by Carl Dennis
Of her own making, should she need to make it,
Should her new friends prove unreliable.
But if they do, you won’t be happy. Not then,
When the sweet water of grace begins to flow.
Bivouac Near Trenton
Now that I see my life composed
Of many stories, not one, I needn’t worry so much
If I’ll be able to see it whole on my deathbed
With any more certainty than I can now.
A relief not to think of it as a war that hinges
On a final battle after years of skirmishes.
Each day reaches its own conclusions by sundown
About the meaning of freedom, its kinship with loyalty.
And if today the armies of General Washington
Had to stage a retreat, Harlem Heights abandoned,
The soldiers who take each day as it comes
Can be happy they didn’t panic.
Now they’re falling asleep by the river
In tents or in open air, where I’m ready to join them
As soon as I make my devotions to Night,
The goddess who’ll protect this day from invasion,
From any plot hatched by tomorrow.
And now as the tent flap rustles in the wind
I’ll finish this letter to you by the fitful candle.
It’s cold crossing the Delaware in the grip of winter
And at night it’s scary, what with the ice floes.
It’s warm inside this letter. No need for mittens.
You were out the day the Declaration inspired me
To declare my independence from the tyrant ambivalence,
Who blocked my pursuit of happiness, so I’m writing.
Night has pulled my phrases beyond revision
Up to the safety of the starry sky
Where Jefferson’s silvery phrases twinkle untarnished,
Untouched by the story that he died in debt,
Beloved Monticello taken by creditors,
The slaves sold he’d hoped to free.
Consolation
Could be, she tells herself, the Brahmins are right
And she’s enjoyed already, in a past existence,
The life that for years she’s lamented missing,
Already driven home with her heart’s companion,
Who in this existence is driving with someone else.
Already been welcomed by their ducks and dogs
And shared over dinner their plans for tomorrow.
Could be that what tastes to her like longing
Is really memory, the trace not washed from her tongue
When she kneeled to sip the dark water of Lethe.
That’s why the house in the country where he lives now
Looked so familiar the one time she dared to pass it,
A weathered farmhouse in the shingle style
Set back from the road in a rising field.
She must have lived there once, a good life,
No doubt about it, selected by her watchful soul,
Who wants the best for her, as this life has been selected,
This climbing the stairs to her city apartment
A block from the discount store, her arms full of groceries.
Already she’s planning her project when dinner’s done.
This could be the night at her writing desk
When she breaks through the walls of the well-made story
And flows with a loose, associative style
Out to the hollows and crevices of experience.
Her old life won’t get her there, to this discovery,
However much she may have learned with her friend
As she read to him on the couch by the stove
Or listened to his reading and commentary.
Does she want to repeat herself, she asks, or move on?
To say she was happier then than now,
To say she’s more restless now, and lonely,
Could mean, if the Brahmins are right,
She’s stuck in the fiction of the one best life,
Mired in the language of ranking, while the questing soul
Needs many lives to complete its journey,
Each with its own definition of happiness.
The current definition could emerge tonight
As she sits at her desk shaping her thoughts into unity
Long past the hour when her heart’s companion
Has gone to bed with his sweetheart to whisper and touch
As once she may have whispered and touched
In a life with him she’s promised herself
Not to dwell on now.
Writing at Night
This empty feeling that makes me fearful
I’ll disappear the minute I stop thinking
May only mean that beyond the kitchen window, in the dark,
The minions of the past are gathering,
Waiting for the dishes to be cleared away
So they can hustle supper into oblivion.
This feeling may only mean that supper’s done
And night has the house surrounded
And the past is declaring itself the victor.
It doesn’t deny that tomorrow I’ll wake to find
That the usual bales of light have been unloaded
And distributed equally in every precinct,
That the tree at the corner is awash in it
And the flaming, yellow coats of the crossing guards.
This empty feeling could be a gift
I haven’t yet grown used to, a lightness
That means I’ve shaken off the weight of resentment,
Envy, remorse, and pride that drags the soul down.
A thinness that lets me slip through a needle’s eye
Into the here and now of the kitchen.
Without losing a button.
An emptiness that betokens a talent for self-forgetting
That lets me welcome the stories of others,
Which even now may be on their way,
Hoping I’ll take them in however rumpled they look
And gray-faced as they drag themselves from the car
With their bulky night bags and water jugs.
It’s late. Have I gone to bed? they wonder.
And then they see the light in the kitchen
And a figure who could be me at the table
Still up writing.
As If
Before dawn, while you’re still sleeping,
Playing the part of a dreamer whose house is an ark
Tossed about by a flood that will never subside,
Its dove doomed to return with no twig,
Your neighbor’s already up, pulling his boots on,
Playing the part of a fisherman,
Gathering gear and loading his truck
And driving to the river and wading in
As if fishing is all he’s ever wanted.
Three trout by the time you get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you’re first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she’s first on yours.
Then you’re off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun’s standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn’t a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.
And while you’re speaking as if everyone’s listening,
A mile from school, at the city hall,
The mayor is behaving as if it matters
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he’s budgeted,
That the archi
tects don’t transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it’s a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare.
The strollers out on the street today
Don’t have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
As if they believe the country will be better off
If more people do likewise, that acting this way
May help their fellow Americans better pursue
The happiness your housemate believes she’s pursuing
By sharing her house with you, that the fisherman
Wants to believe he’s found in fishing.
Now while you’re thinking you can make her happy
As long as she’s willing to behave as if you can
The fisherman keeps so still on his log
As he munches a biscuit that the fish
Rise to the surface to share his crumbs.
And the heron stands on the sandbank silently staring
As if it’s wondering what the man is thinking,
Its gray eyes glinting like tin or glass.
Starry Night
Only a few stars are visible when I step outside
For a walk to the mailbox with my packet of poems.
