Author: Duncan MacNae

Yesterday a three season day
Rain, sun and wind, snow still lingering
In the morning still with frost. Birds
Gather seeds on this second day of  our
Feeder watch. 
One more day of radiation and attempted
Poison before that other poison called waiting.
The insurance company will protest that I am too far
Gone. Not worth the expense and bother. 
The doctor puts it in more soothing terms.
My mind rebels still at the notion that there
Is no cure, only prolonging of life – mere semantics.
There truly is no cure for the thing that chases us
From birth down halls and forests of life. There is 
Only this last frost-rimed morning of winter
Filled with diamond-dust snow and the 
Singing of the miraculous little birds.

I. 
Take no thought for tomorrow - 
No more radical words for our progress-obsessed system
Don't think about tomorrow
Precludes stock options, house payments, cruise vacations
Super Bowl fantasies - in short the whole 
tackle and trim of pre-apocalyptic consumerist normalcy.
Take care of today is corollary
Perfectly suited to quarantine and prayer
Be here now we are instructed over and over
down through millenia, live for the day,
Tomorrow never comes. 

And so I want to ask, I want to ask
How long? How long until that 
Dawn with no tomorrow
Long night of no sunrise
Short coursing of the sun
At the end of the race?

When the blue birds come back forever
When the snow is finally gone
The rain blowing in from the south
When we all sit at the table
No longer contending over shadows,
Disputing the flickering histories of our cavern wall.

But that is not tomorrow
Instead, a sort of no-tomorrow.
Not worrisome, an easy burden, 
Consummation waited for since the beginning
beginning of whatever this is
whatever will be, world without end
healing waters from the great river,
the healing trees, music unending

And so without a thought for the mundane tomorrow
Daily chores, bills, work, status-seeking, gossip,
unperformed house repairs and unwritten poems
I ask again
How long?

II.
And so we buried Violet, honorary duchess
Our angora rabbit, under shroud and stone
Covered with tulips and strawflowers 
Her foot of ground, said a prayer for her sweet spirit
As we stood and spent a few tears.
And what was that solemn ceremony?
Where do the spirits of animals go, and why are we so 
Sure their fate is so different than ours?
Buried in her garden among sage and calendula
Where she made her lippety rounds 
weighed down with basalt stone and blossoms.
Or Ajax, leg-destroying hero dog for whom I spent
Hard labor building his cairn of milky quartz stone
Among the farewell-to-spring and poppies of a 
fire-singed green California hillside?
No such hero’s grave will I get in this refined age,
No shrine of river rock hauled to hilltop,
No shroud of old bedsheet, or should I just 
vanish like an old cat.
We all go our way, in our time, God send angels 
To guide us, but no word has come back from that
Far shore, except from He who told us he conquered 
Death, and promised resurrection, but He left again 
After a few days and hasn’t been seen since, and seldom
Heard from.

III.
Yesterday, May Day, wave the red flag, dance around the May pole,
Light the two fires to drive the cattle between, but we all huddle
Separated in our houses across nations and continents, while the
Charlatans still preach that there are more important things than 
Being alive – presumably pork chops airline revenue hotel vacancy rates
Fat women in Michigan getting hair colored and nails painted red white blue 
To which I can only say that there are more important things than dying - 
Though it comes for us all, no privilege, but rather a reckoning – 
Bird song, love, breathing the mountains again, swimming in the emerald sea,
A boy playing clarinet, gardens to come, smell of roasting chiles, winter’s chill.
Why climb this mountain holding death in our heart, why hazard the climb, 
And then turn back from the summit – life is the basic premise
Death the dollar flash and trim. Court life even as it flees. Hold in your heart hope of resurrection, cherish that consummation of life forever, but know that we humans cling to this vail of shadow as our natural habitat, 
shaped for its beauties and its terrors. 

IV.
Scenes from a childhood come unbidden to mind
Disjointed, carrying little apparent weight or meaning – 
A Christmas gathering at the Perkins (whoever they might
Have been or still be) where I had real mincemeat pie, 
Tiny concrete block church where an honest to God old Irishman 
Sang me a song about his name and about crocodiles on the Nile,
Tremendous water-oak in front of a house, long gone, where I 
found strange insects, sun coming up over far hills, spring days, 
exulting survival of night.
Now for me days of doctor consultation
Analyzing the recent scans, interpreting the electron clusters
Captured on screen, looking for other invaders, metastases 
(may no new thing arise) taste of fear coming again with the 
Five o’clock blues and with the morning cough – metallic and 
bitter as you may guess.

