This Blue : Poems (9781466875074)

by McLane, Maureen N.

  Something to it, the thought

  of a people like its clime

  or thereby impressed—

  my lunchtime lassitude dissolved

  the minute I moved from the sun

  to this shadowed grass.

  I could invent the wheel now

  & soon the cotton gin

  and steam engine &

  let’s not forget

  it won’t be long now

  before nuclear fission.

  Nothing’s beyond

  my airconditioned ken.

  My offshore multinational’s

  humming more power

  than the biggest powerstation in Hoboken.

  My shadowed shade

  my intemperate glade my big fat thrum.

  Let’s call it progress, this.

  Let’s call it whatever it is.

  BELFAST

  Your velvet hills came to me

  last night in the pool

  how they hugged the fraught city

  the pubs filled and buzzing

  the Europa unbombed now for years.

  Your political murals are kitsch

  and history’s a ditch

  for lying if we let

  the gravediggers

  name us. Let’s bury

  our pseudonyms

  all undisclosed.

  Was Scarlett O’Hara’s father

  a blustering Ulsterman

  or was he a peasant

  like granddad from Wicklow

  tender and fond amidst the riot

  and kind to his slaves

  but for the obvious?

  White people are weird

  with their vitamin D

  and sunravaged skin.

  So far from an equator

  it’s hard to walk the line

  in a cleaved world.

  Orange, green, navy blue

  the colors are weapons

  as were some horses

  in the 19th century.

  Freed by machines

  see how they race

  on fragile ankles—

  beauty a late flower

  of disuse. Your storefronts

  were boarded, your university

  Victorian, the linen quarter

  defunct. The solid brick

  that shelters us unmortared

  smashed a window.

  Your sky hung low your beer

  rode high your visiting Masons

  sober and punctual.

  A Days Inn here

  is a Days Inn anywhere

  but for the marchers gathering

  their ribbons’ gaud at odds

  with their drawn gaunt faces

  shut like a purse

  around an old watch

  that still keeps time

  DEBATABLE LAND

  The palest green immerings on the slopes

  the snow’d made white near overspread

  the snowdrops ungeared for fighting

  yet strive they do to live in this suddenly

  coldened place.

  The silence of the knowes rising above

  St Mary’s Loch is almost the silence

  of nearby graves but the yow-trummle

  pierces the mizzle we’ve decided

  to plow though.

  Other people’s disputes are not yours

  till they are. Whose debatable land

  did you walk on whose unmarked graves?

  The village of free blacks buried below

  Central Park.

  The Hanging Tree an English elm anchoring

  a corner of Washington Square Park

  knows nothing of the disintegrated dead

  who long fed its soon-to-be

  commemorated roots.

  Let’s unpeel the world

  and bite that big fruit the earth

  it took us too long to remember

  well-being just being holy land just land

  the hanging tree a tree the son

  of man a man.

  THINGS OF AUGUST

  Not fog not hail not sleet

  but rain boring

  as ever the same

  rain less acidic

  now the Midwest has failed

  and new laws prevailed.

  We shall abandon

  our cars. We shall walk

  unadorned under stars

  whose names we shall learn

  in four languages, minimum.

  Our maximum velocity

  will be no faster

  than an average human can run.

  Everything scaled

  once again to the body.

  The body? My amplified

  brain’s going haywire

  not to mention

  my juiced-up tits

  and pumped lips. An army

  of amputees marches

  on Dacron prosthetics

  the military should do better by.

  I was nostalgic

  until I got over it.

  My diabetic sister’s living

  and a million women past

  predicted deaths in childbirth.

  Good. I can’t think

  my way out of this

  covert. I’ll just stay

  here with the soft frightened

  rabbits while the hunters

  storm the brambles looking

  for whatever today’s kill might be.

  Those hunters who fed

  or still feed me.

  REPLAY / REPEAT

  Amazing they still do it, kids—

  climb trees they’ve eyed for years

  in the park, their bicycles

  braced against granite hewn

  hauled & heaved into a miniature

  New Hampshire Stonehenge …

  Your white-pined mind

  fringed with Frisbees saucering

  the summer into a common

  past—look, it’s here! two red

  discs! & the goldplated trophies

  everyone gets for team effort.

  Human beings always run

  in groups. Sure there’s a solitary

  walker, can’t bother

  him, iPod breaking his brain

  into convolutions

  you’ll never get the hang of.

  Go skateboard yourself.

  My maneuvers are old-

  school, yes, but so’s school

  & summer & children

  & these fuckedup resilient trees

  which tell time like the Druids

  by the same old same old sun.

  BROADBAND

  Before I open my mind

  to the sludge

  the open connection

  will carry

  let me tarry

  with archaic diction

  and ancient bodies

  the sun & my own

  shaped by a code

  unfolding itself

  through millennia.

  For thousands of years

  art had no fashion

  was the beautiful

  drawing we did.

  In cave after cave

  the ochred bison run

  by charcoaled aurochs

  and a delicate ibex

  an opposable thumb

  grasped. Don’t think

  they’ve gone

  from your mind

  I remind myself

  rousing from sleep

  the screen of my brain

  WESTERN

  I can see the big sky

  people have a point

  the clouds mounting high

  above the lake give

  the lie to the fat claims

  of mountains. The eye

  requires a horizon

  Thoreau somewhere sd.

  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

  reci
tative. 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

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