Sunday 21 November 2021

Five Poems by Mark Saba



Directions 

 

I'm starting to get uncomfortable with the idea

of details. My eyes have grown accustomed

 

to just scanning the news. I become impatient

with the loose words of novels. Explanations of anything

 

make me cringe. I'm beginning to prefer

white walls, sleek furniture. The article I just read

 

about typefaces and fonts set my blood

boiling. Who cares about their slightly splayed legs,

 

the contrast of high strokes, their teardrop terminals?

Don't people have anything better to do?

 

I've been a nit-picky proof reader myself

but wouldn't it be better to just let people

 

express themselves, get rid of spelling

and grammar? Throw all recipes

 

into the trash bin of intestines?

Decimate all evaluations? Let the check book

 

go in and out of balance, like a bow-legged stork? 

 

 

Unravelling 

 

Years later we learn of three more couples
who are coming undone, their good looks and charm
growing wrinkly and predictable

like weeds folding into themselves
under winter's weight. Then my son's ex,
who broke his heart, resurfaces

with an incurable disease. My daughter, in turn,
finds herself lost in a distant paradise
where everything goes her way but that nagging suspicion

that she has not quite grown up. My mother lies
in a waterlogged grave, the only one
marring a sea of perfect, land-locked stones.


Twenty years into this new century
and it strikes me now that I will never be able
to return to the last. Imagination

reaches only forward, a painted bunting
sitting on a bare northern branch
having lost its way from the sultry south

as it ponders its next flight. 

 

 

 

Stuck in the Middle 

 

Somewhere between yoctometers and yottameters

the infinitesimal and the end of time

where gigaparsecs parse out

unimaginable distances



we are stuck, akin to FM radio wavelengths,

elephants, and hummingbirds.

This universe spins circles around, inside,

and beyond us, as we keep discovering

 

the ever greater and lesser, trying

to place ourselves in obvious insanity.

Only when a parent loses a child

do we get a firmer grasp

 

of where we are, everything at once

abundantly clear, the weight of it

pulling us back to a knowledge

of only us—fierce keys

 

to blind regeneration, no matter how often

it happens to fail. 

 

 

When Wind Meets Water 

 

When wind meets water

it sculpts sunlight

a harvest of midday

 

and morning, evening lain deep

in dark furrows, a prisoner

of air. Just below the surface

 

light lies locked in waning

currents of night, steadfast

in atmosphere's absence,

 

the place weather never reaches

and nothing is carried by the wind.

The reach of sunlight stays locked

 

above the water, the change of seasons

welcomed there, the breath of time

rippling, blinding, then gone. 

 

 

Days of Nothing 

 

Days of nothing but the bottleneck of sounds

coming from the other side of the window

the constant chatter of construction

and lawn mower, the birds

 

that never came to our feeder.

Days of outside in and inside out

of my dog breaking the stillness

long enough to give me pause.

 

These rooms the same, one after

the other, each co-constructed in their abolition

of freedom. Footholds become ceilings

to those living below, walls transparent

 

to memory. It's the silence though

that holds me aloft, keeps me treading

invisible waters of inclination.

So many days of something keep

 

pulling me back to uncertain times—

even those less certain than these.






Mark Saba has been writing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction for 40 years. His book publications include, most recently, Two Novellas: A Luke of All Ages / Fire and Ice, Calling the Names (poetry), and Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past. His book of creative nonfiction, Forking Paths, will be published in the spring of 2022. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines around the U.S. and abroad. Also a painter, Mark recently retired as a medical illustrator at Yale University. He lives in Old Greenwich, CT (USA). Please see marksabawriter.com. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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