The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  His third burn took off miles of trees for days.

  They’d not forgive such lack of self-control.

  Befriending. Brief Ending.

  If they put Carlisle Ledyard on the shelf,

  I stood in threat of banishment myself.

  There’s hidden meaning in the woods above:

  The thing we both alike most lacked was love.

  Reluctance was a sin I’d overcome,

  To be his friend despite opprobrium.

  But when I greeted him, he was, I fear,

  Beyond the reach of sympathy or cheer.

  Prospective friends to outcasts, do beware:

  My good intentions led me to despair.

  III

  * * *

  Relative

  Both “towns” where they had lived before

  Were swallowed up by wood.

  A change it was, to have a door

  In open neighborhood.

  And yet these distances seclude

  With loneliness diverse.

  They wondered if such solitude

  Was better or was worse.

  Getting a Good Fire Going

  Fires soon took much light toil from them, to find

  A way to start them that they hadn’t tried.

  Pathetic, how indoors his woodsman’s mind

  Built bad-draught fires which sputtered, ebbed, and died.

  Too long to learn to leave the fire alone:

  Not to observe it closely while it’s weak.

  All hill folk know facts which were unbeknown

  To them, who’d not give me a chance to speak.

  We “Other-Sides” do not believe in ghosts,

  But Flossie Salter “’peared” to them, and they,

  Hearing her cry, who had become their hostess,

  “A watched far won’t burn!”, turned their eyes away.

  Additional Gratuitous Advice

  from Mrs. Flossie Fay Salter

  on Their Use of Her Hearth

  Don’t let the far burn out, by night

  Or day! A far once lit keep bright

  As long as you’ns intend to stay!

  Bad luck, bad luck, to leave it lay

  Untended! Shun the wood of peach

  And sassafras! The fars of each

  Could cause yore mothers both to die!

  And Satan on the roof to lie!

  If yore lit kindlin pops and cracks,

  It means a snow will bear yore tracks!

  And if the far should fry and sing,

  You’ll find yoreselfs a-quarrelling!

  Cutting Her Water Off

  Old Flossie ranted on.

  The boy got up and fled.

  Her Flossie turned to, “Hon,

  Incline to me yore head:

  “A private word to heed:

  If monthly you require

  Some rags for when you bleed,

  Don’t throw them in my far!

  “It’s turrible bad luck!”

  The girl replied, “Don’t fear.

  I won’t be monthly struck

  As long as I am here.”

  The Ghost’s Outrage

  She’d been a Baptist, Primitive,

  The hideboundedest kind who live.

  (Although to say she’s still “alive,”

  Puts glosses on how souls survive.)

  The way our couple misbehave

  Has brought her running from the grave.

  (If such a thing you can’t conceive,

  Then you, like they, must make believe.)

  As doleful as a mourning dove,

  She watched them make their frantic love.

  (At all events, I think them brave

  To choose a spot where ghosts might rave.)

  Alas, if only he’d connive

  At showing her he meant to wive.

  (Do dead folk have much thought to give

  On marriage as imperative?)

  Two Reasons

  Yes, I will grant it’s rather odd

  They’d met no ghosts in places past.

  And Flossie, yes, is such a clod,

  She leaves one numb if not aghast.

  My theory is no jest or taunt

  But uncontested fact, I vow:

  A ghost desires a house to haunt,

  And they’d not had a house till now.

  Let’s lift away the other gauze:

  Your flying saucer seems a “ghost.”

  You “see” it. Is this not because

  You see it when you need it most?

  Strategy

  O they had need of her!

  To teach them country ways,

  The use of juniper,

  The meaning of the days.

  As sharp-eyed as a hawk,

  She was nobody’s fool.

  And when she spoke she’d talk

  The hind leg off a mule.

  Her meddling and her chat

  Soon drove them up the walls.

  They wished sometimes she’d scat,

  At least when nighttime falls.

  They found a plan unique,

  So strange it made me laugh:

  They asked that “I” should “speak”

  To her on their behalf.

  The Exorcism

  “Flossie,” I began, “it’s me, Dan Montross, here.

  I’d like a word or two with you, I beg.”

  “Eye Gawd a mighty! Dan! Pull up a cheer!”

  Who’d think a ghost would hop on just one leg?

  “How are ye, Floss? How’s ever little thing?”

  “Jist fine, jist fine,” she said, but then she frowned.

  “Exceptin they is always underwing,

  And make it hard for me to git around.”

  She carried on: “Is this some kind of joke,

  That they are livin here? It aint got rhyme

  Nor reason! No, it’s my own house!” I spoke:

  “It is your house, but it is not your time.”

  Then she was sad. “But tell you what,” I said,

  “It’s Christmastime, almost; then you and I

  Can visit here and share their board and bread.”

