All of Us: The Collected Poems

  middle-aged man. When he was a boy,

  going with his dad to the barbershop,

  or even later, a teenager, how

  could he have imagined his life

  would someday allow him the privilege of

  a beautiful woman to travel with,

  and sleep with, and take his breakfast with?

  Not only that—a woman who would

  quietly cut his hair in the afternoon

  in a dark city that lay under snow

  3000 miles away from where he’d started.

  A woman who could look at him

  across the table and say,

  “It’s time to put you in the barber’s

  chair. It’s time somebody gave you

  a haircut.”

  Happiness in Cornwall

  His wife died, and he grew old

  between the graveyard and his

  front door. Walked with a gait.

  Shoulders bent. He let his clothes

  go, and his long hair turned white.

  His children found him somebody.

  A big middle-aged woman with

  heavy shoes who knew how to

  mop, wax, dust, shop, and carry in

  firewood. Who could live

  in a room at the back of the house.

  Prepare meals. And slowly,

  slowly bring the old man around

  to listening to her read poetry

  in the evenings in front of

  the fire. Tennyson, Browning,

  Shakespeare, Drinkwater. Men

  whose names take up space

  on the page. She was the butler,

  cook, housekeeper. And after

  a time, oh, no one knows or cares

  when, they began to dress up

  on Sundays and stroll through town.

  She with her arm through his.

  Smiling. He proud and happy

  and with his hand on hers.

  No one denied them

  or tried to diminish this

  in any way. Happiness is

  a rare thing! Evenings he

  listened to poetry, poetry, poetry

  in front of the fire.

  Couldn’t get enough of that life.

  Afghanistan

  The sad music of roads lined with larches.

  The forest in the distance resting under snow.

  The Khyber Pass. Alexander the Great.

  History, and lapis lazuli.

  No books, no pictures, no knick-knacks please me.

  But she pleases me. And lapis lazuli.

  That blue stone she wears on her dear finger.

  That pleases me exceedingly.

  The bucket clatters into the well.

  And brings up water with a sweet taste to it.

  The towpath along the river. The footpath

  Through the grove of almonds. My love

  Goes everywhere in her sandals.

  And wears lapis lazuli on her finger.

  In a Marine Light near

  Sequim, Washington

  The green fields were beginning. And the tall, white

  farmhouses after the tidal flats and those little sand crabs

  that were ready to run, or else turn and square off, if

  we moved the rock they lived under. The languor

  of that subdued afternoon. The beauty of driving

  that country road. Talking of Paris, our Paris.

  And then you finding that place in the book

  and reading to me about Anna Akhmatova’s stay there with Modigliani.

  Them sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens

  under his enormous old black umbrella

  reciting Verlaine to each other. Both of them

  “as yet untouched by their futures.” When

  out in the field we saw

  a bare-chested young man with his trousers rolled up,

  like an ancient oarsman. He looked at us without curiosity.

  Stood there and gazed indifferently.

  Then turned his back to us and went on with his work.

  As we passed like a beautiful black scythe

  through that perfect landscape.

  Eagles

  It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle

  dropped near our feet

  at the top of Bagley Creek canyon,

  at the edge of the green woods.

  Puncture marks in the sides of the fish

  where the bird gripped with its talons!

  That and a piece torn out of the fish’s back.

  Like an old painting recalled,

  or an ancient memory coming back,

  that eagle flew with the fish from the Strait

  of Juan de Fuca up the canyon to where

  the woods begin, and we stood watching.

  It lost the fish above our heads,

  dropped for it, missed it, and soared on

  over the valley where wind beats all day.

  We watched it keep going until it was

  a speck, then gone. I picked up

  the fish. That miraculous ling cod.

  Came home from the walk and —

  why the hell not?—cooked it

  lightly in oil and ate it

  with boiled potatoes and peas and biscuits.

  Over dinner, talking about eagles

  and an older, fiercer order of things.

  Yesterday, Snow

  Yesterday, snow was falling and all was chaos.

  I don’t dream, but in the night I dreamed

  a man offered me some of his whiskey.

  I wiped the mouth of the bottle

  and raised it to my lips.

