This Blue : Poems (9781466875074) (4 page)

Somewhere over yesterday's

rainbow the clouds compact

of mysteries rise

and billow, ample sheets

in the blue. The line

is an orienting

thing. The horizon

the plumb line the halyard

we tightened for good

sailing. How we want

the world rigged tight

yet not rigged against

us. In Texas Montana

Dakota they know it

the cattle rounded

up for decades

into a genre near dead

as the passenger

pigeons that famously

darkened the sky

V

HOROSCOPE

Again the white blanket

icicles pierce.

The fierce teeth

of steel-framed snowshoes

bite the trail open.

Where the hardwoods stand

and rarely bend

the wind blows hard

an explosion of snow

like flour dusting

the baker in a shop

long since shuttered.

In this our post-shame century

we will reclaim

the old nouns

unembarrassed.

If it rains

we'll say oh

there's rain.

If she falls

out of love

with you you'll carry

your love on a gold plate

to the forest and bury it

in the Indian graveyard.

Pioneers do not

only despoil.

The sweet knees

of oxen have pressed

a path for me.

A lone chickadee

undaunted thing

sings in the snow.

Flakes appear

as if out of air

but surely they come

from somewhere

bearing what news

from the troposphere.

The sky's shifted

and Capricorns abandon

themselves to a Sagittarian

line. I like

this weird axis.

In 23,000 years

it will become again

the same sky

the Babylonians scanned.

MOSS LAKE

I eat this silence

like bread.

The white lake

replaces my head.

I am cold & calm

as the untracked snows.

SKYWATCH

a brace of stars

a shivered benediction

of moon

Latin splashes

the firmament

as if it were universal

as the Milky Way

scanned by Chinese poets

& Egyptian astrologers

how not to fall

in the permanent black

unrelieved

except tonight

by this light

QUIET CAR

the willow's lost its hair

the snow's receded almost everywhere

and you are riding in the quiet car

the branches mostly bare

but the thin icesheets that cracked and chimed the pond

                           have vanished into water

while you are riding in the quiet car

walking around the reservoir

              canvasbacks gliding on the water

the path two miles, perhaps a bit more

while you are riding in the quiet car

soon I will climb in the old blue car

and drive to Back Bay, not too far

from you my love now riding in the quiet car

SONG

Love's in Gloucester

setting a lobster pot

in her mind.

Love's in Gloucester

feeling the wind's effect

on inner and outer shoreline.

Love's in Gloucester

where the whalers once sailed

and the cod's collapsed

but the sea the sea

calls to whoever

has ears for what's leaving and left.

HER SUMMERMINDEDNESS

Her summermindedness

embraces all full green things

& banishes nothing.

The dragonfly helicoptering

over the pond the deerflies

harassing the swimmers

& the leech on the leg linger forever.

Everything a scale

of clear intervals

no roadkill can mar.

The baby spiny thing

rubbing itself against

or was it scratching

the bark of a thin tree

by the roadside.

The speechless waddle

caught in the headlights

of late cars by the lake

moonlit and perfect

for canoeing in her summer mind.

O porcupine

spine in the mind

even a blithe summer mind

swerves from your shine

LOCAL HABITATION

The wildflowers

of New Hampshire

have yet to earn their names.

Flagrant apparent

they litter the meadow

casual sprays in patches

on the edges the gravel

almost reaches.

Sure there are

daisies and clover

beyond that

things remain

unspecified.

It seems rude

to pry. Elsewhere

it's called good

old simple asking.

Here wonder's

best kept secret.

Don't leak

your want

I've learned

not a native

but not wild enough

to resist

what constricts

a field

of uncut flowers.

THE FACT OF A MEADOW

North of Boston

roads diverge.

Downed birches

clog the Nubanusit.

A meadow made

a lightning field

by flashing flies

reclaims its green

each morning.

What the clouds now pass

you will not pass.

Those flies

were beetles.

Pine needles grow

in fascicles sewn

like Dickinson's poems.

A stone wall

stumbled on

stubs the mind

into an old ache—

what did you make

what did you make

of all diminished things

MÄRCHEN

The timbering done

the afternoon rings out

an aftermath.

What euphemism

would you not choose

in this multi-use

forest? I've left

crumbs for returning

the way back

marked by tiretracks,

lopped branches.

I've left words

in woods the thrushes

sing in refusing

the extinction

of the day. Pines

guard the path.

The way we come

back will not

be this way.

ELSEWHERE

The beer was nice

but not what we wanted

nor the rain nor the century

nor the actual children

we had. Let's not talk

about the parents. The forsythia

yellowed the hedges.
So there

sd the spring.
So what

the jay shrieked. A concussion

of air stripped the inner ear

vessels clean but for the gist

we needed to hear by.

A siren sang this evening's aria

after a basketball'd

recitative. In other places

other people thought through

different birds. They eat

dog meat there. We refrain

from outright condemnation.

Everywhere we know

the sun is setting

in an absolute sky.

ENOUGH WITH THE SWAN SONG

The woods are words

the turkeys spell

with their feet

their pine-needled path

a wild way

we won't take.

The sheep that bleats

in the night escapes

a starry declivity

we must be rescued from.

The rocks rest

below mosses, the pines

outtop the hemlock.

Flat ferns fan the wind

that will not break

this heat. I am lonely

with the sculpted edges

of fat leaves on low shrubs.

Ingrate soloist the chorus

is just beginning

and that bodacious robin

doesn't care if you join.

ENVOI

yesterday

I sat on a swing

and swung

will I do this for ever

will I never

not be a child

the grave

my last crib

*   *   *

I noticed to-day under a tree

nobody was singing to me

but oh there was singing

and there was that one tree

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the editors and publishers of the following journals and forums, where some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in different form: The Academy of American Poets “Poem-A-Day” series,
The American Reader, The Cortland Review, Grey, The Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, The New Yorker, nonsite.org, The Paris Review, Plume, Poetry, Port, Psychology Tomorrow Magazine, Shearsman,
and
The Wallace Stevens Journal.

My deepest gratitude as well to the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities / The Bogliasco Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, which granted residencies that supported the writing of this book. Their air is everywhere here.

To Jeff Clark, again. To Christopher Richards.

And to Eric William Carroll, of the blue line.

To Jonathan Galassi, compadre.

*   *   *

For L:
mio disio però non cangia il verde.

Also by Maureen N. McLane

Same Life

World Enough

My Poets

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2014 by Maureen N. McLane

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

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eISBN 9781466875074

First eBook edition: June 2014