Wina hushes, somewhat to my surprise. To think that the Crazy Horse call to fight at Big Horn—hokahey, today is a good day to die—might be the utterance of a teenage girl in the twenty-first century, especially in light of yesterday… Ho! It can have no good response.

            “Amen,” Mato honors just the same. I mumble through an explanation why we’re panhandling here this time of day, giving Pezi reason to smile. He had hot chocolate brewing for us anyway—roadways in the winter have their strange predictability. I barely have to ask to use the phone.

            “Hey, Mika,” I call—she’s been worried, by the tone of her hello—“we’re just a little bit stranded. Haven’t asked yet, but Mato will give us a lift… maybe’ll run by the pickup to grab what we can… No word from furnaceman?... No, that’s okay. We don’t need his hokey sense of humor…. You okay?... That’s… yeah, Winona’s sippin’ cocoa, seems a lady Mato’s with is ordering the same…. Yeah, I’ll do that. See you in a little while.” The phone fits nicely in its brace upon the wall.

            The lady friend is Zonta—I should have picked that up from hints my uncle gave the last and last encounters at this bar. Her name in Sioux is trustworthy, and I concoct a plan to have her stay with Wina, while Mato and me try to get the pickup going, maybe tow it to the house. Why can’t Wina go as well? Well, I tell myself, I think she’s had enough. Zonta’s eyes say she would love to babysit, or teach Winona how to do the same.

            It allows my need for Mato—an hour ago I only faced the snow—to be my babysitter, ’cause I’m about to burst.

~~~

            Yesterday, as we were on the reservoir—after daybreak, it so happened, drilling through the ice of holes we’d set the day before—a group of vigilantes trudged our way. “Keep a low profile,” I told Winona, and by body language, they implied the same. We were well enough away from anything of relevance, but somehow this became their equation: they were hunting deer—as was the end of season and their right—and we were in their way, deerpaths on occasion making use of ice. Yet, the reservoir had open water not too far away—deer would know this better’n us—and so I compassed with my arm the area we would stay.

            They retreated; we reviewed our flags—one falling for a pike not big enough to keep, and two others indicating strikes. Daybreak turned to sepia, and I had names of crayons in my head, begging Wina read my mind if not sure how she’d do so. Flags fell with regularity—I’d be pulling out a perch and she’d be handling a muskie; we were well ahead of forecasts for an Alberta clipper coming through. By afternoon, we’d be home, packing these filets and celebrating graces from the lake.

            But first we had to find its mercy. Turns out a herd of deer had designs to cross, coming out a glade directly east and nosing a route halfway between us and the southern shore. In their middle, muskox style, two fawns—including an albino—picked up their pace, as nature told them not to dawdle on the ice. Winona was enamored; we both stood still to make the moment stay. It would be the memory of a lovely day.

            Until the hunters tumbled from their blind upon the shore. They couldn’t shoot from their present angle, unless they wouldn’t care to hit us in a miss. Because they made a stir, the herd halted in their tracks and froze, staring full that way and allowing Win and me to see their napes, all eight—all completely trusting we were not their fight.

            The hunters were. And they were pissed—we were screwing up their site. You could see their calculation, how to shift this way or that to have an open shot; like wolves, they slowly split to buy the time they needed—the herd would break in unison one side or the other, but which side was the question. Winona and I could only be the audience.

            Time is a product of heartbeats, even when that organ stops and is somewhat recalled in a funeral drum. I tried to think all the beings thinking right now—on the lake and under our feet, considering bait and ways to partake, or strategies how to escape. Three hunters made for their smiley face, the herd still a nose, Wina and me serving eyes below a forehead of balding ice. An eagle would see us this way.

            All broke in an instant—the face sprinting Pennywise, the deer doing basketball J-stops in efforts to get open or confuse, and us now aware that we were surrounded, one with the herd. Winona made way toward the water, just to make space, and warily I followed. A shot rang out from the eastern-most hunter, and the middle man charged to force the hunt west, but the deer scattered east, anyway—familiar more with the glade. The little albino ran toward us, causing Winona to stop it from going away from the herd. Its mama responded and charged us further to the edge of the ice, skidding when she saw it cracking and Wina going down, the fawn finally knowing it shouldn’t join us. I quickened to where Wina elbowed the unbroken ice, yelling inside for her to stay calm. She heard that, it seems, and though I also cracked in, reaching for her, we both managed to belly to safety, like seals. Maybe manatees.

            Hunters stopped to look at us, distantly, guessing what the story of the day would be. When they saw us out of water, crawling back to the flags we didn’t need to keep, they bolted back to their blind, gathered up their gear and disappeared. That left Wina and me alone—memories of deer notwithstanding—with a half-shelf life to get home and, crucially, dry.

            Mika drew the bath—water heater working fine—and Winona stayed in there an hour it seemed to get her back to lukewarm. I resorted to our stock of blankets—bison hides from IKEA. Later, I’d go back to fetch our fish and flags and use up all our wood to get the calories in us—units of heat, they taught us in school, and great with peppercorn and wild rice, we knew by instinct.  