Sulaire, at last I see you 
Meteor falling into this sea
Of polished bronze
Fiery sea still holding fisherman’s bones, 
concealing proscribed priests, pirate secrets
I watch from the megalithic tomb
At Cleggan Farm, its great wedge capstone
Pointing like a ship’s prow
Toward western lands
Gorse glowing burning golden, 
Sheep content with the turf on their marshy hillside
Sun sinking while you rise
And plummet, rise
And fall again
Inishbofin’s hills like white cattle
Floating hazy, heavy
On the darkening horizon
While you wing your way
Fish-filled to your cliffy fortress.
Sulaire, sea comet, I see you at last.

Bengooria domed like a druid’s cap
Rising from bogs, peat 
Clinging almost to your rocky top
Bengooria once clothed in oaks
Ground by glaciers, haunted by
Wolves, diorite and granite,
White veins of quartz, like milk
Spilled along these stone steps
Where the tourists climb, 
All the nations of the world
Climbing Bengooria

Rest-stepping to the top
Dead-eyed Irishmen unsparing in their
Merciless assessment
Gaudy lycra-bound Americana 
Moving like a deer
Middle aged stumpers unused to their 
Medieval bellies
Climbing Bengooria

Soft land, hard bog spread out like
Map of a million million stones
Up and up I say to a stern man
As we stand aside to let his family pass
Up and up and it brings a half smile
Unexpected on the granite face
Disarmed perhaps by the
Western drawl
Climbing Bengooria

Two pretty young girls ridiculous
In their blooming, ungainly, coltish
Run after me to bring a lens cap
 That is not mine, chagrined
 We part as friends, I think
Of a few seconds, a few steps 
Out of the way
Selling their hard-earned elevation 
For courtesy

Bengooria though your head
Is not so high as your neighbors
You stand alone, aloof, visible
Even from the sea loch by the farm
While they lift their rounded lofty heads
Under the mist

Bengooria, I take a heavy rock
Blocking the trail, add it to the cairn
Of the summit add my labor to the history
Of Ireland, the stone I have come 
After all, to set upon ancestral longings.

Bengooria, from you crumbling crown
I look down on ancient glens,
Seas of heartache, passes of hunger
Unknown stones standing significant 
Standing heedless, standing regardless 
Of we mountaineers of the hour
Filing by

Climbing Bengooria
Are small children, dogs, out of condition
Office workers, fashionables fellows
Sneering at their smartphones
Deer-like the runner passes 
Her footfalls make no sound on the scree
While my boots creak out their toad trill
At every gravel crunching
Trudge; an anxious aging woman
Gabbling non-stop at the child
By her side – Nelly don’t go there come back
Not there Nelly come here Nelly
What are you doing Nelly
As she sprauchles unsteady up the trail
Glares at my smile, turns up her shoulder
In response, then disappears behind a  stone
Never seen again
My love is like a red red rose
The wind is singing in my ear
Soft, almost tropical
Climbing Bengooria

This is no epochal ascent, a simple
Test of failing strength, endurance
Of small physical discomforts, 
a feeling of temporal victory 
As we look back up at the summit block where 
We stood, resting in the bog below, 
A bone knife in my heel for every stone step
Then assuaged by apple pie and tea
In the visitor center café
After climbing Bengooria.

Love like a fistful of fish-hooks
Love like gout in the feet
Love like a supplicating old cat
Purring with a threat in his eye
Love like a sleepless night
Sweating into my pillow
Love like garden’s first appearance
Frozen and bleached after the snow
Green stirrings at the juncture of
Melting ice and sky
Snowdrops, crocus begin to show
Love full of sidelong looks
Love like a winter retreat.

I kindle the fire this morning
Without malice, without jealousy
Without envy, without fear
Without terror of anyone living under the sun
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
God kindle in my heart a flame of love
For my neighbor, for my friend
For my enemy, for my family
For the brave, and the coward, and the slave
For the humblest thing alive in the world
And for You whose Name is above all

Based on a traditional Scottish Gaelic prayer, from Alexander Carmichael, Ortha nan Gaidheal

Pity this springtime poet
Lilacs all a-flower
Green fuse burning relentless
Dawn comes early, rosy-fingered
Millenia of figured images
Clichés crowding together in 
Lazy mind bored with technical
Trickery, filled with ennui
At mention of enjambment
Monotonous metrical devices
Who, grey office waiting
Wants nothing more, nothing less
Than to spend this May day
Bower bound with his love
And all the flowers of the mountain.

