Moths pressed
against the window,
drawn to the light --
or was the random
tapestry of wings
a message --
against the window,
drawn to the light --
or was the random
tapestry of wings
a message --
help us, we choke,
coke-oven smoke
and smelter, fumes
from your rolling autos,
all poison us --
each summer
there were fewer, then
fewer still, now none
as both they and the house
are mere ghosts in the woods.
What were
the nightjars
asking for, anyway?
That same persistent
whip -- whip --
whippoorwill call.
whip -- whip --
whippoorwill call.
Did respite come
for Poor Will, ever?
What tread at night
as the watch-dog howled,
making a large-pawed
circle around the house?
Grandma slept through it,
but the two boys wide-
awake in terror heard it,
three times circling --
as the watch-dog howled,
making a large-pawed
circle around the house?
Grandma slept through it,
but the two boys wide-
awake in terror heard it,
three times circling --
was it a bear
from the high rocks above
or something sinister
that even the Indians
hereabouts
would shudder to name?
What did it want?
What does anything want
in the wide world
but to be left alone?
this poem made me feel like I could set my existential fears free, as the circling terror was set free, into loneliness itself. But being left alone is not the same as loneliness. Hmm.. Beautifully complex -- You have woven in your weltanschauung, because this poem is from the view of the trodden, of the outcasts, and gives a dream-like impression that their/our world is reaching in from the darkness. An archaic, forlorn love that finds bliss in tragedy, in self sacrifice.
ReplyDeleteAnd the first two stanzas... there's the agonizing wonder of if we have been hopelessly deformed biologically into monsters of consumption, but then, something more -- a humbling innocence that there are symbols we can't comprehend in words beyond what's already inside of us. How the body is taut around its own gravity, how it can't help but center around its lifeforce, and mourn something dead and gone, even before ever having personally known what once was.