~~~

            Mato hears all this with nods of understanding; we’re at my pickup before he’d have a chance to question. Cable now attached, it would be a glacial load for his Ford Bronco, and I would have to steer and brake this rogue tail to keep us safely on the road. Mika meets us with good news—furnace fixer here tomorrow, even an apology for letting the request linger, as nobody should be left out in the cold.

            We got wood enough for tonight, thanks to Mato, but he suggests we camp out otherwise: “You haven’t seen our new place yet—Zonta’s made a little guest room, also got a futon—make yourself at home.”

            The bar’s more abuzz than when we left it—Warriors and Thunder on tv, games of darts and billiards round out the room. Pezi makes his case that Golden State has done a subtle job of representing Indians more or less okay: “their logo is a bridge, not some Chief Wazoo—”

            “You mean Wahoo—let’s call things by their right names,” his rival jokes.

            “Wa-who cares,” Pez goes on, “I don’t want Geronimo there either, or tomahawk chops—”

            “You want a bridge.”

            “I do.”

            “A bridge for warriors to… what?”

            “To pass around and score, defend their side, and bring in customers.”

            “Fair ’nuf. And Thunder—what do you what them to do?”

            “Same. And bless the earth with rain.”

            We watch the game and gauge Winona’s smile and little things she wants to say, playing darts with Zonta and thanking Pez for the chili he had made, with shredded cheese and sage. I leave a twenty on the counter, Pezi takes it, puts it in the tip jar and slides that back to me. “For the furnace,” he deafens to my protest, “at least a dent.”

            The Bronco’s cozy with us five, spacious that it is. Like our country—vast and jealous of its space, best when neighbors sit together. Mato drives deliberately, the clipper’s brought its drifts that he has handled many times, increasingly in ways that counts him wise.

            He’s right—we haven’t seen the new place, though I have seen it old. “This was Smokin’ Joe’s! I knew you took in Homer when he died—”

            “Did that—and he ran back here several times.”

            “Thought I scared him off!” says Zonta.

            “Joe had little in his will—took a couple months for relatives to find it buried in his books and things—and though the house has some mortgage left, he shifted it to me, if I wanted.”

            “Bank agreed?”

            “Got two years, favorable rate—and I’ll retire in four.”

            Winona walks the spaniel before we all need to hit the sack. Mika runs to join her—“she forgot her stocking cap”—and I sit back remembering last I’d been in here, playing Scrabble with Joe, who wasn’t smoking at the time. Mato says the board is over there—a little spirit of the house they’ll surely keep, Zonta being the better wordsmith.

            “Now, Hon, there’s no ‘better’ when a thing needs more than one.”

            “That’s true. We’ll play a round tomorrow.”

