duncanmac.blog

A dream of rain this snowy afternoon
Still makes concentric circles 
Splashes of rebounded thoughts
Like circles in my mind.
The wind is coming this Ash Wednesday
In power indiscriminate, gusting across
Snowy peaks, over empty quarters
Of sagebrush and juniper, 
Chamisa and pinon, 
And the robins came back yesterday.

This stone I carry around with me, 
Fear is what some people name it
But for me it always seems nameless, suffocating,
Silent, like an undescribed sunless country.
Another hidden mass in my chest, I feel it
Most when I try to live, to breathe deep and 
Then it brings me up short
Like a brick sealed inside, a wedge of empty
Heavy as a meteor and it comes as quick.
My mind will not tell me what to do, 
My heart falls miserably silent, 
Fearing nothingness, I become nothing
I turn to the light, hoping to become light,
To know something beyond these shadows

The road to I love you
Seems longer than that 
Or sometimes brutal and short across deserted flats
Turning into all day sweating in the poison chair
Wishing for the open road’s unchainedness
For that  place to walk lost mountains
For that place to pause and feel
Cool breezes, identify the birds 
In the unknown trees, to come into
That narrow lane lined with fuchsias
Where the sound of the surf
Leads me on and on and on
The high sun burns and blesses in its course
And the little creek runs alive along the path
But directionless, I wander a road that barely seems
A road, ending somewhere I don’t quite imagine
But seems to start at thank-you.

I.

Entangling songs rise from chthonic deep,
Atwitter with the language of birds.
Incompetent druidic servant, all the wisdom
Of seven sages reduced to an Irish winecellar.
Melody impossible to grasp, sick hangover
Hovering above the morning, asleep on the barrels.

Not the black beetles in the water cask, nor the 
Holy tree languishing over the well-spring of virtues
Will tell you which way you came through 
Haunted woods or direct you past 
Looming monoliths marking the way forward.

Demons gather in the mouth of every sacred
Spring, waiting for the holy man to chase them
Away, purify the dark water, cleanse the world.
Dry old well paved with stones, still worth a turn
Or three deiseal, away from loss and sorrow,
Toward the sun. 

The soughing tide rattles rocks in its fist
Around the isle of stones, sip from the raven’s
Skull, three crows at the window, cranes
From across dry mountains, sparrows
Asleep in the aspen tree.

Understandings of many things, kingship 
Waiting on the green world, unwinding 
In a sip of dragon’s blood. Dirk twisted
In the fire, warped three times, useless
Blade, crooked iron to chase away 
The old witch of cold want
Hounding us on our path.

What charms against the dullness of our vision?
What holy well to wash away the fear, 
The angry fear soiling our footsteps?
Where the mothan, secret herb pearly-white,
To heal this lonely disease, this modern life?

II. 

How long ago now those ancient bike rides
Up into sunburned hills, along cut-over
Lettuce fields, O cinematographer’s daughter
Far away with the dead fiancee and the sad
Hooded eyes. How did we live, long ages
And ages ago, before these all-devouring
Little machines had keeping of our mind
And soul? 

What neglected switches, bypassed circuits
What faded lights replaced by LEDs, 
Bent knob on the old console set?
What arrangement of antennae?
What fatherly beatings?

Warnings from old friends, name puzzles,
Bewildered inquisitions, world in a frog pond,
Looted masterpieces, saltpeter biscuits,
All the done down failure of balanced
Checkbooks and unpaid tuition
All the misplaced coupons and fraudulent
Dinners, azaleas in flower and flags 
On the bridge.

Three A.M. teapot talking a rough tongue,
Synthetic fire snaps on magical, mechanical.
Computer illumines the new plague, vague nausea 
Evokes Ativan, dreamless and dark. Books, 
Ancient pottery, needlepoint and compact disc. 
Little poetry in this pre-dawn gloom of mourning, 
Just ragged chorale of contextless work, 
Rattle-talking lonely words.

III.

Feeble breath, empty almost-rhymes,
Powerless to regrow the stolen woods,
But meaningless feannagan may grow
Again, not words, memory embodied.
How else should an emptied land
Remember, but in empty words, 
These pale shoots seeking the light.

