The Skeleton of Water
Poems, 1979-1984
Gordon Fisher
I. Who that say that?
Passed
Past
Friends blur and
cities melt like ink in rain.
What I read before or meant to read
is now trapped dots and
runny dissolution,
though gravid dots remain which may give birth
to fictions, schemes, regrets or benedictions.
Anyway, some messages
arrived today
I still can read with fresh precision,
in the right light, with
my glasses on.
Dec 1981; Jun, Jul 1982
memory mist
breath of blown days
puff of Trebizond
blast of Alamein
wracks of moving on
sparrow days
flying past
swallow graves
shy epitaphs
woven to disguise us
binding winds to rest
patches of remind us
on cloaks of nothing left
Jul 1984
The Old Order
The old ones, for all I
knew,
had always been there like the Dipper.
Grandfather in his special chair,
a white-haired lion at the gate.
Miss Waite the spelling
teacher
shaking her finger at the tide.
Mayor Louie guiding the
village
from his cave in the feed store.
Chief Herman shining his spotlight
like a comet in the night
as we practiced being grown,
darting into alleys,
our pockets stuffed with stolen apples.
Now that was order.
May 1984
shower
sounds of rain spring
legerdemain
sticky tires
moist road desires
sounds of water walk on
leaves
rains daughter
stalking eaves
might and may
rainy day
may and might rain tonight
Jul 1984
Promenade
The moon creates no
color.
Black leaves are chattering
above the bushy beasts.
The footsteps trailing
me
fire like pistols on the walk.
Is that roar inside my
ears?
Is that metal in his heels?
Just before he passes,
I leap suddenly aside.
He doesn’t break his stride,
and starts to whistle.
Who was the savage in the night?
May 1981
Watch It, Clown
Here comes Mr. Death
with white bulb nose
and warning on his cheeks
riding a unicycle.
Be careful how you circle Mr. Death
Be
careful where you goes.
May 1984
Reflection
This brook is fresh,
circling like a lover,
tickling the rock.
The
sun’s a vasty genius
that calls up sparks
by
rubbing water.
The rock, old smoothie,
holding ground,
marks a place
the swirl and flashing found.
Mar, Jul 1984
Polarity
Go north and look for
messages in ice,
the
skeleton of water. You did
a time in heat and now that you are rid
of
macaws, giant ferns and paradise,
be blinded by the sharp
reflected light
of arctic suns and drops of ice in flight.
Let snowflakes, falling, form a cold delight
and crystals be the letters of your night.
Mar 1982; Jul 1984
Permanent Press
No matter what the vernal resolution,
the themes return: the rise and fall of fleshes,
the providential snapping of the precious
traps and elementals of illusion,
the wracks and lax* of vapid dissolution.
An itch I have for contemplating edges
entices me, I tumble into meshes
and nibble at climactic absolution.
Since the power of this
plenary obsession
as broad and meddlesome as time itself
will not be wheedled into absences,
why not let the pattern speak its lesson
of constraint and get from it what help
we can to navigate what silences?
* or: racks
and lacks
Dec 31, 1981; Jul 1982
Maybe
Perhaps
and then the surly earth will care
holes rebirth what
preciously they dress
atoms burnt to curling
air regress
liquid swirls emerge from
their down lair
Perhaps
and yielded flesh regenerate
centers of our love
appealed express
reeling suns X-ed
energies address
reap and
seal and recapitulate
Perhaps
then secrets pairingly we share
patterns glaringly we
imitate
puzzles daringly we
postulate
caringly will deepen then
and there
Perhaps
and then and where
the certain lapse
the curtain end
perhaps and fair perhaps
Sep 1984
Birth
Come into the light,
the end is now beginning.
Crying in the morning,
watch the sky.
Some screw their faces,
ask for other weather.
Others chirp and gobble,
might as well be bright.
Hunters glisten,
jaws are sharp.
But what the hell,
it isn’t dark.
Aug 1983
Out to Pasture
"I fear death,
But once when it was close to me it was cowlike,
It went moo."
Reed Whittemore (1974)
Fey ogre, dragon,
reaper, skull and bones,
dark
siren, empty executioner,
I dub them gentle cud-caressing cows,
so now there’s not
one Death but a placid herd
of
hit-cows winding up to put us down
and softly moo at us when laying low,
and as we toil our
homeward ways we know
a
curfew ruminant will sidle near
to part us. What are you afraid of now?
Cows.
Sep 1982
Making the Cut
Death may find them
undisturbed,
these
easy cronies of the barbershop
who check in every now and then to swap
their tales of foreign parts and hearts perturbed
and how their doctors do their medicine,
and what’s been lately cut from those now stopped
at patient nurseries for the coming crop,
and
who have lately had their final trim.