            Tomorrow will be hard again—nice to think the furnace might get fixed, but then the pickup’s next, and maybe driving cross the county to drive again an ambulance is more road than I’m made to meet. Maybe take some cues from Mika—we can build a better shop—Winona adding color, if she wants. They come in from the cold laughing at something they had said. Hugs goodnight, and dreams of deer that also snuggle in, tumbleweed and sometimes white.

DMVL

Happy New Year, honoring T.S. Eliot

Clutch

            For all intents and purposes—a phrase that all-too-often diminishes the mystery of ‘all’—the press conference was over, the podium emptying of its various speakers. The renowned poet J. Hiram Peacock had died sometime during the night—his body found at the base of a cliff that sunshine couldn’t reveal until mid-morning, and now it was early afternoon. The tide had almost buried him, which might have been the way he wanted it. But people cared about J. Hiram—look how many came at such short notice—and there was no way he’d just slip away, unnoticed. How he slipped—that was what this presser was all about.

            The sheriff had to front the questions, though he often pointed to the deputy coroner and the DNR representative to provide details about the body and the circumstances. “We cannot inform much more,” each said, “as the investigation is on-going.” Indeed, they had hardly transferred the corpse to the morgue when the need had become apparent—through helicopter footage and a million social media shares already—to at least give something of an explanation, even if there was little more to say than

• he’d been walking his dog
• the weather was, as you know, calm—and moonlit
• the promontory above where he fell had no fence
• the dog, still leashed, made his way back home
• there was nobody else at home, and no evidence of foul play
• there was no note—nothing revealing a deliberate act
• the body, as we have said, was half-submerged when found
• we’re not revealing who it was who found him
• we’ll reconvene again this time tomorrow—or earlier, if fate sees fit.

            It was an odd way to end—if fate sees fit, as if the Wizard of Oz were part of the consultancy. Others who had spoken, assembled on the fly, included a neighbor more or less disconsolate, an agent of the publishing house that owned the rights to much of Peacock’s works, and a colleague at the university he sometimes graced—if also cursed.

            “Yes, of course it’s a loss,” the colleague said during Q&A, “which is immeasurable. What can one say? He’d written—well, not everything, but—so much that is now in the parlance of not only philologists, but the common reader, who could quote him at a moment’s notice…”

            “Can you give us an example?”

            “Um,” sighing in some disbelief, “sure… it’s best seen written out, but you can hear his power in the lines:

                        ‘ours were not the hours that bound us

                        but the second chances of infinity.’

That, and more concretely—”

            “You can find a complete collection of quotables from our website,” the publisher announced, disinclined to give away the gems for free.

            “Business”, the colleague lamented, “is never what a poet wants to leave as legacy.”

            “So what will be his legacy, from an academic point of view?”

            “Academic? I know him as an artist—or”, swallowing the thought, “… knew him… I’m sorry—this is all so sudden—”

            “Of course,” the questioner understood, putting up a palm to apologize.

            “But,” the colleague began again, “I can try….” The publisher and the sheriff loomed in the background, gauging when responses went too far. The colleague, for her part, decided on these lines: “art itself is legacy, and art that spurs on other art is—not to be redundant—immeasurable. I was talking to him just the other day—”

            “Where? When exactly?” another journalist pressed for details.

            “Well, just a matter of speaking—it doesn’t pertain to how he died—”

            “How would you know?”

            “Of course I can’t know. So maybe I’ll say no more.”

