irlish still, in mildness and spark,
surviving in a skeleton
fragile as an armature of reeds.
The color in her cheeks
faint as watercolor wash
gracing impatiens in a vase.
Rubber-treaded soles and gurneys
should soften the shock
of arrivals, but she startled up
from the morphine,
eyes wide
upon acres of hours.
Muffled sounds enforced
a sense of quarantine — I will
never go home. The house
was sold — while
droplets condensed
on the murky sacs on IV racks.
As no family was near,
I sat with her from 10 to 6,
evening to sunrise.
They said, “Oxygen-starved,
she’s unlikely to eat.” She said
Now air is what I need —
In the margins of a magazine
I transcribed what I heard:
so fitful in sleep
yet lifting to a rinsing lucidity
— Does it frighten you to go
before you’ve understood?
Note the rise and fall,
every breath released
like a sigh. In advance,
our unspoken goodbye.
— Pretty boat . . . What boat is this?
Now a row of faces. All so small.
Later when I had gone
they completed her chart.
Vacant johnny and wrist tag.
This was New Year’s Day.
Vague sun pressed through mist
thin as watered milk.
The first dawn in nearly a century
that finds her nowhere
on earth.
When she is older herself
with hair glazed white
and sagging a little
below
will she say of me
“He was well known,” “He was well-to-do ”
(not likely)
“He knew what he wanted . . . ”
“He was sometimes at loose ends . . . ,”
or,
if I’m lucky,
“He baked our family’s bread” ?
As doves do seem to moan,
as the amusing uplift of a warbler
flutters into tune
and a grosbeak slides glissandos
through the ash tree’s come-lately buds
pillow talk chez nous
mating calls, chez eux
Smooth — you,
every part of you I touch
with open hand,
thin fabric between
thee and me.
Alas, interrupted
(not this time by our child, who’s away),
we catapult from bed
and run outside to shout away
a woodpecker
hammering holes
beneath the eave.
Too late to go back to bed,
yet let’s stall briefly
before giving in
to the day’s duress —
Could you call this couch
a love seat? Yes.
So long beyond reach,
shorted-out
by anxiety and exhaustion,
these strained nerves
revive, intertwined:
What a jolly surprise
to coincide
with daybreak, accompanied
in bird song.
The child said
our line is empty, no
dial tone, no hum
though we’d spoken to you
over the river
not minutes ago,
laugh that thumped
a diaphragm beneath
the ear piece
as shuttled magnets
interrupt
an electron stream
to approximate
speech
**
With wind coming on hard
in the woods, thighs gashed
through pantlegs by berry wands
I follow the phone line
in its smooth black rind
looping without poles
over branch stubs or dragging
low through leaf wrack
a mile from the junction box,
touch disconnected leads
with electrodes on a multi-meter
set for ohms
seeking infinity
which I find; then
with the house side re-joined,
test for continuity —
not found; then eventually see
the storm-split cherry tree
that severed the wire
**
Slice the cable sheath
unwrap those shining threads
in its core to re-entwine
long ago, the metal called Cyprian
a pair of filaments
thin as eye lash
yet miles in length
dug from slopes above town,
our old Elizabeth Mine’s yield
perpetually re-employed,
smelters to rollers to wire —
when pure, dazzling
in conductivity
through my fingers
the current resumes
low-voltage, textured
like velvet to an ear
at the far end,
and here we
hear the scrambling chime:
it’s you, voice
in the receiver
transfigured, complete.
The morning glories
continue
knowing nothing,
but such a caprice,
this lavish clambering
toward — what?
Only sunlight.
For that they open, every day.
Believe me, the grief
I feel cannot be
explained.
In moonlight, broad
as the sprawled land we look across,
the blossoms are closed
like miniature umbrellas,
our clothes on the line colorless
yet bright beneath a round white
platter of mercury,
whatever takes place
in the world surrounding us,
where dear friends
will die.
These nights we hear transports
from the airbase upstate.
These days I hear fighter jets
going east
at ungodly speeds.
Autumn chill,
a stream of piss steams
in golden-gray thatch.
The morning glories are
— what colors?
“Blue as our girl’s eyes,” or bluer.
Tinted rose, as wishful thinking is said to be.
Wrinkled slightly like crepe paper,
with white centers,
with avid green vines that climb
whatever we do,
defying all
but
the killing frost.
Jim Schley has worked as a writer and editor, teacher with adult students, and performer with several experimental theatre troupes on tours of the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He is the author of the poetry chapbook One Another (Chapiteau Press, 1999). His poem "Virginal: The Nativity Pageant" is featured in In Posse Review, Issue 14.
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