  It was like one of those dreams of falling

  where, they say, if you don’t wake up

  before you hit the ground,

  you’ll die. I woke up! Sweating.

  Outside, the snow had quit.

  But, my God, it looked cold. Fearsome.

  The windows were ice to the touch

  when I touched them. I got back

  in bed and lay there the rest of the night,

  afraid I’d sleep again. And find

  myself back in that dream…

  The bottle rising to my lips.

  The indifferent man

  waiting for me to drink and pass it on again.

  A skewed moon hangs on until morning,

  and a brilliant sun.

  Before now, I never knew what it meant

  to “spring out of bed.”

  All day snow flopping off roofs.

  The crunch of tires and footsteps.

  Next door, there’s an old fellow shoveling.

  Every so often he stops and leans

  on his shovel, and rests, letting

  his thoughts go where they may.

  Staying his heart.

  Then he nods and grips his shovel.

  Goes on, yes. Goes on.

  Reading Something in

  the Restaurant

  This morning I remembered the young man

  with his book, reading at a table

  by the window last night. Reading

  amidst the coming and going of dishes

  and voices. Now and then he looked

  up and passed his finger across

  his lips, as if pondering something,

  or quieting the thoughts inside

  his mind, the going

  and coming inside his mind. Then

  he lowered his head and went back

  to reading. That memory

  gets into my head this morning

  with the memory of

  the girl who entered the restaurant

  that time long ago and stood shaking her hair.

  Then sat down across from me

  without taking her coat off.

  I put down whatever book it was

  I was reading, and she at once

  started to tell me there was

  not a snowball’s
chance in hell

  this thing was going to fly.

  She knew it. Then I came around

  to knowing it. But it was

  hard. This morning, my sweet,

  you ask me what’s new

  in the world. But my concentration

  is shot. At the table next

  to ours a man laughs and laughs

  and shakes his head at what

  another fellow is telling him.

  But what was that young man reading?

  Where did that woman go?

  I’ve lost my place. Tell me what it is

  you wanted to know.

  A Poem Not against Songbirds

  Lighten up, songbirds. Give me a break.

  No need to carry on this way,

  even if it is morning. I need more sleep.

  Where were you keeping yourselves when I was thirty?

  When the house stayed dark and quiet all day,

  as if somebody had died?

  And this same somebody, or somebody else,

  cooked a huge, morose meal for the survivors.

  A meal that lasted ten years.

  Go on, sweethearts. Come back in an hour,

  my friends. Then I’ll be wide awake.

  You’ll see. This time I can promise.

  Late Afternoon, April 8, 1984

  A little sport-fishing boat

  wallowing

  in the rough waters of the Strait.

  I put the glasses on him.

  Old guy in a canvas hat,

  looking grim. Worried,

  as he should be.

  The other boats have come in

  long ago, counting

  their blessings.

  This fisherman

  had to be clear out to Green Point

  where giant halibut school.

  When the wind struck!

  Such force it bent the trees

  and caused the water

  to stand up.

  As it’s standing now.

  But he’ll make it!

  If he keeps the bow into

  the wind, and if he’s lucky.

  Even so I look up

  the Coast Guard emergency number.

  But I don’t use it.

  I keep watching—an hour, maybe less —

  who knows what passes

  through his mind, and mine,

  in that time?

  Then he turns in to the harbor,

  where at once it grows calmer.

  Takes off his hat then and waves it

  like mad—like an old-time cowboy!

  Something he won’t ever forget.

  You betcha.

  Me neither.

  My Work

  I look up and see them starting

  down the beach. The young man

  is wearing a packboard to carry the baby.

  This leaves his hands free

  so that he can take one of his wife’s hands

  in his, and swing his other. Anyone can see

  how happy they are. And intimate. How steady.

  They are happier than anyone else, and they know it.

  Are gladdened by it, and humbled.

  They walk to the end of the beach

  and out of sight. That’s it, I think,

  and return to this thing governing

  my life. But in a few minutes

  they come walking back along the beach.

  The only thing different

  is that they have changed sides.

  He is on the other side of her now,

  the ocean side. She is on this side.

  But they are still holding hands. Even more

  in love, if that’s possible. And it is.