            “Probably the best course forward,” stepped in the publisher, “so, again, our website is—”

            “No, no—,” broke in the second journalist, “I didn’t mean to stop you. Please go on—talking to him just the other day…”

            The colleague weighed the moment, an ear on the remonstration and encouragement equally. “I asked him if poetry would survive the century, and if so, in what form…”

            The publisher shouldered toward the microphone. “That’s the credo of our company—Dr Peacock would affirm—to usher fine literature from generation to generation, as Shakespeare did for Milton, who did for Dryden, who did for—”

            “But it was curious how he answered it,” the colleague continued, gathering strength in the recall. “He brushed his hand through the notion of this century and had me imagine New Year’s Day, 2025—seven years from now. I said, ‘ok—that’s not too hard.’” She itemized through unclenched fingers: “‘different president, for sure; harsher hurricanes, probably; handsets obsolete, perhaps, traded for wearables, Dick Tracy watches—that kind of thing.’ He listened to these obvious considerations. But then he said this: ‘In seven years, everyone on earth will change significantly—usually through relations—yet everyone will essentially remain the same—usually through relations.’”

            Reporters scribbled in short-hand, as if a video review wouldn’t catch things right. One asked if the poet meant to say that twice, “about relations,” to which the colleague simply nodded. The sheriff considered that point as good as any cue to wrap this conference up—there had been no mandate on entertaining questions in the first place. Yet as he cleared his throat to repeat ‘again, this time tomorrow,’ another question from the press could not be stifled: “Did he speak beyond those seven years, like the century you initially proposed?”

            The colleague looked at the sheriff, who blushed and backed away. The publisher inched forward, yet knew the rostrum didn’t want him anymore. “Did he speak beyond 2025?” the colleague repeated; “he did—beyond this century. It’s fitting that we’ve had Shakespeare referenced today, as more than four centuries have transpired since Hamlet, Isabella, Othello, the Fool, Anthony and Cleopatra broke the fourth wall, basically, of theatre. What’s changed since then? Our institutions have, technology certainly, notions of an ‘undiscovered country’, Caliban to Taliban—if not our understanding of either of those names.” There were puzzled looks about whose words these were—hers, or Dr Peacock’s. She read them and clarified, “characters like these were always in our conversations, as they’ve been for centuries. Our job is to add to the cast, beyond the average Jedi—to be a Shakespeare for an audience four hundred years from now.”

            “So he felt he was the Shakespeare of our age?”

            “A Shakespeare. Virginia Woolf has much to say on this theme.”

            On that note, for some reason, the sheriff called it quits. The publisher caught the colleague’s arm for some whispered words, and then one of the journalists did the same. “You’ll be here tomorrow?” the latter asked. Against the glare of the sheriff, the colleague shrugged a ‘possibly’. “If so, could you say more about seven years turning into centuries? Just… even off the record, if…”

            “I’ll sleep on it, God granting any sleep tonight.”

            The next day offered little news, and just the sheriff took the stage to say where things were with Dr Peacock—or (he corrected) the investigation of his death. “It’s ongoing,” was his blanket statement, thereby little could be gained by Q&A, but “those who want to speak about his works or legacy”—the sheriff panned generally toward those who’d spoken yesterday—“will have that chance, if not expressly from this podium. Our update, then, is thus:

• still no evidence of foul play
• his shirt, however, was torn from the left underarm to the middle of his back
• this tear could have happened during the fall, or otherwise
• the top of the cliff shows nothing abnormal
• the tidal basin below the cliff remains off-limits
• the one who found him prefers not to be identified
• that finder never touched him—the lack of footprints bear this out—and called emergency services that came within ten minutes
• the coroner’s report will not be issued before the usual legal protocols
• updates hereafter will not be scheduled, but posted online.

And I’ll take just a few questions.”

            “Is the dog being cared for?”

            “Yes.”

            “By whom?”
            “Confidential.”

            “What do you mean by ‘otherwise’ concerning the torn shirt?”
            “Nothing more than it’s part of the ongoing investigation.”

            “Could there be a person who tried to prevent his fall?”

            “I cannot speculate.”

            “Or someone he was fighting with?”

            “Next? I’ll allow two more.”

            “Why are you so tight-lipped?”

            “Next. One more.”

            “Are you looking at his poetry for clues?”

            The sheriff stared hard at that question. Reluctantly, knowing the ticking seconds showed a flagging unresolve, he called up Peacock’s colleague from the wings, whispering to her she had two minutes, max.

