Low-pressure System

"skin not bound to the other’s
skin and the afternoon cumulus
rolling in with the smell of rain"

Derick W. Burleson

Bound by breastfeeding, it would have been
difficult to run. Cumulus

clouds graying the Sleeping Lady,
the sleeping baby

in one arm, a burnt Coke can in the other hand.
Another afternoon that felt like a rolling

blackout, hope itself extinguished
while green things rose in the rain.

And I, lady-hostage, with skin singed
by hands, not by fire;


cleaning curdled milk from a tiny
chin's folds.  In the next room, another's skin

beaded with acrid sweat,
freckled with tiny, telltale punctures

gives off a mist like evaporating rain.


I who slept so little save in the afternoon,
rolling chef's knife handle between palms.

Weighing the balance

of tang against flight.



 

Storm

"and if the storm kept
on storming you couldn’t stand
it couldn’t stay within your body"
Derick W. Burleson

If this wind keeps on, there won't be any pigeons
left, poor beleaguered birds
buffeted about.

This wind has surpassed freight train, 
has named itself storm,
though sun shines.

Purple-and-gray missiles fire
from corrugated roof to treetop.
They can't stay within their bodies,

these pigeons. They're catalytic.
They can't stand thermals
rising from tin,

but want ballistics, want cold.
Want sky.

I stepped out into the storming
this morning, early, and felt
the top of my head

come clean off. The pink mountaintops
gyrate with blown snow.

You shot past me, both cannon and iron ball,
split to pieces by
this wind. To feathers. To shot.

I had no time to pull you together,
no heat within
to use for smelt,

to use to pull out your last precious
metal. That's good, you see.

There was no time.
I couldn't name you, couldn't call you

body.

 

April/fool

A sudden impact detaching the retina
can cause

sunburst. Some are hot-white.
Others are black.

And then, whatever stood before you is gone,
not disappearing,

nor fading,

but exploded
away.

How I wish human lives
were so quickly

lost.

[they went]

 This poem is fourth in a series unpacking a poem Derick wrote for me after we celebrated the release of Never Night, here in Palmer, Alaska. It was a wonderful evening at Sun Circle Farm, and Derick's poem from that night has always been special to me. 



[they went to eat and drink and listen to poetry. 
The children played and listened and spoke fell 
and were hurt crying for their fathers]
-Derick Burleson, July 2008

Is there poetry in the world, still? Suddenly
an angry chant, a roaring crowd's staccato 

is a brook. Listen.

Played over its lined and silvering rocks,
a melody spoken by fore-fathers

has a descant cried by their children's children's
children. 

And the mothers eat dried fruit from their purses,
stand and fall against concrete banks,

listen to one another, to a communal poem

about remaining free. 

Is there poetry still in the world? Hurt
with rocks, with thrown bricks, they still come, crying

stage whispers. Drink.

We've been told all this water
is fed by pure love, upstream of any violence,

fell from sky. Wait.

Is there poetry in this still world? Fathers
hurt by fathers who would not let them cry

stand with mothers hurt by loves who loved
too much drink.

Across this shallow, ice-cold water,
a bass line is being hummed by others.

Their throats are raw, thirsty. Listen. 

They've eaten bread, and salt. 
Folded cups from red paper.

A child drops her cup, which plays its butterfly
march 'til it sticks where tree-trunk fell. 

She cries. Water. 

Wind eats petal-pink rawness on faces-all of them. 
The child steps in 

to rescue her vessel. 
Both sides see her fall, see her begin drifting under.

Neither moves.





 

[sweet/alyssum]

[sweet alyssum and borage in azure bloom in the salad the farm feeds the people who live here and twenty-nine other families] - Derick W. Burleson, July 2008

If I owned twenty-nine acres of land what could
 be done with all that bloom under azure sky?
Sweet cut-grass chaff rising

after mower's rotating blades.
 Simple cuts-chlorophyll

and drying hay and musk of a few horses.

The farm would feed my people: whomever
gathers to live on purple potato,

on bitter baby greens, white alyssum.
On each other, dropping silver hairs into the carved

wood salad bowl. Sharing water dipper, sharing beds.

