W
"What-A-Vue”
my grandparents called their beach house
in Northport. Every year my brothers and I
left the smog and heat of June
in South Jersey
and were transported to a half-water
half-lawn and flowers world
where our only homework
was not to drown. We only stayed indoors
when the weather turned nasty.
After Hurricane Carol stranded us for a week,
I picked up pieces
of the wooden windmill weathervane
that had been blown apart.
I wanted someone to reassemble them,
but Grandma then Grandpa died,
Pop sold the house, and my brothers and I
grew up and scattered,
like that old weathervane--
left with no one but an aged poet
trying to put its parts back together
with his toolbox full of rusty words.
STARTING A FIRE
I learned in the woods:
build a small cabin of sticks
with the tinder inside.
The flames will come straight up
and catch larger kindling.
My father tried to scare me
by telling stories of wolf packs
and that only fire could keep us safe.
I only half-believed him but slept so close
the embers singed my hair.
My tiny apartment in Chelsea
had a working fireplace.
I scavenged boards from dumpsters
but they had been treated
with fire retardant and wouldn’t burn.
I had to buy wood at the grocery store.
Now I have a cabin up north
with a deep fireplace built with cemented fieldstones.
I have a wood pile too, half a cord
a friend split for free when I told him
my dead trees were mostly walnut.
These days, I start my fires with a log
made of compressed wax and sawdust.
I cover it with real logs and light it with one match.
I know it will catch and burn
for at least 2 hours –guaranteed--
and I can even pick the colour of the flames.
But every fire I set comes with its own wolves
that circle, just beyond the light,
wait for the fire to die down,
wait for me to lie down.
THE DANCING RIVER
Tonight, I watch the river dancing
below the falls. It dances
by the light of the moon
that is reflected by the ripples
that flicker and spin and charge
while the veiled dancer stays
in one place and does not mind my staring.
So why should I feel sad?
From up here I can look down
on the current almost a mile wide—
but the high banks are not stone or clay.
they are deserted downtown office buildings
and high-rise apartments
that keep watch with few lights.
I know you can never step
into the same river twice,
but after the closed-for-the-season sign
ice will soon put up, you can stand on it
and dance your own dance.
NO SAFE HARBOUR
Today the line of a hundred cormorants
on a thin slip of land are not fish robbers,
but mourners all in black, some waving
black shawls, wailing but too far to hear.
The sea has had its way with the sand
and today the bricks that once were just ballast
are fragments of the towers and walls
that came down one after another.
Today, the shells I step on are the bones
of peasants and kings now mixed and in pieces.
Today, the big black and white gulls
fighting over a crab at the waves’ edge
are corrupt clerics selling indulgences to killers.
I pick up a channelled whelk, almost whole,
and hold it to my ear—
no echo of breaking waves.
I try to blow it like a shofar,
but no one comes to pray.
The tide comes in with its boney teeth
and grinds it all away.
THE RENDING WALL
“Before I build a wall I’d like to know
What I’m walling in or walling out”—Robert Frost
Not far north of McAllen, we’d found
our target birds, so our Texan guide
had no excuse when I pushed him
to show us Trump’s Wall up close.
He took us down a muddy road that looked sad
when it had to stop dead in its tracks
blocked by two rows of giant metal combs
jammed into the earth. But they didn’t meet
there was a gap a bus could drive through
with loads of “Illegals” –no papers required.
no Border Patrol or Guardsmen—just two workers
wearing white helmets and day-glo vests.,
Guarding the huge derrick that no one
was running to fill the gaps in our security.
The Wall sections weren’t even aligned,
we learned, because it is difficult and costly
to work around natural barriers like hills or swamps.
The Governor had run out of Wall funds
more than once, and had to build the Wall
one mile at a time.
Walling in or walling out? For a moment getting out
hung in the hot air like a bubble we had to burst.
Would the next visit to the Wall find it finished,
well-armed and ready to keep enemies of the State
on either side in their places for good?
Warren Woessner has authored six collections of poetry; most recently “Exit ~ Sky (Holy Cow Press). He has won the usual contests and received the usual grants, including the Many Voices Competition and an NEA fellowship. He co-founded Abraxas Press and WORT-FM, a community radio station in Madison, WI. He splits his time between Minneapolis, where he was on the Board of Coffee House Press, and Marth’s Vineyard, where he is Poet Lauriat of the Vineyard Conservation Society.
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