            “Poetry, of course,” she gathered her thoughts, “is generally inductive, not deductive; Hiram liked to say ‘the emporium for evidence of anything is that it might exist’. Not ‘must’, but ‘might’.”

            “So…, does that mean… his poems might hold some clues?”

            The colleague shook her head a little, pulling a folded sheet of paper from her pocket with a trembling hand. “Here’s a poem he gave me not so long ago—nothing that he’d sent for publishing, as”—the publisher coughed to try to make her stop—“not all poems are meant for that, but, revelatory or otherwise, here is what he wrote:

There are no arrant knaves out here tonight—

my dog and I protect the greater us from such—

so we’ll Quixote other lands beyond our sight—

inventing faith for those who doubt too much—

starting with ourselves, our ways and means—

this world’s a top that’s spun for all it’s worth—

from dradling, and fidgeting, to slot machines—

thought is often thrown away, like afterbirth—

and in its place are many manufactured fears—

how to pay the rent, and smile while doing so—

the question’s not so petty through the years—

I wonder, with my dog, where walks might go—

I’ll hold it up for photos if you’d like.” She clutched it tenderly from the top.

            “He typed this up for you?”

            “He gave it to me typed.”

            “Dashes at the end like that? Is that typical of his style?”

            The colleague aimed her head at the publisher and said, “you might check the website,” to muted laughs, “but Hiram wrote in various styles—‘many manufacturings’, if I may paraphrase that line.”

            “You’ve called him ‘Hiram’ several times. Was that his preferred name?”
            “He was self-conscious of all his names. The obvious line to draw is to ‘J. Alfred Prufrock’, and perhaps his parents knew they’d have to play with ‘Peacock’ somehow, so why not do so in homage to the great T.S. Eliot? The ‘J’ in that poem is never known, but Hiram’s first name, Japheth, was just something he didn’t care for.”

            “I can see why!”

            “‘Hiram’ isn’t any more conventional, but yeah—he leaned toward that, or simply as ‘Hi’.”

            “Like ‘Hi and Lois’?” someone asked.

            “Alright,” the sheriff wrapped it up with that.

            The colleague stayed an hour, though, to share more lines from memory. The journalist who had asked the day before how seven years turn into centuries rekindled the question, not so satisfied that today’s quatrains sufficed. “Among the poems he shared with me, the one I read out seemed pertinent to how he might have died, walking Barney—”

            “His dog, yes?”
            “Yes—and thinking, maybe absent-mindedly, about errant knights against the arrant knaves of this world. Admittedly, that doesn’t vault our present circumstances much—”

            “And rather implies a look backwards in time,” the publisher interrupted. “I think you should be careful about platforming his work without expressed permission.”

            “Whose? His? Certainly not yours, in this instance.”

            “In this instance, the guardian of his estate. I know that isn’t you.”

            “No one can reclaim what another person freely gave. And we’re talking about ideas, anyway.”

            “Ideas have copyright.”

            “And thoughts, and questions, and arguments, and conversations, and memories?—”

            Some journalists walked away from this, but the one hell-bent on Peacock’s long-view of humanity pressed on: “I can’t shake yesterday from the notion of a Shakespearean leap into the future. What would Hiram say about.., well, life in the 25^th century?”

            The colleague shot the publisher a glance that underscored free speculation. “He knew there’d have to be enormous differences. World population could be ten-fold or one-tenth that of today, depending on prosperity or pestilence. Space will have opened up, so some of us would be out there—where we used to say the heavens were. Biology will coincide with electromagnetic regulators, blurring some sense of what is human and who is robot. But—as I represented yesterday—Hiram was convinced about ‘relations’ as the common denominator of any era. We will always need ourselves.”

            “The reason Major Tom is calling Ground Control?”

            “And his wife—‘I love her very much’—”

            “—‘she knows’,” the journalist couldn’t help but croon.