Is this rheumatic ache the fire in the bones
The wise ones prophesized of old ?
Smoldering flame in a punky log
Wheezing gasp when the morning comes
Hips gone stiff sore and cold
Golden headed boy grizzled as an old dog.

Here the grass is just as green
The grass that is green
Sky as blue, bluer
Horizon as vast as the restless sea
Clouds of dust rise from the bare land
Like swirling mists on Aughrusbeg
Here my heart is empty
Mind clear as the cloudless sky
No sky-reaching ben tempts me
From the daily demand
Office, business, mundane stresses
Still the garden patch to be ploughed
Here the grass is just as green
The grass that is green
But where are the swans of Lough Anilaun

Land without memory
Since the camas are gone 
Interminable wheat field
A pile of picked rocks
Where the ring fort should be
Abandoned combines, derelict transformers
Brady Bunch park of historical significance
The old cans piled in the coulee 
Pass for heritage and memory here
Fallen is the schoolhouse in Govan
Covered in graffiti
Almira’s famous hotel sits empty 
Home of hantavirus mice and unfriendly 
Spirits.
New sidewalks for Wilbur, they say
Will charm the burden of this 
Dying town away
Or change the name to Wild Goose
With its touristic jingle and eerie 
Undertone of futility
You’ve loaded all the detritus, lost dreams 
Of the vanished years into the old church
Ancient uniforms, broken tools, 
Fading photographs fill the holy place,
Block up the well, and it’s no wonder 
The kids have troubles, leave for Spokane
Or Tacoma, or stay forever eating the 
Rancid fried junk food
Try to catch the retired hatchery trout
They stock in the dead creek for the murderous 
Maniac’s honorary day, a festival occasion
Here in Bottom Dollar.

Sun breaking the dish of the world
Burning orb of copper fire
Quail calling for the dawn
Blackbird fancy dancing on a wire
Trees suddenly in full leaf
Lilacs ready for bloom
In the cool beauty of this morning
My mind wanders over 
To the garden untended
Overrun with grasses of neglect
Onions of unknown provenance
Glorious tulips violas unbidden
Fill the eye, but my mind
Is filled with leaving.

He was always going back
To that day with his father 
To that golden hayfield without trouble
Where an old man could outstrip a youth
Always going back to that hireling hayfield
Where there were badgers to be killed for bounty
Father fast as a King City jackrabbit, strong, 
Free of the death machine that would take him.
He was always going back to that place of fatherly love
Not stuck with pins, abandoned in cheap hotel rooms
Drunken soldiers banging 
calling through the door for his sister
And he only ten.
Away from the casual violence of 
Saturday night pistol whippings in front of the movie house.
To that field full of stolen inventions, 
Repair shop of lost dreams cracked engine blocks
Hearts tighter than the rusty frozen bolts my grandfather 
Could loosen with his bare fingers
To that wide bright California hayfield
Where an old man could outrun a strapping youth, 
Golden air hazy with dragonflies.

Roar of wind 
Covers even sigh of wave
Fills this little house, an taigh,
Cottage of stone walls, oak beams
Iron stove muttering surrounded by roses
Gate moaning loose in the wind
Rooks call amid heaving branches
Yesterday walking beaches
Gathering shells, marveling at the
Hundred kinds of seaweed
Brown, yellow, red, green.
Dulaman. duileasc, feamainn
We came to the midden of some
Ancient gathering place eroding out the sand
Heap of limpet shells mixed with fire-cracked rock
Stand wondering at the hand that casts
The stone of history down the deep well of time
The expanse that separates us
The danger from which there is no escape
And no return
But doesn’t clear away leavings of this five thousand year feast
But we turn away to seek our rare 
cowries, lose the way to Ballyconneely
disappointed in our quest we content ourselves
with sea potatoes, augers, 
maerl like finger bones, whelks and
periwinkles, limpets like ancient shields
razor shells, fill our pockets with 
golden stones, and white, 
green like the sea whose murmuring fills the 
lull in the wind.