  She smiled, and bade the pair a fond goodbye.

  Christmas Coming

  He tried to get her to agree:

  No presents by their Christmas tree.

  Or else no presents bought with cash.

  A festoon, garland, homemade crèche

  Would do to brighten things a bit.

  No spending for his benefit.

  Some holly on the mantel shelf;

  He’d go and pick the greens himself,

  And bag a turkey with his sling.

  But please, don’t buy him anything.

  She wouldn’t buy this argument,

  And all the way to Burnsville went

  To shop the stores for him and her.

  O gold! and frankincense! and myrrh!

  To give is like to thieve, he thought,

  Regarding all the things she’d bought.

  The giving to the got transfers:

  Her lavish presents make him hers.

  And yet, he thought, by getting such,

  What you get free may cost too much.

  Mistletoe

  Up overhead an oak where mistletoe was swishing.

  He thought that finding it right in their yard was refreshing.

  He climbed high up and got some of it; everything was meshing

  To make of their Christmas a joyous and sightly show.

  But nervously he understood that it was not just for kissing.

  From such, the science of botany is missing.

  On some dark cold Yule night when the fireplace was hot and hissing,

  He’d lecture to her on the parasitic mistletoe.

  IV

  * * *

  Hospitiful

  My permanence showed through everyone’s grin:

  I was a stranger, and they “took me in.”

 
And when Yuletide came and I was still their stranger,

  A wonder that I wasn’t made to sleep in a manger.

  Presents. Presence.

  The Day, the “younguns” think, to gift

  Is on December twenty-fifth.

  The oldsters feel that they should mix

  The day of January six.

  Although I cater to tradition,

  I liked the young ones’ definition.

  And so I worked with that in mind.

  That Day the children rose to find

  Someone had come and left behind

  Assorted wooden toys and things:

  Doll houses, Shoo-Fly rockers, swings.

  The younguns cheered; the oldsters stood smirking

  Because they guessed who did this woodworking.

  Virtue

  Christlike, the carpenter who scatters his gifts,

  Stays out all night walking in high snow drifts,

  Hopes to ingratiate himself to his neighbors,

  This point of such handsome Christlikeness belabors.

  Enters

  Now my Magdalene drags in with feet bare and palms which are clammy,

  And stage-center stands with a look that would melt any heart,

  A girl-child of twelve, the Ledyard’s “leastun,” named Ammey,

  The one I had overlooked, distributing my art.

  Had the Ledyard place been too far for me to walk on that mission?

  True, he, when I’d sought his friendship, sent me away.

  Was that it? Or was it a matter of precognition:

  I knew already she’d become my Magadalene some day?

  You Can’t See Me, but I’m on My Knees

  Forgive me, Ammey, had I known

  That you were not already grown

  But still a child despite your size,

  I’d quickly go apologize.

  What penance or amends could right

  The wrongness of my oversight?

  The giver was “unknown,” you see.

  Acknowledge anonymity?

  So here, to cancel out my debts,

  I send anonymous regrets.

  Unverminous

  If thus far I have given a whitewashed picture

  Of Lost Cove folk, and not revealed the squalor,

  It hasn’t been from blindness or from stricture.

  Like them, I disregard the almighty dollar.

  There was no money there but stuff to barter,

  And precious little stuff for even that.

  The typical inhabitant was martyr

  To poverty that wouldn’t keep a rat.

  To bear his miseries would take an Atlas.

  Why bother throwing out the trash and litter

  Except into the yard? He was not bitter

  He had the solacement of being ratless.

  Synopsis so Far

  I drifted in like mistletoe:

  Birds shit the seeds where’er they go.

  A stranger, like a wolf, laments

  The natives’ false indifference.

  I saw Death’s face when I was sick.

  My fever was the candlestick.

  When well, if gratitude allows,

  Befriend your nurse but not her spouse.

  Some wood and labor sacrificed

  At Christmas make you feel like Christ.

  My gifts were hooks I wetly dipped.

  The fish I prized the most I skipped.

  V

  * * *

  A Ballit of Amenities

  Old Flossie’d been their hostess, and now that she had left,

  They felt relieved at evening, but mornings felt bereft.

  Too lightly they had taken the wisdom of her years.

  Too bad she comes so quickly, then disappears.

  “In retrospect, I miss it,” the girl would sigh anew.

  “It was a thrill, her watching, when we lay down to screw.”

  Their fireplace has been mentioned, their other things have not.

  There’s more to daily living than keeping bodies hot.

  The Salter house was cozy, because it was so small:

  Two bedrooms, kitchen, parlor, four rooms in all.

  The furniture they’d gathered, by “borrowing” around

  From other empty houses, whatever still was sound.