            “Sounds rather utopian,” another journalist wanted to determine.

            The colleague scrunched her lips on that word. Looking toward the publisher, she decided to conclude, “if not utopian, also not its opposite. Go to the website and browse that spectrum more.”

            J. Hiram Peacock lived alone for the latter half of his life, though always with a dog or two, parakeets and smaller pets. A maid would come in once a week, friends would visit on occasion, but few remembered how recently. His relatives respected him, including his privacy, and, living on the other coast, their tighter budgets had to wait for him to fly to them. He wasn’t active on social media but participated on some professional blogs, none of his own making. His publisher and agents—several over the years—met him at the university or in their offices. Neighbors—like that one disconsolate—saw him often in his yard and walking along the promontory. They liked him or, more likely, the idea of having a poet in their midst.

            Nothing of the investigation held anything upon another cause than a ‘self-fall’, accidental or otherwise. Results of blood toxicity showed nothing unusual; he had eaten reasonably that evening. Searchers explored every crack of the cliffside to try to procure that swath of shirt—the size and shape of a paper airplane—and finally determined it must have gone out with the tide. The dog, it was thought, could have ingested it, but the vet ruled that out in due time.

            After a few days, it was arranged that the dog would go to live with the colleague. The latter was of two minds about it—never having owned a dog herself, yet well aware that Barney, 14 human years old, could largely take care of himself. The need for walks, though, gave her pause.… The last line of the poem she shared would guilt her into the commitment.

            One of the detectives joined the veterinarian to settle Barney in. The colleague’s apartment was modest—a connection of rooms that all looked like a professor’s study, books and papers spread about like plants at a floral shop. She’d made a special area in the hallway for the dog, yet led him all around to get the lay of the land. Then she asked her visitors into the dining room for coffee. The afternoon was in its homestretch—perhaps there’d be more work to do for all of their offices, if times like this bridged work with greater cause.

            “We’ve done a thorough search of everything he owned—there may be items that you’d be interested in, according to the guardian of the estate,” the detective said.

            “Who is that guardian?”

            “It’s legally undisclosed, but we have been granted rights to say, well, what I just did.”

            “Are you talking about his papers, letters?”

            “Among other things, yes. We’ve looked through things according to investigation protocol, but have no interest in detaining them for those who’d value what they hold more personally.”

            “The guardian agreed that you’d be ideal for the dog,” the vet seemed happy to add.

            “How would this guardian know?”

            The vet and detective shrugged, discretely. “The fact is,” the former admitted, “no one else gave any indication of care for his well-being. I mean, in the abstract, maybe, but…”

            “From what we understand,” the detective continued, “the dog is the only witness to Peacock’s fall. Even ‘witness’ is not so accurate, as the leash and his being outside the property is only circumstantial. Neighbors mostly didn’t know Barney’s name—you did; no one outside the investigation called the veterinarian’s office—you did every day.

            “In the brief time we’ve been here, Barney’s wagged his tail more than I knew was in him,” the vet joined in. “He’s obviously comfortable with the conditions here.”

            “I’ll probably inundate you with questions when he’ll have the sniffles…”

            “Sure,” the detective answered for the vet, “and give us a call whenever you need.”

            “You’re very kind. I think, if Barney agrees, this will all work out. Barn? what’ya say? Barney?”
            The dog wandered in naturally at her call. His tail was wagging—consistent to his age and penchant. In his mouth was something he had found—securing ownership of his new environs, it seemed.

            “What’s that, Barn?” the colleague asked, then cupped her mouth in recognition.

            The detective, noticing, also beckoned. “Barney, come here, boy,” and he complied—not giving him the item, but letting the detective scritch his neck.

            The vet looked at the colleague, as if she were suddenly his client. “Have you seen this before?”

            Of course, she had. Her eyes looked from it into Barney’s, reading his mind to discover her own. The detective said nothing, letting the vet’s question linger. The colleague also said nothing—the cloth speaking somewhat for itself. Barney lay down, keeping his find close to his snout.

