Friday 20 September 2024

Five Poems by D. R. James

 




Only This, Just In 

 

 

I once positioned my outpost on earth— 

at the time, in a forest, within earshot 

of owls and a lake’s short waves— 

to be the center of all communication 

beaming in from everywhere, out 

to all the rounded, warped corners 

of this universe. I was hoping to fool 

that alien sense that’s native to many, 

that I was actually practically cut off 

from the prime gist of being alive. 

 

So rather than scanning for more 

koans-on-transcendence or rapture or 

a how-to to convince the chipmunk 

I imagined standing in for my mind 

that this felt insignificance was 

insignificant, thereby skirting 

the issue that acted as my Everest 

because it was there, it was always there! 

 

I pitched a little white tent in a holler, 

with vents in the canvas to let in, let out 

my antennae, the requisite wires, and 

the million telekinetic messages 

I’d be managing by the minute, 

like some ancient eighty-armed operator 

devotedly plugging in, plugging out, 

the supple joint expressing a life to Life. 

 

And when all systems were finally go, 

and after I flicked the little switch (a 

Venetian-like light flooding the moon 

of my face), the first words in were 

wind and how old leaves left alone 

will crackle for no particular reason. 

 

Then the slow creaking of tall beeches 

followed by a pulsing, silent swooshing 

as if I were holding my personal shell 

to my own singular ear, which, naturally, 

as my long-suffering custom, I was.


 

 

 

To Be, or . . . It’s Not a Question 

 

 

Why did we ever buy  

the other story, the one 

in which we walk 

with heads held as high 

as deciding otherwise? 

This is set without 

our consent— 

though we’ve conceded 

we’ve consented to assuage 

our sixth sense of soul.   

Try stepping aside, 

outside your own shadow: 

it’ll take funhouse strides 

to strike the balance, to 

dodge your own reflection, 

to see around your own  

conscious self – slippery,  

slimier than a hand,  

the same one that, 

with the sleightly other, 

helps wrangle the lies  

you don’t want 

to show, the lies  

that are the truth of you. 

If only they all came out! 

Ah, the relief! 

The pure ease 

of that pain! 

Meanwhile, the sheer effort 

of holding in, holding back, 

holding forth – holding at all 

the broken-winged bird 

of your heart. It’s 

Herculean, really,  

ridiculous as myth,  

silly as saying any 

thing, any way, 

anyhow.


 

 

 

Poem on Itself 

 

—as told to its author 

 

“Reluctant, I’m shy 

the confidence of squirrels, 

who clatter across laced branches, 

reckless when the unmapped way 

lays itself out or 

doesn’t, the dead end, 

the spring-and-give 

more the living 

than the solid path. 

 

“I fear this next leap— 

that a soft spot in leaves 

or a sure next move 

won’t rise up like a dream 

or like reason— 

that I might have to answer 

to myself 

or to some perfect image 

shouldering its vague weight  

onto a balance, trying 

to tip the scales 

favouring significance. 

 

“Right now, 

I’m hesitating 

to inch 

along this fine line 

I’m barely feeling 

between seeing meaning 

and needing 

merely being. 

 

“Even in this 

I am afraid.”


 

 

 

A Couple of October Options 

 

 

An invisible train’s distant whistle 

this unseasonably warm 

yet seasonably blustery early hour 

plays a fetching, come-hither counterpart 

to the crickets’ mad ventriloquism, 

their ceaseless, crass rasping 

somewhere outside the open door. 

 

On a morning like this – long before 

the garbage truck will rumble by – 

sprawled on the familiar hide-a-bed 

that doubles as the center mezzanine 

in the psycho-surgical theatre 

of your own emotional vivisection, 

you’re torn between 

 

 – critiquing your perpetual allegory 

in which Long-Suffering and Proaction 

engage in their stylized dialog 

about your non-unfolding life 

 

and 

 

 – coveting the rustic romanticism 

of a hobo riding the rails, 

whose only concern is to time his roll 

into the liberty of an accelerating boxcar 

so as to minimize his potential 

for slipping from its lip and clipping 

his otherwise unencumbered body.


 

 

 

At Sunrise 

 

 

The cat at my elbow is like a rising—and falling—loaf of bread. 

She will become cinnamon-raisin swirl. 

Across the way, white shutters over dark red brick glow in the early light. 

In long intervals, cars swoosh by through a sprinkling of spring. 

This fine first cup of coffee is not bitter-sweet, just bitter. 

It smells like the morning I knew I’d move away to the lake. 

These computer keys are smooth and reflexive and move me into today. 

Their dainty clicking prompts the flickering I’ve been seeking. 

Another time it was Thoreau re-counting his beans from Walden Pond. 

Meanwhile, the cat has become a multi-grain muffin, 

her batter expanding over the paper cup, malignant 

mushroom looming over a city soon to be our ally. 

Though the friendly fire is frightening, 

it will bring us the happy ending as always. 

Happy is as happy does. 

The pealing bell of freedom will deafen any outrage, 

for we are as open as a Good-Friday tomb. 

We will mend the crack and roll away the stone. 

The prophet schlepping his satchel and silly redundancies 

will forever find his satisfaction in cynicism, 

his cynicism to be satisfactory, his satchel alone to be sacred. 

No matter—in this he is going to get what he’s going to deserve. 

Il va obtenir ce qu’il va mériter, 

whether the cat tips her top or the shutters mutter a percussive tune. 

Look: as the sun blooms, the bricks bleed. 

 

 

—first published in Poetrybay 








D. R. James, retired from 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press, 2021).







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