 If I gathered spring borage, who would eat it?
Who eats the mushrooms I bring now,

pock-capped, spongy undersides, creamy icicles
grown from rotting but still-standing birch? Silage

of Sitka valerian, fern fiddleheads, and dark

brown chaga conks, wrested from trunk and boiled down.
White alyssum on the windowsill, silver

mushroom knife in hand. Yes, whomever gathered to live
on this farm would eat well, it's true. Horses whickering for garden

carrots as sky darkens to azure. What Magic is it

to feed other people, to use one's hands as tillers,
 to turn up from glacial loam an elixir on which to live?

[heifer grazing beneath mountains/ invisible in cloud mist rain vanishing/ now though]

[heifer grazing beneath mountains invisible in cloud mist rain vanishing now though]  
-Derick W. Burleson, July 2008

 Another one drops off the list, daily: dodo,
black rhino, Pyrenean ibex, and you.

It's snowed for two days, a useless snow-dry,
light mist, too loose for construction.
For burying perishables under.

 In the woods, old spruce bearded
yellow-green, blacken their trunks and bend.

What will vanish next?

Stock like our neighbors' small shaggy
heifer, grazing innocently on winter hay.

Perhaps flocks of chickadees dee-dee-dee-ing
suddenly silenced. Me, cause invisible.

In my sleep.

Everyone knows a summer's rain doesn't make up for winter, though.
Nagoonberries, blueberries, bog orchids
spread tendrils beneath snowpack for months.

To feed our dogs, it takes wading
through clouds. Invisible underfoot
are the rhizomes, the runners. Mycelium.

Hope to stoke up vanishing hope.

Oh, it's a challenge, alright...

Quicker than you expect. Everything happens that way, doesn't it? Here in Alaska, we're inured. Sudden. Sudden onset of autumn, loss of daylight; sudden accidents in places we have come to expect-a plane crash, a shooting. Simply because it hasn't happened in a while, doesn't mean we don't know it could. Simply because it could, doesn't mean we've become immune. When one marries, or dates, or befriends an addict, one of necessity becomes accustomed to the notion that there is no past tense when it comes to dealing with addiction. I have said it so often in the last two years: There is no such thing as "recovered". There is only "recovering". What a tenuous thing our grasp on language, and therefore, on each other, can be. You see, I've been challenged. I mean this in an absolutely unambiguous way. And nor do I mean it to not-so-subtly refer to these two years past. I have been challenged. With language. With words. With an unabashed request that I use them. Type them down. Write them. Because I feel as if I've forgotten. Because it snowed in the mountains, today. Because it comes colder, and with a shortage. With a starvation, if you will. In any relationship gone awry, you lose your voice. In a relationship with an addict, you lose not only that, but your desire to speak. Your desire to craft full sentences. The satisfaction that generally comes with communication is lost. You are able only, even in the best of moments, to use loose change. Sometimes, not even that. Sometimes. Sometimes there is only silence, because you know from months of the hard way, that whatever you leave out in the open will be taken. Stolen. And used against you. You could leave a scrap of yourself on the kitchen counter with the grocery receipt. A dollar bill wadded into coat pocket, into crook of arm. An IOU whose signature line is too faded. It's all fair game, you see. It's all "ours". I am done with "ours". So as I have been challenged to find my writerly voice again, in turn I challenge you. Where best have you spoken? Do you remember the sound? Write it down. Today we spent half our time, my son and I, in the woods-as well you know I usually do when there's free time, or I feel somewhat lost. Get lost Then find your way out. And the other half? The other half I spent at the kitchen island with a chef's knife that was a wedding gift. And I halved things. Though they all ended up in the same pot. And I cored them. And dusted some with cloves, and other with curry powder, and all with a dash of lemon juice. Acid for preservation. Rind for flavor and color. Cutting across the core of one, I was compelled to stop and listen, to the decisive sound of the knife. To the quiet that followed. In the center, as we all know well, was a perfect five-pointed star. And I thought to myself, In the end, it was not temptation that Eve ate-if one believes that hype. In the end, it wasn't evil. It wasn't even curious. In the end, Eve ate the very thing we're all made of, didn't she?