In a week or two Mary will take time out
From preparing her class on Melville
To mark the lines that seem to need more work.
If I don’t agree with her now, it’s likely I will
In a month or two when I gain more distance.
Are other writers as lucky in their friends as I am
Or do they go it alone, as Melville did?
To get some distance on Billy Budd, he left the manuscript
Untouched for six months in the dark of a desk drawer,
The last six months of his life, it turned out.
Maybe he was planning to go back to it
For a final review and then search for a publisher
If publishing still mattered to him
And he thought a story so far from the fashion
For middling characters could find a public.
A book so different from the one I’m writing,
The way it reveals its truth in extremes.
How boldly Melville likens his sailor hero
To Adam before the Fall and then to Jesus.
On the lid of the box that held the papers
He pasted the words, “Be true to the dreams of thy youth.”
And if he felt true, as is likely, what more did he need?
Here is the mailbox, and this is the comforting sound
Of my packet of poems hitting the bottom.
And now it’s time to walk back under the streetlights,
Wondering what a youthful dream of adventure
Would conclude if it could see me,
How much explaining it would ask me for
And how much revision, if it thought revision
One of the choices still available.
Still Life
Now’s a good time, before the night comes on,
To praise the loyalty of the vase of flowers
Gracing the parlor table, and the bowl of oranges,
And the book with freckled pages resting on the tablecloth.
To remark how these items aren’t conspiring
To pack their bags and move to a place
Where stillness appears to more advantage.
No plan for a heaven above, beyond, or within,
Whose ever-blooming bushes are rustling
In a sea breeze at this very moment.
These items are focusing all their attention
On holding fast as time washes around them.
The flowers in the vase won’t come again.
The page of the book beside it, the edge turned down,
Will never be read again for the first time.
The light from the window’s angled.
The sun’s moving on. That’s why the people
Who live in the house are missing.
They’re all outside enjoying the light that’s left them.
Lucky for them to find when they return
These silent things just as they were.
Night’s coming on and they haven’t been frightened off.
They haven’t once dreamed of going anywhere.
Your City
How much would it take for this city
That so far has belonged to others
To be yours as well,
The houses set in rows and each row named
So you can find the garden of your new acquaintance
Long before sundown, just as you promised,
And the talk has time to wander and pause.
How much as you walk home in the dark
For the portly policeman, who now
Stands on the corner for others,
To stand for you by the grocery store
Still open for your convenience,
The lettuce and cucumber planted last spring
For you as well, weeded and watered,
Picked this very week, sorted and loaded,
And driven along a highway where a highway crew
Has worked all month for you digging a culvert.
How much for the book on the nightstand at home,
Written now for others, to be written for you
In hours stolen from sleep and children,
Sweet and bitter wisdom distilled as a gift
As the author guesses you’ll be coming along
In need of encouragement and of warning.
Three weeks till it’s due at the local library.
How much would it take for the right
To wander the stacks all afternoon,
Wrested for others from kings and shamans,
To be wrested for you as well,
And the Constitution amended to protect your rights
Against the privileges of the few
And the prejudice of the many.
You learned the story in school but couldn’t believe it.
How much would it take for it all to be possible,
To walk the streets of a glimmering city
Begemmed with houses of worship and lecture halls
That thrust the keys to bliss into your hands.
A city where for you as well
Mohammed decides to linger at Mecca
And Jesus rides his donkey into crazed Jerusalem
And Moses descends the mountain and loving Buddha
Turns his back on heaven, hearing your sighs.
How long a wait till invisible hands,
That have left instructions for others
In every lonely hotel room, lead you
To lock up evil and coax the good
From whatever corner of your soul it’s fled to,
The beleaguered good you’ve always imagined
Looking for others to deliver it
When all along it’s looked for you.
from Practical Gods (2001)
A Priest of Hermes
The way up, from here to there, may be closed,
But the way down, from there to here, still open
Wide enough for a slender god like Hermes
To slip from the clouds if you give your evenings
To learning about the plants under his influence,
The winged and wingless creatures, the rocks and metals,
And practice his sacred flute or dulcimer.
No prayers. Just the effort to make his stay
So full of the comforts of home he won’t forget it,
To build him a shrine he finds co
ngenial,
Something as simple as roofed pillars
Without the darkness of an interior.
If you’re lucky, he’ll want to sit on the steps
Under the stars for as long as you live
And sniff the fragrance of wine and barley
As it blows from the altar on a salty sea breeze.
He’ll want, when you die, to offer his services
As a guide on the shadowy path to the underworld.
Not till you reach the watery crossing
Will he leave your side, and even then
He’ll shout instructions as you slip from your shoes
And wade alone into that dark river.
Saint Francis and the Nun
The message Saint Francis preached to the birds,
Though not recorded, isn’t beyond surmising.
He wanted his fellow creatures to taste the joy
Of singing the hymns he sang on waking,
Hymns of thanksgiving that praised creation.
Granted, the birds had problems with comprehension,
But maybe they’d grasp enough of his earnest tone
To feel that spring shouldn’t be taken lightly.
An audience hard to hold, to be sure,
With a narrow attention span, a constant fluttering,
But a lot less challenging than the nun he counseled
Only this morning, a woman still young,
Dying slowly in pain, who asked him
Why if her suffering had a purpose
That purpose couldn’t be clarified in a vision.
Why not at least some evidence
That the greater the suffering reserved for her
The smaller the portion reserved for others?
What a balm to be able to think as Jesus did,
That with every difficult breath of hers
Patients in sickbeds around the world
Suddenly found they were breathing easier.
What a relief for Saint Francis these birds are,
Free of the craving for explanation, for certainty
Even in winter, when the grass is hidden. “Look!”
He calls to them, pointing. “Those black specks