They sound as used to
death as dropping in
to gossip with the barbers while they trim
the growing, graying, falling, turning bare
barometer of our decay, our hair.
To them that snicking scythe today appears
as easy as the barbers’ clicking shears.
Jul, Aug 1982
"The earth hath
bubbles, as the water has"
Hamlet
I’d like bubbles for
the days
to cuddle our sweet bodies in
opaque to other time
and rainbows on their faces
and when one day explodes
a swift decay to tickle
us.
May 1981
Mine Eyes Have Seen
The undergrowth is
spreading here like smoke
and not much sun slides through the summer leaves
up where the branches try to hold you back.
Here’s a place the
printed guide says someone
mined for copper a hundred years ago
and sure enough the site still shows some ore.
But that’s not why
this trail is in the book,
it’s not the abandoned mine but the waterfall
that’s roaring like a mill of summer rain
and that now you see
above you out of reach,
a sudden brightness embracing green,
a weaving spirit wrestling with the trees.
Jun, Aug 1982; Jul 1984
Doubting Thomas
"Do not go gentle into that good night"
Dylan Thomas
Go gentle to that
cuddling, curdling night.
Let lilac leaves and soda pop remain.
Do not, in raging, wreck the gentle rain
nor, angered, bind sweet sinning from its flight.
Though faith decant and
hope and fair be blight,
and fertile love itself at last prove bane,
let peppermint and panoply attain
what chancy careless anodyne they might.
Though future fail and
heaven not requite
our ghost descendancy to this bright plane,
your cheapjack Armageddon raves in vain.
Not all exploding hate will set things right.
So friend, lie gently
down to restful riddle.
Do not rage. Well . . . maybe just a little.
Nov 1984
Pat Impending
Not I nor you nor brain’s
artillery can lapse
the cracked encroach of bleak display
and God
that
crafty country boy
gives
way to lack of information.
Pray for He.
How come you rule me like you do, did, dung?
That Tuesday rose and
dendrons didn’t know.
Dull Wednesday, Armageddon didn’t show.
Some garden plots are better not begun.
Not eye nor U nor rain’s
exhilary can crack
the lapsed approach of gleet array
so dog
that
crafty country boy
whose
way is stacked with invocation.
Merrily.
Go gently in that
fright
for
wotthehell
It serves the higher purchase
Just as well.
Nov 1984
Splitting
Time pods we are,
containers
of our histories.
The old, whose time is short,
hold
more of it
than
those whose time (perhaps) is long.
We scatter seeds,
our
DNA and what we say and build,
and when (for pods should burst)
we
die,
we
scatter seeds again.
Aug, Oct 1981
Queen of Circumstance
(for
Aunt Thelma)
Hobbling, as she has
to, on her canes
she walks the three blocks to the corner drugstore
in half an hour, past the sword palmettos.
Now alone, she makes this pilgrimage
the pivot and affection of her day.
Her well-intentioned
doctor wants her in
a nursing home because of her wobbly knees
and cancer of the colon, but she says no,
she won’t give up her customary places,
her doilied chair and choice of television.
So most days now she
plods her patient way
to the drugstore where the old clerks teach
the new to brace and pamper her among
the patent pills and tuna sandwiches,
no less than queens of circumstance deserve.
Jan 1, 1982
Salute to Sasha
When he referred to his
predicament
those
months, he used the ancient metaphor
of going on a journey (trite, perhaps,
but
then he claimed no poetry). When
he bumped into a wall or broke a cup
he
said he was always tense before a trip.
At last he left by fire
and air and water
and
bequeathed a kind of wordless poem
by ordering his ashes to be flown
and
dropped into the harbor of New York
where he had entered 50 years before.
Apr, Jul, Aug 1982
Obituary
Professor S. died
recently at home who once
had loved the classics which he taught and
filled his house with souvenirs he bought on
journeys to the Middle East and Rome, and
ever since his wife died lived alone among
his tarnished coins and smelly pots, his
paintings, cards and cheap forget-me-nots,
no longer comprehending what he owned.
He died without a will
and what he saved passed
to the state whose agents weren’t displeased
when they had some of what he left assessed,
a pictured vase an ancient whore had craved,
the golden coins and emperor had seized, a cross
he thought some ancient saint had blessed.
Nov 1980; Aug, Sep 1981
Star Peace
I’m waiting for a
weekday hero,
no
sorcery or space escapes,
just a natural kindness
and
a gift for blinding Death
with laser-like illuminants
so people seated
awkwardly
in
X-ray waiting rooms
will see their shadows glorified,
so people drunk with
bleeding
through
any openings we have or give
will bathe in massless photons
as
the red blood cools and blackens,
so all the people I
could mention
but
who would make this poem too long
and probably depress you,
will liquefy to light,
the
only thing, some physicists say,
which really lasts.