  Having been there for a long time myself.

  Theirs has been a modest walk, fifteen minutes

  down the beach, fifteen minutes back.

  They’ve had to pick their way

  over some rocks and around huge logs,

  tossed up from when the sea ran wild.

  They walk quietly, slowly, holding hands.

  They know the water is out there

  but they’re so happy that they ignore it.

  The love in their young faces. The surround of it.

  Maybe it will last forever. If they are lucky,

  and good, and forebearing. And careful. If they

  go on loving each other without stint.

  Are true to each other—that most of all.

  As they will be, of course, as they will be,

  as they know they will be.

  I go back to my work. My work goes back to me.

  A wind picks up out over the water.

  The Trestle

  I’ve wasted my time this morning, and I’m deeply ashamed.

  I went to bed last night thinking about my dad.

  About that little river we used to fish—Butte Creek —

  near Lake Almanor. Water lulled me to sleep.

  In my dream, it was all I could do not to get up

  and move around. But when I woke early this morning

  I went to the telephone instead. Even though

  the river was flowing down there in the valley,

  in the meadows, moving through ditch clover.

  Fir trees stood on both sides of the meadows. And I was there.

  A kid sitting on a timber trestle, looking down.

  Watching my dad drink from his cupped hands.

  Then he said, “This water’s so good.

  I wish I could give my mother some of this water.”

  My dad still loved her, though she was dead

  and he’d been away from her for a long time.

  He had to wait some more years

  until he could go where she was. But he loved

  this country where he found himself. The West.

  For thirty years it had him around the heart,

  and then it let him go. He went to sleep one night

  in a town in northern California

  and didn’t wake up. What could be simpler?

  I wish my own life, and death, could be so simple.

  So that when I woke on a fine morning like this,

  after being somewhere I wanted to be all night,

  somewhere important, I could move most naturally

  and without thinking about it, to my desk.

  Say I did that, in the simple way I’ve described.

  From bed to desk back to childhood.

  From there it’s not so far to the trestle.

  And from the trestle I could look down

  and see my dad when I needed to see him.

  My dad drinking that cold water. My sweet father.

  The river, its meadows, and firs, and the trestle.

  That. Where I once stood.

  I wish I could do that

  without having to plead with myself for it.

  And feel sick of myself

  for getting involved in lesser things.

  I know it’s time I changed my life.

  This life—the one with its complications

  and phone calls—is unbecoming,

  and a waste of time.

  I want to plunge my hands in clear water. The way

  he did. Again and then again.

  For Tess

  Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping,

  as they say here. It’s rough, and I’m glad

  I’m not out. Glad I fished all day

  on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back

  and forth. I didn’t catch anything. No bites

  even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!

  I carried your dad’s pocketknife and was followed

  for a while by a dog its owner called Dixie.

  At times I felt so happy I had to quit

  fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,

  listening to the sound the water made,

  and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
r />   that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.

  For a while I even let myself imagine I had died —

  and that was all right, at least for a couple

  of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.

  As I was lying there with my eyes closed,

  just after I’d imagined what it might be like

  if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.

  I opened my eyes then and got right up

  and went back to being happy again.

  I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.

  Ultramarine

  …sick

  With exile, they yearn homeward now, their eyes

  Tuned to the ultramarine, first-star-pierced dark

  Reflected on the dark, incoming waves…

  — DEREK MAHON

  from “Mt Gabriel” in Antarctica (1985)

  I

  This Morning

  This morning was something. A little snow

  lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear

  blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,

  as far as the eye could see.

  Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went

  for a walk—determined not to return

  until I took in what Nature had to offer.

  I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.

  Crossed a field strewn with rocks

  where snow had drifted. Kept going

  until I reached the bluff.

  Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and

  the gulls wheeling over the white beach

  far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure

  cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts

  began to wander. I had to will

  myself to see what I was seeing

  and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what

  mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,

  for a minute or two!) For a minute or two

  it crowded out the usual musings on

  what was right, and what was wrong—duty,

  tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat

  with my former wife. All the things

  I hoped would go away this morning.

  The stuff I live with every day. What

  I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.

  But for a minute or two I did forget

  myself and everything else. I know I did.