Author: Duncan MacNae

You showed us the empty boats
Vacant gardens where sunflowers
Hang their heavy heads
Cypresses waiting for us all
Beyond the flowering springtime 
Orchard.

We prisoners pace the yard
Slow motion re-creation of
Forgotten harvest dancers
The sowers make their blind way
Across the empty wheat field
Crows gathering in the trees
Beyond our sight.

The guise of reality hides eternal
Questions, but gives no rest,
Hints at no peace of mind, demands
The price of passion be paid.
Wander hungry, sleep cold, preach that gospel
No one wants told, overwhelmed 
By the infinite sadness.

You could have given us disembodied
Heads, blood like dripping jewels, 
Salome’s dance, but none of those
Eyeball balloon cactus man dreamscapes
Penetrate the veil, reveal the hidden wound
More than that faceless gray family
And their vanished dinner of potatoes.

Essence of yew tree burning in the veins
Ancient harbinger now life bringer
At a price. Dark traceries up my arm
Like the poison in a sword fantasy.
Bone-break ache, muscle fever,
Sleepless nights, but these fade,
All fade but the grim tracery in my veins
My hair turns loose, covers my pillow 
In lost vanity and after a few days
I shave it all away; still, strength enough 
For a real hike among arroyo willows, 
Cottonwoods. I can get out of bed
Most easily, 
Now it’s time for round two.

Father of every good gift
My thanks for the bounty
You have brought to my life
For the obvious list ending
Family, son, wife.
For the skills I find within
Though the tools now lie 
Neglected – gardens, makings,
Marking down. I see all
Around people of worthy
Accomplishment, achievement
Making my half-conceived schemes
Appear childish and trite.
I thank You for the wasted time
With a golden boy, fishing (but
So little). Thank You for the
Sunflowers and the soil to plant them
Always digging, always digging, it seems.
I thank you for the cost of all these things
Giving them worth, lost mountains
Humanitarian trips, fretwork dollhouses. 
Forgive me if I have wandered too far from
Your task and Your assignment
I thank You for a free life (as much as lies
Within us) and pray to bring some good
Into the world for Your glory.

I praise You, Lord of the Dawn,
Sun of righteousness, for the mercy
Of these mornings, rare as jade on
A golden beach
When I rise feeling clear
The strength returned to my arm
Discernible as the light increasing 
In the east.

I thank You for storm clouds
The stroke of lightning with the sun
As I turn on the fire simulacrum
The sky illumines, rumble of thunder
Follows on a windy morning clouds rack
Branches heave, cough reasserts itself

I know the good feeling passes
Feel it ebbing even while I write. 
I praise you and give thanks
For the grace of the dog’s eerie
Ghost warning in her sleep
Bringing my heart to my throat 
In atavistic memory of vigilance
Long past.

Through forgotten caverns of mind
The log hut where the fire never
Went out, for savage things stymied
By her ghost howl, I praise You
And give thanks.

I give praise as my strength
Dwindles with the growing light
And the house wakens
Safe from found to top.
For clear-skied mornings, also,
Roofless sky touching blue mountains
Eight bluebirds come to the water
Jays laughing at the imperceptible
Dawn. 

Sitting sick by the gas log fire again
At three o’clock in the morning
Complete Krav Maga at my elbow
As I contemplate pugilistic instruction of
My son. I can at least still hold a pad.

Keep your hands up
Shoot out your fist like a harpoon
The Jack Dempsey drop step
Gives the hammer blow, prevents flailing
Like Johnny and Declan and myself
Windmilling away at each other, 
Punch-in-the-nose played
On the rock pile, under the tropical sun
A long way, a far, far way from Armagh

Where the McKinneys learned 
the game along with Build-a-Barricade
And other Troubled childish pursuits.
We came back to the house
Blood streaming down our faces, the
Tears only mine.

My mother didn’t understand
Their mam did and was silent.

Twenty slow miles in a schoolbus 
Buffeted and bullied, tormented and tweaked, 
Fifth circle of unending hell
For a lonely six-year-old sulking
For the islands, but I got no praise
From my father for slugging
The boss’s pretty daughter.

