Underfoot

by Brett Rutherford

If, on a New York sidewalk, you
walk amiss, the foot first feels it —
some gelid and formless object
that will take hours to remove
from the shoe-sole’s nicks and crannies.
One rapid inhalation tells
if it be horse or dog in scent —
but no! obnoxious, odorous,
it is a Trump I trod upon.

An Afterword for Matthew Paris

by Brett Rutherford​

Dante! -- one sight -- and then
no more of Beatrice, a life
of yearning for an already-
departed Muse. Matthew!
You lucky dog! -- With Jane,
you had a Muse who stayed.

I Dreamt I Was Dante (Revised)

Henry Holiday - Dante and Beatrice (Google Art Project)

by Brett Rutherford 

I dream in mezzanotte silver-gray,
donning the robes of aging Alighieri,
sandalled and aching with brittle legs,
heeding the call of Thanatos —
waking or sleeping? —
I do not know! I feel the dew
upon my ankles, but these feet are numb,
my ankles bony knobs, my toes
the neglected bird-claws of an exile.

The years have browned and scourged
my limbs. An umber moon,
senile amid the drooling clouds,
tilts earthward and winks at me,
changeless and blistering.
the knowing eye of eternity, 

Amid a cypress grove, whose rippled leaves
cat-fur the rigid columns of the sky,
the tree-trunks are deeply furrowed
with weeping moss, and blue drear tears,
unbearable in daylight, collect. How cool
they are, how wise, reflecting in leaf-cups
each one the tiny faces of moon and Venus
(so must we mortals, in mirror'd shields
look on the Gorgon face of Love!) 

Among the trees, close-packed, a maze
made from slab-walls of quarry stone —
square blocks of some god’s
abandoned temple? — an idle Pharaoh’s
never-completed pyramid? —
now an unpeopled catacomb roofed by a vault
of stars! The maze invites my errant feet
to tread its ever-regressive avenues.

You need not tell me what is there.
No carving, no placard
    with a pointing arrow
has been prepared for me,
yet I already know the place
my demon-guided steps will take me. 

At the far heart of this stone-cypress maze,
in a niche cut out of purest marble,
on a pediment of onyx, Beatrice waits.
She is already dead, and I may die
before I ever find her resting place.
There may be stairs beneath it,
     too many to count.

That is the journey, and there is no Virgil,
and although I have read him, his silver lines
fade now to dust motes in my memory.

Beatrice! No matter how long, how fast
I walk, I am no nearer you
than that first sight, when you,
thirteen, scorned to return my gaze.

 --November 16, 2018
Revised and expanded June 22, 2026

Where the Ashes Went

by Brett Rutherford

Drunken half-brother blurts out
his memories of the dead.
Having no funds
for plot or stone,
they dug with bare hands
a hole for grandma,
right next to grandpa’s grave.
No one was looking
as the spade went in,
disturbing the thick turf grass,
soft clover, tough dandelions,
How deep? Who knows?
They dug until it seemed enough,
then in went the ashes,
and the little bone fragments
from the paper bag’s bottom.
No marker, no paperwork,
no money spent
on the damn undertaker —
serves them right.
At least they would always know
where grandma rested.

As for our mother,
she always said, laughing,
“Just throw my ashes
mid-bridge, right into
the mighty Youghiogheny.”
Vaguely she knew how the Monongehela,
then the Ohio, then the Mississippi
currents might carry her
(unless she silted down).
“At last I’ll get to see the world,”
she said. That’s what they did:
the ashes, in the humid air,
fell in a straight line
to the dark and rapid waters.
The inedible fish
flapped with their fins
to spread the ashes.

So now when someone asks.
“So, where is your mother buried?”
I am able to say, with some assurance,
“A coral reef somewhere
inside the Bermuda Triangle.”

The Morning Anatomy Check

by Brett Rutherford

Pavel, on waking up,
holds back eye-opening
until he checks
with anxious fingers
whether his nose
is in its proper place —
god forbid
you should lose your nose!

Next, and even more concerned,
he gently unfolds
the tangled blanket
to check down below —
god forbid
you should lose your penis!

All is well. All is well.
He shudders to think
of poor cousin Dimitri
who awoke one morn,

his nose between his legs,
and his manhood dangling
beneath his forehead.
Now just imagine that,
having to go about,
shorts over head,
eyes looking out
from cotton-stretch leg-holes,

the stifled nose below
enduring the smells
the trousers accumulate.
A sneeze down there
is not a pretty picture!

For Pavel, at least,
it is a normal day.
He can open one eye,
the left one always first,
and then the other —
eyes in their sockets,
mind you, and not
on the fingertips
like cousin Masha,
one for the annals of medicine!

The things that can happen
during a sound sleep
are better not thought of.