My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
IV
WHERE IT ENDS
for the Marfans
THE LAST HOUSE CREELEY LEFT
for Ben Lerner and Joseph Lease
Days all was away
and the clouds were far off
and the sky was heaven itself,
one wanted to stay.
—FROM “ABSENCE” BY ROBERT CREELEY, ON EARTH
Surrounded in
Spring wide windows leveling
horizons, hardwood floors buff
polished, neatly, every angle
cared for, carefully crafted
for a poet to breathe free.
Can the window wear
faces, horizons, lines once
balanced here in temporal
sway, swing out over greater
fields, open, in the open wide
as Texas sky, hovering Marfa
lights? Has he quickened here?
This same bed, same sleep
same chairs, table, bench,
same walls, ceiling, doors,
same windows pull poetry from
deeper place, recessive lean
in the backbelly rumble, crawling
pit, chest, lungs, breath, crawling breath,
spine, shoulders, arms, fingertips to type,
pen, produce some fruited sand plum poetry in
the last house Creeley left.
REDUCTION
All we did was pray for rain
to put the damn thing out.
Couldn’t stand the burning
reminding us of the maybe few
thousand in there smoldering.
Or the thousands burned back
Sullivan-Clinton days, dams
lodged, released, anyone left
alive set to flame the next morning.
Damn the blazing.
BREATHING
For weeks we inhaled the dead
scent the same, financier or footman,
and like moths all rested on sills,
searched for light.
BURN
Cattle carcass still steaming,
roadside each way black,
all we can hope is no human’s-gone-pugilistic attitude
shrink-posing for fight when air
drains from muscles
through pores evaporating mist in the heat of it
the burnside tangling flesh/ash
through whirlwinds
black plumes, threading time disappearing into dark energy
encapsulating West Texas Border Patrol,
game wardens, smokejumpers’
interior exit, camouflaged, must outfox the hustle of fire, bustle
whole depletion into retreat, flee, surrender. Surrender.
Hot metal searing Dad’s eye,
soldering pipe flash
into sclera surrounding insight.
He called to me for water.
I could walk then, but was too
young to explain.
Knew the serious nature of it,
how to draw water to heal.
Knew how to handle,
when passing consumed cattle steaming
their bodies still bearing passing life, still bearing full weight
near normal, flash-burned when
they could not escape
tumultuous wind-driven flame. Black clouds on scorched earth
managing weather, amassing AEP
restoration process in the lean
charred leg, delineating linear directions, compass needles,
articulating line of duty death,
Goins gone, his land still smoking.
The East St. Louis child calling,
“Let me out. Let me out!”
as his grandmother’s home buckled inward
too far-gone.
Twice prior, two cousins, sisters lost
in fires years before burn
strangling through the family, bit by bit. As if Missouri tornados
weren’t wet enough, the fires fueled there, still hardy, taking.
Up river, season error snowmelt maddening levees, taking
houses in laps
long overgrown, smacking them into tinder
somewhere heated, but now there is the quickened confluence
beating away anything substantial
to vehicle flow, with amorous
waves rolling wide, gyrating revolve, pushing, turning twist
into
back into blaze, the only water deep
and drifting, not enough hoses
or people to put this out, now another’s popped up, maybe more.
By the sixth, caution translates to which way the wind blows, by
eleventh, homes are temporary, expendable,
nothing matches life.
Massive range-riddling smolder. Tufts turn upward, rise on sweeps.
Glowing bluffs distant horizon, closer
burn backs off befuddled
men, women, wishing for work in a heated ten-mile open wide
volcano mouth, held open since seas
slid down, lava formed high
not two hundred miles from Carlsbad where evacuations loom,
bats scatter, all wide deep of it,
catacombed, put it out north too,
under Los Alamos crazed nuclear weaponry, plutonium storage
experiments hauled over something
byway Santa Fe, city
current remnant flagged in trade cloth waving red, yellow flames
on downtown wheeled armadas, honking,
“L-e-t u-s o-u-t!” while winds
wind themselves into imperiled charts, pictographs, cartography cut
loose from Bandolier-sashed mountains,
the pockets pushed out
into ashes all around. Now, here, javelinas
hurl themselves under
roadside culverts, taking lower pathways from fiery sear.
Remember back on Ridge, fires? Crystal called her sister, Faith said,
“The house is gone, all of it.”
Sarah standing on top, a black & white in her right palm, her hair
in her left, all of it smoldering.
Where’s the cat? My own brother
burning new construction insulation, for the thrill of it; at eight, “Pyromania,”
they said, but never mentioned when he self-immolated at eleven,
no, never gave him that, just coughed
away memory of our sister
pouring alcohol on the hard tile, spelling out,
“Die Die Die” to
shock us coming home. Kids’ stuff.
Or, construction workers stubbing
cigarettes into dry grass behind our place,
how we burned our rubber
soles stamping while they laughed at us, Mom and Dad burned
their palms putting it out, ashed, or her hair shocked that way, white.
Glass bottle fire, smokes up crossroads, no
no fiddles found their bow
play on strings popping alongside road tar
heels, hollowed ditches full
Russian thistles’ bitter scorch, flying out
skeletal-like, running.
Insides turning out, twisting up like lead turns turning. Rising
mantle vapor smoking sunset, rise,
all through night, all through
cooked fields, calves scrambled on, too fast, too fast, the burn. Burn.
