Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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lack mask eyes of the young ones interrogating the first cold night, the unaccustomed noisiness of bone rattle maple leaf beneath their paws. How can I tell them these trees will soon be skeletons, the pond as hard as glass, the nut and berry harvest over? <strong>The</strong>se two are young — they would not believe me. <strong>The</strong>ir mother rears up protectively, smells me, scents out the panic among the saplings, the smell of rust and tannin. We share a long stillness, a moment when consciousness is not a passive agency. Our sight invades the countryside, embracing everything — sleepers in beds in a concrete tower — earthworms entwining in humus rot — goes up and out through the limpid sky, streaming past moon — — moon’s lava’d seas — out, out, to the arc of the sublime, tracing the edge of great Antares, leaping to other galaxies unafraid. (Let space expand as though the worlds still feared their neighbors! Let miser stars implode, their dwarf hearts shriveling to cores of iron!)
We are the scourge of entropy. We sing the one great note through which new being comes out of nothingness. Does it have meaning, this seed-shagged planet alive with eyes? Is earth the crucible, sandbox of angry gods, or is it the eye of all eyes, ear of all ears, the nerve through which the universe acquires self-knowledge? But these are weighty thoughts for man and mammal! We are but blood and minerals, upright for an instant, conscious for but a moment, a grain-fall of cosmic hourglass. Yet I am not ephemeral: I freeze time, relive moments chronicle the centuries re-speak Shakespeare, beat out the staves of Mozart, read the same books my forebears knew make of old words my wordy pyramid. I am the one snapping the pictures of solar systems, sending myself an outside-in self-portrait. I send my name and signature on bottles spinning past Uranus.
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE by BRETT RUTH
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CONTENTS AUTUMN POEMS 13 October Is
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184 The McWilliams’ Coffee Table
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE
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drifting ghostlike and invisible on
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3 Listen! October is coming! It wil
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THE STATE VERSUS AUTUMN RESOLVED: F
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NOT YEARS ENOUGH How many autumns m
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THE SAILOR AND THE OAK NYMPHS Oak w
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then turning to mockery of his all
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END OF THE WORLD Not with a trumpet
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Stockbrokers adjusted their power t
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THE OUTSIDER Some say that spring i
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oll in this new moon blanket with m
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waiting for the bat, the creeping m
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I waited, I waited — He never arr
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THE ARGUMENT “Two decades ago tha
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AVOIDING THE MUSE Silent this voice
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The clouds make way, open a blue do
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WRITER’S BLOCK For Barbara A. Hol
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This state of things will never do!
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BOARD GAME It is a game that never
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CREATION REVISITED 1 According to U
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But now the horizon rages with whir
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Is it invisible, this imago of Wint
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(the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
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The does take bubble baths. At dusk
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ECLIPSE How like the moon, that sul
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EDGAR AND HELEN Edgar Allan Poe and
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2 Moon and the flames of candled gl
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3 Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
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One truck hurtling toward gates lik
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These crows are not informers. A sh
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eside him, “Comrade, what if I cr
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And then he will send them away, do
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You have become an allergy, an anti
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IVAN GROZNI Ivan Grozni Tyrant of t
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Yet who are these ghosts that crowd
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dust devil’s playground when all
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Winter is honest, at least, the bui
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all now are only names in peeling p
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PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
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JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sig
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Stalinists and Maoists, Progressive
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THE EVANGELICALS ARE COMING! Who ne
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BLUMENSTÜCKE The parlor frowned wi
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The combinations were shocking as s
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ROADSIDE VIEWS It is the way of tra
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RUINS Passing the gutted neighborho
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WATER SPRITE Who made you, this ful
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It draws us, real and unreal mortal
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Time is an endless line wound in a
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A shaman sat here, useless for hunt
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AT THE COKE OVENS I wanted to see m
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I played here as a child, amid the
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Moving to field and orchard, Ben na
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THE CEMETERY BY THE LAKE Edinboro L
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I miss that tree. If one of the gra
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You did not know the gourd was holl
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who lured me with promises and sea-
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In the scant shade of his splintere
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It was you who raised the child in
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GANYMEDE 1 Night after night the pa
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2 The boy felt the tense of lightni
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Beauty too soft for marble, subtle
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5 He summons the troupe of ageless
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The boy did not resist, but let his
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8 Ganymede thinks only of Zeus. No
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10 I like to think of the gods stil
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THE RANSOM OF GANYMEDE 1 THE TEMPLE
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2 THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS It is a plac
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“What would we shepherds want wit
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With this, the Sybil collapses unco
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enduring the seismic embrace of her
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Yet Hera hesitates. She knows the G
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and there, trembling and pale, the
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3 GANYMEDE’S PLEA Ganymede offers
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a plaything, upstart and crude. Jea
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“It’s really a mercy I turn the
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T H I N G S S E E N I N G R A V E Y
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2 SACRIFICE Before a cenotaph in ci
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(Silt, fish, flotsam flow from Youg
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4 NIGHT SHIFT At two in the morning
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They watch for a long time, wait fo
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An ectoplasmic virgin blushes, aver
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for this night of nights, summer’
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8 SALEM At Salem the burying ground
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9 THE FORGOTTEN GRAVESTONE At Swan
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THE McWILLIAMS’ COFFEE TABLE So t
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SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
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3 Things go wrong at the American b
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Never knew what hit them or how a b
Page 193 and 194: Who wrote the note? The blonde on t
Page 195 and 196: T H U N D E R P U S S: I N M E M O
Page 197 and 198: We keep our vigil against the time
Page 199 and 200: yet terrified, into the hands of th
Page 201 and 202: nothing would daunt your interest i
Page 203 and 204: I watched you dreaming: the twitch
Page 205 and 206: 7 We became one person, shards of t
Page 207 and 208: It was not done in a daze. The sun
Page 209 and 210: A T L O V E C R A F T ’S G R A V
Page 211 and 212: 2 We stand about, a handful swellin
Page 213 and 214: Earth reels beneath our feet into t
Page 215 and 216: 5 Later a golden moon lifts up, swo
Page 217 and 218: LOW TIDE “The tide was flowing ou
Page 219 and 220: Then why should a fireball plummet
Page 221 and 222: In the stillness of museum night, t
Page 223 and 224: And there, the steeple on distant F
Page 225 and 226: prisoners un-decapitated, toxins un
Page 227 and 228: a literary man, to be sure, a lawye
Page 229 and 230: “I fear the wine speaks now. Perh
Page 231 and 232: Here Pabodie would say no more, but
Page 233 and 234: unquenchable, to fall into her arms
Page 235 and 236: and flying across the parlor to him
Page 237 and 238: so that these seeds transcend to se
Page 239 and 240: HERE AT THE POINT Secret transcript
Page 241 and 242: Those Lovecraft fans are the worst.
Page 243: TO THE ARC OF THE SUBLIME In nights
Page 248 and 249: ABOUT THE POEMS The following notes
Page 250 and 251: DEER HUNTERS was inspired by a trip
Page 252 and 253: INDIAN ROCK SHELTER recounts an eve
Page 254 and 255: SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
Page 256 and 257: ABOUT THE POET Brett Rutherford, bo
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