Writer's Block

by Brett Rutherford

     for Barbara A. Holland 

Figure of speech this is not:

the black monolith
before your door —
so tight a visitor
or the timid mailman
can just squeeze past it
into your vestibule —
is real, and solid. 

This object, taller now
than a double-decker bus,
is clearly out of hand.
Just when the charcoal monolith
popped up in the gutter
     like fungus
is not so important as how
it grew at curbside,
consuming a parking space,
a bus stop,
cracking the Plexiglas shelter
until the smooth black slab
jostled a tree
and warped the sidewalk,
flush to the bottom step
of your brownstone front! 

What is it made of? List all
the known black stones: basalt,
ebony, onyx, obsidian,
lava, jet, or hematite.
No match. Nor is it coal,
charcoal, or carborundum.
It is more like a cenotaph
carved out of frozen shadows. 

Who knows where it
gets its strength?
(Taproots in power-lines,
perhaps, or steam-pipes,
or gas and water mains?)
Does moonlight feed its
blackness? 

It festers there,
absorbing sunlight
like a cubist tarantula,
its height advancing
in bamboo stealth
to the edge of your curtains,
an anxious bird perch
that finally shoots
to rooftop,
five stories now! Five,
and it does not topple! 

Up there, your morning view
must be night, now —
a blank night
without a hint of aurora.
Your darkened rooms
hunch in resentment.
The potted palm
     yellows and dries,
your windowsill
     a hecatomb of withered flowers. 

And all the while 
     your computer dims out,
     that manual typewriter
          from your student days
     refuses a carriage return, 

your fountain pen is clogged,
pencils worn to useless stumps,
as a parallel mountain
of crumpled paper
accumulates. 

Your poems germinate
in beansprout lines,
but the stanzas coagulate
into thought-clot,
as useless as
a castaway scab. 

2 

This state of things
will never do!
I know a consulting shaman
adept at elementals.
He begs for quarters
at the corner of Morton
where it meets Hudson Street.
If you but ask,
he’ll circle your house
with Indian maize
(to the delight of pigeons),
hang a dented silver spoon
on your fireplace mantel.
Then, after a swig
of a sassafras philtre, 

his gap-toothed mouth
will eject dandelion puffs
and the scent of burnt sage;
on fire, he'll pull the tail

     of the Wendigo,
enraging his northern eminence
until its four crossed winds,
its burning feet of fire
converge at the pinch point,
galing down the Hudson River,
huffing from the piers
to your doorstep,
pounding that monolith
flat as a paving stone.
Like melting ice

it will merge with the sidewalk. 

He's done this for others —
but something is always
left behind:
that's why,
at certain corners,
dust devils harry pedestrians
tornado leaves and paper scraps,
raise skirts and strip
the skins off frail umbrellas. 

The shaman’s fee for poets,
since we have less than he has,
is but a cup of coffee
and the promise of an epigraph.
Some lingering vectors
of anarchic wind
are but a small aftermath
of old-fashioned magic.
Lady, the bum’s coffee
at the corner diner is but
a paltry ransom,
for imprisoned sunlight,
fettered typing,
and a hostage pen. 

1980s, Revised and expanded March 2019.