For pity's sake, I was only six
When I punched the ranch owner’s 
Pretty daughter right in the face
When she pulled my hair for the 
Hundred-twenty-seventh time in the back of that
Montana school bus. The older Crawfords
Assured me I would never make it home alive
Until the big Peebles kid, one of our natural
Aristocracy, scolded their middle school
Cruelty and told Brooke (long dead in the plane crash)
It served her right, 
But even then I wasn’t sure it did.

Donny Asmund (I shit you not)
Minor tormentor, the Crairie kid’s
Lieutenant, didn’t get punched, 
But boy he looked surprised and the
Tears came hot and fast when I 
Nailed him in the eye with the ice ball
Careful prepared for the occasion.

But the crew cut principal made 
No distinction of justice as he gave all
Six of us in the melee our ten whacks.

John Rice picked on my little brother
In a Carolina pine thicket, and 
He got the works even though he
Thought his added year of height 
An invincible bludgeon.

Brent Skidmore was going to 
Kill me dead in front of everyone
For squeaking my plastic platform heels
On the rung of his chair during
Sunday night youth service, and who
Would have missed me at thirteen.

But I missed him with a vicious right
Elbow, as he came to lay on the third
Sophomore varsity football hit 
As I tried to walk away, his laughter
Turned to unbelieving pale rage
When my left flashed out and 
Caught him solid between nose and mouth
Braces underneath slicing up 
his lips, my knuckles.

And he was still screaming that his big-shot
Lawyer dad was going to sell my family into bondage
When who should appear but that very dad
Lowered like Zeus in a basket to haul Brent 
Away by the ear.

As the wise man said, I had no more troubles
After that, at least very few, until once more we 
Inevitably, inexorably, loaded up the rental truck and moved
House, like some people say in Perth, where I am sure
That I would have further refined my technique if
Dad had gotten us to Blairgowrie, where presumably 
They needed the Good News more than folks in
Jamaica, Montana, Carolina, California.
And probably in Perthshire they could have used 
Some good news in 1979. We never got there.

California's Washington Junior High School
Dressed like a prison, the reek of sugar beets
Heavy in the air. Plenty of scraps in the yard,
Razor wire topping the eight-foot fence
(To prevent eighth-grade race riots, so we all said, 
Among other things I can’t recall).

But I do remember putting fat Mike on the floor
With a straight right to the solar plexus, and again
His misloyal friends assured me I would die until
Big John Grim (who took steroids, so we all said)
Told everyone Mike had it coming for six months' 
Name-calling, towel-popping, locker room humiliation.
And even now I’m pretty sure he did.

As the wise man said, after that I had no troubles
At least very few, until a cold grey summer morning
Coming back fifty miles from the shore on a new
Bicycle, run off the road onto the grassy verge of
High school lawn I gave my best Johnny Cash salute
And was appalled when the six of them piled out of the 
Big black Explorer to hold me to account for my finger.

They also, across time and space, believed I should 
Die for my insolence. I nearly talked me way out 
And they were getting bored and drifting back to the 
SUV, when the big one screamed “Pussy!” and threw
A big looping right that bounced off the side of my head.
He was surprised when I hit him
One-two-three-four-five-six
the web of my cycling gloves printing his face
and his knees buckled. 
Someone smarter slugged me in the 
Back of the head and I went down getting
Beejezus kicked out of me until they fled the fierce old
Italian groundskeeper as he came riding up errant
On his lawn mower, brandishing a short-handled hoe.
He didn't give a damn for me he said, 
But hated to see six-on-one.

Since then, as the wise man said – no troubles. 
My life has flowed peaceably in its course, although
I did give my friend Sean a casually solid shovel
Hook to the head when he insistently fondled
Our friend Becky, now a famous reporter.
I had forgotten about it, likely due to the whisky,
But she reminded me once of my heroic shot, 
His glasses flying across the room while he went 
Ass over tits behind the couch. A good deed.

Then coming to it late, as I seem to have come
To everything in life but cancer, I studied the science,
By broken ribs and fingers and bruised elbows learned 
Contact combat, to punch like a falling star, 
Strike like an iron meteor, all of which I am thankful 
To have never had the slightest use for.