  They slept upon a mattress they’d found some other place.

  ’Twas filled with downy feathers, if not enough air space.

  Few trips to town they’d taken, to stock up on supplies,

  For “perishables” only; nothing else dies.

  And then they’d finished shopping, returned to home, and O!

  The thick wet flakes cascaded, and bound them in with snow.

  A week he spent in chopping, to gather all their wood;

  The seventh day he rested, and saw that it was good.

  Content they spent their winter, no creature comforts missed,

  Except perhaps a bathroom, and such did not exist.

  There was a two-hole privy, they called their “country seat.”

  They often went together, to pool their body heat.

  I smile to see them sitting, as I did years ago.

  They share their isolation, their privity, their glow.

  Problem

  Of creature comforts I was quick to speak.

  I meant those of the body, not the mind.

  He had a healthy, excellent physique,

  But felt that circumstance was so unkind.

  Nightly or daily they engaged in sex,

  As any two such people are like to do.

  As like as not it left them nervous wrecks

  For having their cake and eating it too.

  On his part complication took a wry turn:

  He had the strength to make great effort, but

  He seldom lasted long enough for her.

  This is the paradox, the unkind cut:

  Release is what exertions finally earn.

  He used all his exertions to defer.

  Elements

  From the woods came the spring, its waters erupting a fountain

  Which coursed to a pool almost right beside their door.

  They lived on the northern slope of Flat Top Mountain,

  Altitude, 4,954.

  The rarefied Air and the clear pure cold Water

  Were the two basic elements most dear to know.

  The Fire is only the Air’s sultry daughter,

  And Earth’s all covered by Water’s grandson, Snow.

  Water and Air are the innate symbiotic pairing.

  Like their lichen, whose pair uses a little of both.

  As the atmosphere purifies by giving the Water an Airing,

  Water gives Air its clouds, its mists, its vapors: its growth.

  The Mistletoe Revisited Yet Again

  But that’s so much poetry. And the metaphor’s ailing.

  The lichen is outmoded, shopworn and bare.

  One night when they’d finished their Christmas wassailing,

  He plucked some old mistletoe out of her hair.

  “Behold!” he exclaimed as if finding a spider,

  And drunkenly started to lecture on how

  An innocent tree gets this sponger inside her,

  This free-loading guest who will drop in for chow.

  This hanger-on may or may not be malignant.

  So why is it license for lovers to kiss?

  And “mistletoe’s” origin leaves one indignant:

  It comes from the Latin word meaning “to piss.”

  Turning It Around

  She said, “I think a tree at least

  Has some identity Its own,

  And doesn’t mind if that’s increased

  When spongers come and settle down.

  “You’re not a sponger anyway.

  It’s false, the way that you compare.

  Reverse your precious figures, Day,

  And see which selves we really are.

 
“The tree is you, the sponger I.

  Your various selves are mighty boughs

  To bear my slight identity.

  The sponger has no earthly house.”

  The Wind, the Wind

  Often they hear the wind

  Howl, howl around the eaves

  And ’twixt their timbers pierce.

  Thinly and pregnably skinned,

  They shiver in their sleeves

  And listen long to hear

  Horn, flute, pipe: winds so fierce.

  Their house the instrument

  Weather rehearses upon.

  The fipples are the cracks

  That all the timbers vent.

  Windows with panes near gone

  Become the vibrant reeds

  The wintry blast attacks,

  Like some bewailing prayer

  That wheedles ’round their heads.

  In the Sanskrit, nirvā: “blow.”

  Thus, a Nirvana’s where

  One’s blown away from care.

  This music wafts them off

  Free, free in the whistling air.

  What Do You Give a Ghost for Christmas?

  Look now: in January he’s using stuff

  She gave him at Christmas, more than enough

  To while hours of time when weather is rough.

  —In the corner there Flossie sits dipping her snuff.

  She gave him a fiddle, that is, violin,

  Because I had said that a fiddler I’d been.

  His terrible practicing makes such a din

  —That poor Flossie is needing some aspirin.

  And while he’s preparing for his first concert,

  He’s casually wearing a fifty-dollar shirt

  Of French velour, quite plush, the color is vert.

  —And there’s Flossie repining in homespun old skirt.

  His cheeks are a-tingle with fragrant cologne,

  Some after-shave lotion that playboys have known

  On special occasions when oats are to be sown.

  —And is Flossie’s aroma entirely her own?

  But the gift he most prizes is his girlfriend’s dearness.

  More treasured than gifts is the fact of her nearness.

  And Flossie’s content with what seems such a queerness:

  —That the gift which they gave her was only her hereness.

  Calendar: January

  Now in this spare month they become

  Surveyors of their journey. Months

  Have passed since first they started out.