Full moon in Beaver Damn Wash
It has always been spoken of
as the grave and womb of light
this most brief day
this deepest midnight
stiffened with ice and silence.
It is crucial now that there be
harbors and pools and islands
of light, and it is necessary
that there be song
for the dead are everywhere
stricken with grief, wandering
among the birds of winter but
with song they may be comforted
and Love, on this longest of nights,
requires the giving of a gift.
asha
Eating our way out of the jungle
we quit the river we followed.
Finally there was nothing left
of the world that bore us—
nothing left of us
but our hunger.
The dead refuse burial.
Strangers now—
turn your attention
to the sky we breathe
and the fiction of escape—
fiction enough
for another thousand years.
asha
published in 300K: Une Anthologie de Poésie sur L'espèce Humaine /
A Poetry Anthology about the Human Race
How do you do, he whispers in her mind.
Take it a little further, he murmurs—
beyond this afternoon, the layers of cliff light—
gray root eyes stern in his pitch thick bush of hair.
Amid the squeaks, twitters and rattles,
the plunking sound of jumping fish,
drifting mumble of lunchers down the lake
and buzz of diving flies,
a fish strikes, bites the meat.
When I was a child I fished,
watched them glide just below the surface—
For a moment only the wind,
winding its way through the tops of the trees,
makes a sound.
Shake out a beginning, middle and end, he whispers.
The boy catches his first fish, grabs
the struggling creature into his world,
his too bright light.
Its tiny teeth sink into his hand;
catch his surprise in the inverted wilderness of water.
Fishing the lake means seeing it from all sides,
he whispers, smiling around his teeth.
asha
I have been up all night
writing and re-writing
tomorrow—
watching the stars
tick across the sky.
Around midnight
the Big Dipper is just
beyond my window.
By 3 am—only stars.
No names.
Then in the hush
just before dawn
when time slows
nearly to a stop
I see my grandmother’s dog
the one she made live outside
that entire North Dakota winter
his pleading, cold-crazed eyes
a sad, two-star constellation.
They shot him in the spring.
The sun doesn't rise.
The world falls face first
into its light, finds its mark
resumes the fiction of the day.
With regret I sense before I can see
the Holy Dark dissolve into grainy
morning. Here and there a bird
stirs in its quills. Before long
they are on the roof rattling
the gutters, pecking at the
tiles. One of these days
they will pull the house beam out
and the whole thing will fall down.
asha
When I was a girl
and hungry for pleasure
with feathers in my hair
and bells on my feet
a wild unpruned thing
a child on the run
feasting on the sweets
and bitters of love
on the full gush of all things
in a swarm of musics
and carelessly carefree
rising and falling
on each tide swimming
a slave to the moon
with a barefoot heart dancing
to the flute of my own god
I spilled blossom after blossom
to the wind with no regard
being full of my season
and the aphrodisiac perfumes
on which I fed
lips red
voice thick from singing
eyes heavy from wooing
until I delivered the fruit of the union
until I became
with the pain and the growing
the reaping and sowing
a woman.
asha
Before the final breath and night
swallowed the glow above the hill
and in the eye—
before the bloodsplash of light
pulsing with unborn and terrifying thoughts
was stilled in the gently falling hush
world to world of the quietest breath
and the last petal of a most beautiful flower fell
into the quick black stream of death—
fell down and forever from view
know this darkness that settled
this disappearing act forever playing out
within the world, this knife
around which the wound dried
was delivered by angels.
You were a splash of light
between two worlds
grooving, ransacking visions
till kingdom came
singing till you shattered
ravaged by innocence.
You were a dying man
hungry for the company
of rain soaked pines
a downed bird whose fierce eye
grew dim in the cage by the door.
Holy Mary, Mother of God—
. . . you were a curly-headed boy
stealing to the lake for an evening swim.
Pray for us sinners—
. . . stealing back to the lake for an evening swim
stealing back to lost summer.
Pray for us now, at the hour of our death—
. . . as I kiss your wax brow
at the door that is always locked.
asha
John T. Chance, in memoriam - June 9, 1934 - February 1, 1992