So why make much of this mundane and ridiculous
Portrait? Six punches in a life, a dozen, a thousand in a 
Day? Why this glorification of the extended arm,
This primal club, humanity’s essential weapon, the
Clenched fist of both resistance and oppression, futile
Defense against the gun, absurd rebuttal to a kiss?

On a bright, leafless winter day
Mares’ tails foretell freezing rain
And boy, the sad dribble of five
Bucks worth of heating oil
Hitting the bottom of the empty 
Tank is a gloomy sound even in
Sunlight. 

But the groan of the furnace running
Dry on a howling wet night
And full knowledge of how cold
The morning floor in the hex tile
Bathroom and then rice alone
For breakfast can just about break
A nine-year old heart.

Long gone flown away 
With the foolish old punk-pop
Anthems, real Gen X dancing 
By themselves, kissing deadly 
And not enough.

Accompanying my grandmother
For the bestowal of Ronald Reagan’s
Cheese and canned commodity chicken
And after, Lawrence Welk on the
Big wooden console teevee
An onion sandwich! With Miracle Whip!

She found eighty bucks one time
On the floor at Albertson’s
And boy we left that supermarket
In a hurry, cart stilling drifting
Abandoned mid-aisle half full 
Of eggs and milk

We went to do the shopping at Safeway, 
Graceless, but bringing five through
The Depression (always capitalized)
Leaves a mark and no doubt.

Chase a crow a mile for that
Someday, teevee dinners around
The wood-crated tube, prickly
Old sectional sofa, watching Dallas
Or maybe the Friday Night Movie
Complete with running commentary
To accompany Swanson’s Salisbury Steak, 
Lonely.

But then days of the house filled
With uncles, aunts, cousins of varying
Degrees of kissability, old-time
Truck driving, lion killing friends
Eyeing the last biscuit with bacon gravy, 
Hash browns, a barn’s worth of eggs,
Endless black coffee out of the red can,
Too many sour plums off the overburdened
Tree, sips of secret whiskey from the old men
In the kitchen.

Lying in wait for fantastic
Backyard tigers and bears
Real projectile-firing plastic rifle
Clutched at my side until boredom
And the buttery kitchen light call
Back up fuchsia smothered steps
To laughter and rough scornful love.

Mockery never ceasing, deep engrained
Ultimate shield against feeling too much, 
Against fear of it all flying away and
Leave everyone sleeping rough under 
The blanket tent again, cooking on the
Tail gate, hungry still among the orange
Groves.

Git a job at the grocery store
She told me, then
When The Depression comes again
They can pay you with food.

I praise you, loving Father,
For the morning, the grey light
Falling through window blinds
Announcing your mercies
Through the night

I praise You for pen and paper
Although my mind seems empty
Of thought
For meandering cats roaming
Irresponsible through this suburban
Paperboard palazzo on the edge 
Of the juniper-filled arroyo
For coyote songs in the night
Muffled through sheetrock walls
I praise you, all-bestowing Father
For the grace of this grey lit morning.

The river that no one can cross
The mountain rising unscalable
Dawn promise that cannot last
Sun setting beyond recall.

A haunted winter comes
At bleak summer’s end
Birds falling from smoky skies
Clamor over false choices

Murder in the street
Murder in high places
Sanctified Red White Blue
Murder in hospitals, murder
Blessed in churches

In public, in private, in the dark
In the company stockholder meeting
Murder alone in the crowd
White knee pressed into black neck
Murder by false dichotomy.

I will not celebrate the murders
Of my ancestors, will not avert
My eyes though history’s bloody
Haze hides truth and lies together,
The lines clear only to the ignorant, 
The deceitful, and the knave.

I stared long at that nameless hill
But because tyres on the rented
Vauxhall were thin, and because
An American, I am afraid in 
Someway to walk where I will,
I simply stared longer while heavy-headed 
Barley senselessly swayed.

Burn of my name, eponymous wood
Do you remember us still, gone so 
Many days?
Nameless hill calling my names – 
Lowland git gathered across seas, 
Green-hilled Galloway’s thorny brae,
Names off the sgurran fo cheo
Seeping in around the edges, hinting
Of duthchas, duine, dualchas.

Fading in WalMart parking lots
In a desert place a mile above the sea
Names that call back to hill and muir
Names calling my names.