Shadowy light filled with obscure motion,
Burning woods, burning roof frames.
The blacksmith wizard brings Saxon gold
But takes away the children, and the wolves.
Wild dogs, wild trees, empty fields, empty houses,
Thrice emptied land, emptied word-hoard, vanished world. 

Came the cities, came the flood, sweeping us away,
Synthetic fire, midnight electronic bards
Telling stolen old mythologies, written out for pay.

Flat-topped mountains watch over 
Adobe houses turned hostelry
Peaking purple-hazed over fantastical
Pillars, towers of red mud stone
And white, purple again, yellow cliffs
Muddy river meanders around the old
Church, busloads and bicycle tours
Congregate under sunshine powerful
As water. 

Blue horses covered in flowers
Masterless dogs, marmalade
Shaded groves, timber
Ramadas, breakfast leavings,
Artistic business arrangements
For the moment

See where the famous painter walked, 
Her house, vegetable garden, borrowed
Horses. See where the old horsemen
Watered steeds, the new church
Rising among giant cottonwoods.
Infant voices echo from ancient cliffs
Virga falls over distant flat-topped
Mountains.

Echoed voices this middle watch
Still murmur down the hall
Mechanical voice reciting snippets
From stolen old stories.
Dragonfire in the night,
Drawing of glimmering blades,
Arrows of hope, slaying of fears,
Perpetuating illusions. 
Reminders of the plagues come before us,
Ancient rebellions, long-betrayed loyalties,
Death of heroes, long sleep of the brave,
The king praying in his spidery cave.

Fencer, fighter, map maker, spinner of tops,
Kilt-clad cowboy making his guitar sing,
Fighter of old housecats, trader of cards,
Growing tall in the night

Scholarly shirker of boredom, time
Honored family disposition, seeking
Rather anime diversion, practical physics
In language of beigoma, torsion, vector.

Listening to grandpa’s oft repeated
Semi-stories of pressed pants and first
Driving, the boy gives me a sad smile
Revealing a sweet strength of manhood.

May he rise above suburban surroundings
May his soul sing out as it wants
His great heart tuned to the mountains
The light of God in his thought.

Achieve satiety of living, the ancient Stoics say
Eating, sleeping, the act of love, suffice.
Don’t labor heaven with your sighs
Your days were numbered, fate was cried
Long before you ever saw the light
So they say, so I believe,
Sometimes, in the middle of the night.

Long hours before the dawn, tonight the moon
Is full, our longing for the sun
Brings summer to its end, throws
Wind against the mountains, mist on the boughs.

And yet there are chiles still to roast, mottled red and green
Cherry tomatoes still in blossom and in fruit
Morning glories deep candied purple
Hang over the busy hummingbird feeder
Where the little stoics seek their fill
Sipping day by day by day, until the cold,
The changing light, tells them to fly away.

Old comic book anthologies on my left hand,
New unproven medicines at my waiting right.
Time flows away like falling sand,
Moon covering clouds fade in rosy light.

Light ageless, untainted, pure,
Showing each ash leaf, each rabbitbrush flower
As it stood on some first morning, ethereal, sure.
Breeze hushed in gathering light, filled with power.

Beneath it all the plague still racing,
Jaguars stalk the night, bring sleep 
To old horses, church song and bull fight erasing.
Old monsters stirring, rise from the deep.

Everyone who came before him
Brush arbor preachers opening the light
Mothers and grandmothers making all things possible
Holding everyone together in dustbowl migration, unemployment
Preventing general aimlessness, ruthlessly rationing love
Dirt farmers praying for rain and cursing the dark
London brass polisher choking his lungs out at thirty-five
Carrying a foreign name in a far-off strange country
Farther back, to the beginning,
Beginning of whatever this is,
Gatherers and fishers, hunters and clerks, holy women
And debauched uncles
The world as frustratingly sad as a broken anthill
Vanished trout streams, lost mountains
The old burned to make the new
But he could still stack up stones from fallen old houses
New roofbeams of poetry grow among the neglected trees
Old prayers take on new relevance dredged from a broken past
Cardboard sign out begging for gas along I25, kid’s toys left neglected
At the last house they lived in, skipping out on the rent
Making out for a new place where they’ll find a better job,
New house, new car, green grass, summer and song never ending