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VANDER MEER’S REVISION
Discovering another man’s words crept
in among his own, Vander Meer dutifully
strikes them. (Though writing for himself,
he likes to make it new.) But the pruned
phrase—“The energy leaves the wine”—
makes his memory wander. . . .
August;
a night-wind enriched by the moist grass
he hadn’t mowed in weeks . . . and crickets!
Thick as stars in the yard. He is reading
in the half-dark, angled over the book
like a slab face on Easter Island, mouth
slight-moving: “The energy leaves the wine,”
thinking: But there are reasons.
And yet,
one August later he was living alone—
three floors up, leaning half-naked
into the open jaws of a panting fridge,
letting it lap his sweat away. Off and on
her voice would drum again in his ears:
“You want her? Your little bitch? Go
to her! Go to your bitch!”
So he left,
not explaining he was leaving for no one.
How could he speak that unreasonable truth?
“The energy leaves the wine,” and the god
wakes in you no longer . . . no longer
takes wing suddenly in your blood—
and your own voice sours in your mouth,
and your best words. . . .
Speechless
Vander Meer! Reeling again . . . flushed
like some sullen, intemperate priest,
drunk as a lord on the sacrament.
*****
ONE OF THE LOST MOMENTS
We sat isolated among the others.
Her feet were bare in summer sandals,
bare and lovely, that’s what I whispered.
She crossed her legs . . . discreetly
touched a toe to my naked ankle.
We swayed like neighboring birches
whose branches wind had blown together.
When I close my eyes, I still hear leaves
weaving those wild shadows around me.
*****
THE WOUND
A fresh-fallen limb, the blossoms still on—
dim stars amid the restless green. Interrupting
my therapeutic morning walk, I bent over it,
touched the tender inner wood where the branch
had fastened to its trunk.
Lightning?
Or a wind?
The limb was long, slender, smoothly tapered.
Felled by its own weight then? My fingers
crept across the moist white wound.
What a frail grain!
That could not bear
to bear such a profusion of flowers and leaves.
*****
ELEMENTAL PRAYER IN A BLACK HOUR
1
Icy wind, lover-like mouth, drink down
this bitter cloud I took for a soul.
Sip it out through the bones of my ears
as a widow sucks tea through a sugar cube.
2
Carry off my shadow in your shadow’s arms,
bleak river. Freeze me until I’m glass.
Let my failures flood and pass through me
like moonlight—leaving me empty, but clear.
3
Swallow my heart, sullen earth, and my eyes.
I bring them to you, their dreams intact,
as neophytes once offered you seeds of barley.
Feed them your darkness. Force their sweet fruit.
4
Huddled fire, comfort my flesh—and my mind,
“which is also flesh.” Let my voice rise
like smoke. Let it drift as the night goes,
seasoning the day with the scent of vanishing.
*****
NOTE: Bed of Coals is out of print and no author's copies are available.
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Order Online
NOTE: Bed of Coals is out of print and no author's copies are available.
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