We’re still missing one hundred twenty-five head
from Rock House Fire.
Seventy-four from the leased Poor Farm land. Neighbors keep
a lookout, nothing. Black Angus, aoudad, pronghorns torched up
like marshmallow roasts, giving tongue
lapped licks on lips curled
quick in heat. Twenty-nine special rangers seek the rest, any loose
herds made clean of it. Rustlers, must be.
No vultures vortexed
sight overhead, no buzzards’ contours, no, only smoke belies.
Downtown, some fliers offer reward next to a ma and pop chiding
their eldest over dropping lit butt into pathways.
No room for
accidents in No Country for Old Men. No room for it where Woody
wore belts decked out by Graybeal, by
Moonlight’s best gemstone,
Marfa agate. Too bad the shots didn’t display
the cut of them. Real
beauties over sterling silver plate. Now heat plates on low-profile sports
cars tinder prairie grass ignition, cactus wrath. Anything’s
at risk; everything’s to blame.
Flames follow wind the way
water follows wave, over seabed
ground pummeled high, mile
high elevation, sure as Denver, but desert scene. Chihuahuan
and Sonoran, now both carry largest wildfires in colonial
history, both heated harder, spreading
further, than pictured
in recent times. Everything from Tucson through Texas a rage.
Ladybird’s roadside flowers billow dust, chocolate
flowers still scenting straight paths familiar.
It’s the fury fell
here. Fuming every angle, hopping asphalt,
by the time Gage
Holland breaks from roadside rest area, Hwy 90 is shut down clean
to Marfa, no one there holds much hope,
Rock House said
to be still smoldering. It’s all without mercy, without peace.
Dreams come easily branded, but no iron rod season’s
coming this round. Come easily into
infused chicken games,
forearms stubbed, spoons cooked in dosage blues, shooting
burns, shoot-up euphoria, hero flying
through blistered skies,
they called it horse at import, now horses shot, nine of them.
Nerves so frayed teakettle copper melts blue,
then white, ash
covered the electric burner on stove range, while the range
outside roared, spat sideways onto
roofs, roads, ranches.
Population too sparse here for national concern, no, though
public radio does spare lives nearby, maybe
our own, measly thrill
a bitter bitter thing in coverage accolades, but dammit they do
deserve attention, we depend on them.
Give them glory, we’ll
share in it, same face, Border Patrol/Walk In, all phoenix rise,
nothing sheared shares grace,
black peel crusts everything,
surviving’s the only reason. Look at it, gone. No fire climax
pines here to justify so much loss,
rebirth here, a fought thing.
Mr. Spanish buried ceremonially in shoebox, under glory, flagpoled,
each niña entered escuela.
It’s rough country. Aftermath don’t add up.
Logic’s subjective.
That’s life out here, not much gussy ghost propositions. Trains
all that ever run on time, rest of the clockwork’s when it need
be business. Rain’s only thing missing.
When it teases,
lightning sparks whatever’s left, six sparks spread within an evening.
By morning smoke’s on the plate again.
Coexistence only calm.
We expect plunther, plunther along the world’s edge, horizon.
One day a rim fire burns so great its whirl will create weather,
pattern vortices tilt horizontal to vertical, hurling
branch, limb, whatever fills to vorticity. Scorched pathways leaving earth.
All roads travel onward, until they end.
Everything ends in time.
Everything temporary. An eternal fire holds itself, only in heat,
fuel, oxygen, triangulate combustion,
tetrahedral support planes
existence, life spark, yet fire has been carried, cultivated, cured
since first fire. It’s log bundle, hollowed, fed.
He fed the first from his pickup on I-44. Tossed the news out his window,
flaming until half of Luther
left Oklahoma in fury so hot, all it left was white ash, the whole of it
under skies dark with night
shining proof of other worlds. Orion holding up east. The gleam of it maddening.
Stars surely shine. Sun’s running sky each morning.
Sirius still rounds night except
for seventy days or so.
Always will. Stardust precedes Earth.
Dust here kicks up heavy, towered seventy feet high
in Lubbock years back.
High in Arizona now, where
Wallow breaks records like gangbusters.
Mainstreamers
picking up haboob as if comprehension made it new.
Predate dust. You can’t. Dust has been and rises when-
ever wind wills.
Gusts a given out here.
Where a heat plate scrapes grass like armadillo shell
tears into straw with friction, sparks it,
whole thing burns
bright, spreads for miles in short order. Spreads for miles.
People unable to move through it, leave everything they love, hope
until return, then weep. Like the mother
whose kids shared our
school. One tied to the couch and burned alive after Demerol
downed him there. Bad deal.
Bad deal all over. Drug wars
never won. Border blasting happening here.
Bad deal all over.
SBI burned down the shooting gallery back when. Now
’tis anyone’s game, gamble,
crap shoot, loosing lives like
spit on clay, baked hard, broken.
What’s the seed of it? Crack?
Char rounds out horizon now,
used to be shadows. Tall
men in saddles shifting through, now shadow men unsaddled
blow away in wind on giant flat.
Secrets untold shudder
what should be proper, what should be here, gone. Gone.
Char brings looseness, holds memory intangible, blackened
earth, its own beauty, not hollow
but kept there. In
evening, vultures scan space, seeking remnant, passing cranes feast
on roasted grasshoppers, crickets, larva.
In morning, phoenix
rises through community sight, open to opportunity, lamenting.
We come here hoping for more,
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