July, Aug, Oct 1981; Jul 1984
2. Turns Among Many
Harmonice mundi
The
scans and dots enhance these other worlds,
the red rock plains of Mars, the red spun reel
of Jupiter, the brash and crystal wheels
of Saturn, all the moons, their pocks and swirls,
blue ice and hot volcanic curls,
the planets' clouds and what the clouds conceal
and what the rifts and surfaces reveal
to Voyagers, the silver spiders hurled
a billion miles and still a part of Earth
since what they signal to their place of birth
reminds me what the tantrum world might mean
and makes me happier for having seen
in pampered safety here, from by TV,
a vision of the gorgeous harmony.
Nov 1980
Entropy
Parting
pairs
and states betray
the patterns of the holy.
Even
the stars
on course decay
although, of course,
more slowly.
Jul 1982
Cosmologists
"The radiation from the early universe should
by now have expanded to such an extent that its
temperature has dropped to as low as about 3 K."
1.
There's no one ranks them for audacity.
They say the world, well-loaded point in wait,
blew up one day and spewed out t
(time), s (space)
and then a slew of spiral galaxies.
I bow before their wild ability
to theorize and slickly calculate
the birth of stars from quantum
states
and other wonders leading up to me.
But I sometimes think how pleasant it would be
if they could find behind the
background haze
some acts more touching than the
lepton phase ---
a song, perhaps, or notes on perfidy,
an ancient pas de deux, a family tree
with portraits of the causes of 3 K.
2.
Swift origin: a singularity
exploded to expanding time and space
and from excited quantum states
created
our spun light, the spiral galaxies.
So bow before the probabilities
that turned the universe from early
rays
into an older world in which we brave
and which we chalk with strange
cosmologies,
and though I think how pleasant it would be
if we could find within the
background haze
a past more touching than the lepton
phase,
still, theories too contain a poetry.
Though crabbed equations lack
humanity,
they glorify the genesis of blaze.
Sep, Oct 1981; Aug 1982
We Also Swerve
"If the atoms did not have this swerve,
they would all fall straight
down
through the deep void like
drops of rain . . .
Thus Nature would never have
created anything."
Lucretius
This
is a world with convictions
in spite of hesitant hands.
Though faith fail to furnish prescriptions
the trees swallow rivers and stand.
This
is a world with conditions
in spite of plangent desires.
The world has its circular missions
and we are its tangents to fire.
Jun, Jul 1982
Thinking Time
"And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into
which destruction, too, happens, 'according to necessity; for
they
pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice
according to the assessment of Time' . . . "
Anaximander, 6th century B.C., containing the earliest
words known today of any Greek philosopher
The
air our ash, the earth our solemn bones
the sea our cold remains, the elements
demand a payment for our chance
offense,
due when our
culminating act atones
for our epiphany, that threat to stones.
attack on space and matter's eminence
made by burgeoning intelligence
that no
materiality condones.
Or
are they thinking too, the stones, the seas,
the restless atoms, quarks, the elements
of elements, our thoughts, our very
thoughts
alive and thinking thoughts of thoughts like these
but all consigned to such impermanence
and recompense as trying Time allots?
Feb, Mar 1979
Darwin's Music
Disciples of Pythagoras report
a music made by bodies as they move.
When
Newton, plagued by time, tuned in his muse,
he manufactured theories for the chords.
"And ... whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity,
from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been
and are being evolved." (These are the final
words of Darwin's Origin of Species.)
The
worms and plants of Darwin's tangled earth
and other forms produce a music too,
and protein codes are scores that
carry tunes
for protean
performances of birth.
Apr, Aug, Oct 1981
Evolution
On
just one day, a single turn of earth,
some unknown millions of years ago,
the first dicotyledon must have grown,
and every spring the earth salutes its birth.
No one can know the shade tree as it was,
whole types are gone whose grace no longer grows.
A random few have left their shapes in stones,
the rest have disappeared, as living does.
The
patterns stay which fit the changes most.
The last dicotyledon may ascend
one day, and shade trees never grow
again.
Time makes the most insistent matter ghosts
but nothing time controls will bring an end
to beauty in the patterns which have
been.
Apr, Aug 1981
Life on Earth
I
may make do with having been
an instance of profusion,
my species one of many,
not framed so colorful as some ornate varieties,
and less at home, although
adept, at times, at saying so.
Jan, Mar 1982