            “You were there that evening,” led the detective, still looking at the dog.

            Barney, as if in response, sighed the way dogs do.

            “I was,” the colleague softly confessed. She put out her hands, J-shaped, left atop right, flinching. “From that afternoon, onward. I’m surprised you hadn’t found his phone call to me—”

            “We didn’t find the call record unusual; it was typical that he’d call you or some other colleague around that time of day—we don’t investigate routine things to an intrusive degree.

            “He said he didn’t want to live anymore—you would have heard him imply that on the phone—”

            “—again, we—”

            “—and he didn’t want to think four hundred years from now when,.. when—”

            She stopped—not to cry, as was in the making, but to kneel down to share in Barney’s find. The vet gestured to the detective to give them space, then reminded her of the question: “when?”

            Her sigh resembled Barney’s. Then, “when eternity consumes the need to be present, as it has.”

            “You ate dinner with him?” the detective measured.

            “We talked a lot. I brought over the poem about Quixote—that was mine, the only lie I told to the press. I wanted him to enjoy ‘our ways and means’, among other things.”

            “Were you romantic with him?”

            She kept her eyes on the dog. “Does that matter, really?”

            The detective wasn’t sure. “No,” he decided for the moment. “Can you describe how he fell?”

            Now she stretched to make her elbow a tripod to support her head for the memory. “He gave me the leash—we’d been walking a half hour, not arguing but also not enjoying the moonlight, which I kept on pointing to—it was a favorite motif of his, the changing faces of the single side we see, the towboat of tides…. Barney was tired, whining to get home. Hiram asked me to do that for him—and I said I wouldn’t, not without him, too.”

            The vet gently slid the triangle of cloth from Barney’s paws and regarded it himself before handing it to the detective, who asked, “how did this tear happen? When exactly?”

            The colleague studied the crooked fingers of her left hand. “He turned toward the cliff and paced like I hadn’t seen before—not quite a run, but… a resolve. I begged him to stop as I ran—Barney right beside—and he wouldn’t. So… I… clutched what I could, and Barney seemed to understand, too, because he threw his weight toward the safe side—aiming home—otherwise I would have tumbled over the cliff, too. I thought his weight and my clutch could be enough.., but… the fabric ripped and… he was gone.”

            “Why didn’t you report this right away?”

            Good question, her face showed. “I saw by moonlight the moment he crashed into the tidal basin and I yelled and yelled for—I don’t know—minutes more than I knew a rescue was possible. No one heard me? Really? None of the neighbors?”

            “None,” the detective straight-lined. “Or, like you, they didn’t come out to bear witness.”

            “He was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted the ocean to wash him away.”

            “Why did you leave Barney out all night?” the vet implored.

            “I let him go—he ran the rim of the promontory and out of sight. I looked for him ’til the moon went down and gave up. I came here and collapsed.”

            “And put yourself together for the press conference?”

            “What else could I do?”
            “You could have said all this then! You could have told the truth!”

            “You could have helped with Barney then,” the vet poured on.

            She sank fuller to the floor. “I could have let the facts define the man.”

            “Yes,” insisted the detective, “you made this all an unnecessary drama!”

            The room assumed the atmosphere of Prospero’s cell—or the ramparts outside it: “a turn or two I need to still my beating mind,” the colleague said, “that is what Hiram needed. I’m not sure I bought him time, but… the rest of us got that chance.”

            The vet and the detective regarded each other, wordlessly, and, in turn, stood up to figure how the meeting might end. The detective went into the hallway to make a call, muffled but overt enough in purpose. The vet returned to sit again. “Will you be able to take responsibility of this dog?” he asked. “Or yourself, for that matter?”

            The colleague sat back up and asked Barney, “are you ready for a walk?”

            Barney stood and wagged his tail, a welcome return to some routine and the shared need for here and now.