Two Poems from His "White Labyrinth" Series by Joel Chace

 

Untitled Poems from White Labyrinth Series

At the incline, he

begins trudging.  A path

upward is for the

old; that downward, for

the young. Incontrovertible, but

he doesn’t know why. 

Damp mid-winter air chills

as he treads carefully

 

over icy patches. He’s

forgotten these pleasures of

cold, muted sunlight shimmering

the moist facades, gray

and brown, of houses

abutting each other; and –

where the park opens up

near the summit – black

 

branches jigsawing pale sky. 

Taking his initial step

of descent, he recalls:  

a path upward is

for the old; that

downward, for the young. 

Cautiously, bending aged knees -- 

calves and thighs tightening –

 

he lands on a    

narrow stretch of ice.

His heart bangs his

chin. But his fear

and the years that

have brought it on

commence to slide away. 

Frigid air rushing by

 

his ears exhilarates. Despite

momentum, no blurring occurs.

Vision  --  all senses – sharpen

those neighborhoods passing by. 

Sweeping around a curve,

month after month dropping

away into the past,

he marvels at maroon

 

scalloping midway up the

façade of a house

he used to visit. 

Whooshing through one square,

he opens his lungs

to delights of a

bakery then a tobacconist’s;

through another, he shivers 

 

at a Schubert melody

played upon a piano           

slightly out of tune. 

Younger.  Younger.  Farther down

into the city, until

that thin rivulet of

ice abruptly ends, and

he has to catch

 

himself from hurtling headlong. 

He stands in another

square.  No more radiant

hues; only a monochrome               

of lead.  Pervasive odor,

mop water. Sounds muffled

as those beyond asylum

walls.  Before him, a

 

washed out three-story building  -- 

his workplace.  Glancing at

a clock, he sees

he’s tardy.  So, small

and old as he

is, he enters, takes

a seat in the

grimy anteroom, and waits      

 

       to be summoned.

Emergencies  --  thicketed, secret, deep. 

Emergencies of thorns, dust,

dusk. Clouds thicken twilight.

 

On those distant hills,

lights begin flickering and

rising in a line.

 

Following emergencies  --  announcements, blood

on this ground.  If

there’s hope, it’s in

 

    the mountains.

 

 

 

Time’s taken its time

with him.  96. 

Thick, jet-black hair; same

weight he would have

been before quitting school;

 

ruddy, wrinkleless skin.  When

he does speak, he

pushes high, raspy sound

just barely beyond his

lips.  Lived with his

 

older sister for eighty

years, with her and

her husband for sixty. 

Both gone, now.  On

occasion, a grandniece visits

 

the facility.  She recalls

just once when he

made loudness, when  --  the

parlor filling with words,

laughs  --  he rose from 

 

his chair, plodded to

the TV, cranked the

volume on his show

full blast, scaring the

Christ out of everyone. 

 

His sister pointed up

to his room, where

he went, puffing a

voice thin as breath

mere inches in front

 

      of his face.

Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision, Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail. Underrated Provinces is recently out from MadHat Books. Bone Chapel is coming out soon from Chax. For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist. He is an NEH Fellow.