Closing Time
(for Dad)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
Appalachia’s air chilled gradually.
The valley’s likenesses on deeper pools
Shivered as mayflies burst the watercolor
Skins, and theirs, taking to air, trailing
Papery past selves after them in flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
A trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. He was wading toward the nearest bank
Where yellow tiger lilies thrust their heads
Above mad tangles of grass trailing the current.
Feeling through many years of wandering round him
The gravity of some intent, I followed close
And broke the silver ripples of his wake.
“Let’s take the path. We’ll cross again above,”
He said. I understood just where, and so
We clattered on the gravel with empty creels.
In an abandoned orchard, adolescent
Apples swelled, stone green, not yet much burden
On their boughs. We plucked wild blackberries
Dripping among thorns, filling our mouths
With fruit still warm from standing in the sun.
A stalk of goldenrod, its bud crown forming,
Jutted shoulders and head above the rest.
One of its leaves dipped lower. There, beneath it,
A butterfly hung folded for the night.
Here was something to show. I called him round—
“Watch this”—and putting out a youngster hand,
Which shook, I slipped a finger through its legs
And so became its leaf. Its filaments
Shuffled for a hold upon my skin,
And there it dangled, groggy-sensed, and free.
“The thing is holding me.” I thought of all
The butterflies I had kept caged
Inside that hand, beating wild against
My skin, and I, wounded, sprung my finger
Bars at blows softer than sleeper’s breath
And watched the insects stagger, fear-drunk, to the air.
Then, left looking at my dusted fingers,
I shamed my motives and hungered by that shame.
“Here, hold.” He reached out his work-etched hand.
The fumbling creature hooked its spurs and clung,
Still, like dew. The valley’s dusk set deeper.
We hung the insect on its shelter-leaf.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to cross the creek.”
We crossed the creek, me feeling the way after
Through flowing shadows, the waterway turned velvet
Dark of forest face and leafy, long
Reflection, and he an image fading off the stream.
The Pear Tree
When early autumn’s storm wrung from the clouds
Summer, wearing the last thundering rain thin
And sharp on the wind’s rasp; when thorns
Of the first frost bloomed over the grass,
And the morning glory hung brown and bitten
On the garden fence; on those first nights
Of cold window glass and the drip of chill
Onto the plank, when I wrapped in the blanket
And the dog curled at my feet, I heard,
Above the clay clink of wind-churned chimes,
Above the wag of the unlatched screen door,
Round blows of fruit fall against the ground.
I have been here three years’ windfall
Not hearing the bump of pears, but when the tree
Burst blossoms against the window, I watched
Crawl across the floor shadow from thousands
Of swaying cups lifted into the storm of pollens,
And when after petals leaves screwed from the nodes,
I looked out into green overcast: fruit had pushed
Off flower and bent down boughs as with old age,
But more mystic that blunt drop of fruit earthward
That jerked my ear like a new word.
Someone else should hear it: I could better tell
How, when the wind rattled its sticks upon the houses,
I heard a pear fall to a bruising; how it struck
Above the rip of water from passing cars’ tires;
How, as I let slip with sleep my garment of senses,
A tree caught the last thread and plucked it
With a ripe pear; and how I lay awake beneath rainy
Leaves or sat for spells by the window, as one haunts
Heaven those nights her globes bear down the branch
For a single star to fall away in flame.
“The Pear Tree” was first published in Irreantum 4.2 (2006): 99. You can hear
Patricia read it here.
It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist
(for Saul)
My son, seven, says, in passing,
“To travel at the speed of light
You must become light.”
From the apparent blue, this bolt
Blasts me from terrain
Of rolling, languid thought,
I am forced to leap by precipice
And, after thrills of floundering,
Beat together wings of suspense
And impetus, igniting flight.
He is only seven, and it is my duty.
Breathless, I ask:
“Where did you hear such a thing?”
He tosses “I just know”
Over a shoulder, stoops
And is gone, uncaring
The grace he has done me.
For him, it is simple collection
From some garish bush, but for me—
They say accidents of real consequence
Happen among comforts of home.
First published in Irreantum 4.2 (Summer 2002): 80.
Dry Year
It’s been a dry year. Rivers rise into the sky.
Some places worse; here, not so bad, but—
thunder, rain scraping leaves,
spatter from the eaves
wake me.
I come to,
wondering,
Is it raining?
Mist pricks my face, a damp breeze
tumbles loose papers.
The ringing in the air is loud now—
everything whispers with water.
Evening Drive
Mountains and evening: aspen leaves,
Pale as moth wings,
Reclaiming the wood.
The car clove spring.
A flock of yellow petals, heads hung—
I wanted to stop,
But seeing you, said nothing.
You were not much in your face,
Your words, better remembering
Some breathtaken childhood
On this exalted road.
On the peaks, winds blew
Clouds to dust
In parching cold.
We rode through green flush below,
Windows pleasantly rolled down.
With dusk, winter came a little down.
On the road above the gorge
I sat in the window.
Raindrops broke across my face,
Burned off in the wind.
You turned the wheel
As if you held the reins
Of a mare, a bold girl
Standing on the saddle.
Beside us like a hound
The river ran panting.
The last brightness came down
Cascades branching like ivy.
Your mountains, losing
Their faces like sleepers,
Slumped out of the light.
The car went always
Toward the edge of that small clearing
The headlights cut.
Inside, your face,
Your chest, glowing faintly
From dashlights
As if you stood in a room
With a fire.
When I came in at last,
Breezes still running
Over my skin,
My hair cool as grass,
I had no warm words.
You had no cold,
So we sat like two birds
On the same wire.
I thought,
Language is an odd thing:
You can go no further
Than you have words for.
First published in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film; Volume
8, Number 1 (2006), pp. 100-101
Patricia Karamesines roams and writes in southeastern Utah. She has won
several literary awards for her poetry, essays, and fiction, including from
Brigham Young University, the University of Arizona, the Utah Arts Council, and
the Utah Wilderness Association. A poet, essayist, and novelist, she has
published in literary journals and popular magazines locally and nationally. Her
novel The Pictograph Murders (2004 Signature Books) won the 2004 AML Award
for the Novel. She writes for the blog A Motley Vision and runs AMV’s
companion blog Wilderness Interface Zone, a blog focused on nature writing.
Art~ Fredrick Leighton
(for Dad)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
Appalachia’s air chilled gradually.
The valley’s likenesses on deeper pools
Shivered as mayflies burst the watercolor
Skins, and theirs, taking to air, trailing
Papery past selves after them in flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
A trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. He was wading toward the nearest bank
Where yellow tiger lilies thrust their heads
Above mad tangles of grass trailing the current.
Feeling through many years of wandering round him
The gravity of some intent, I followed close
And broke the silver ripples of his wake.
“Let’s take the path. We’ll cross again above,”
He said. I understood just where, and so
We clattered on the gravel with empty creels.
In an abandoned orchard, adolescent
Apples swelled, stone green, not yet much burden
On their boughs. We plucked wild blackberries
Dripping among thorns, filling our mouths
With fruit still warm from standing in the sun.
A stalk of goldenrod, its bud crown forming,
Jutted shoulders and head above the rest.
One of its leaves dipped lower. There, beneath it,
A butterfly hung folded for the night.
Here was something to show. I called him round—
“Watch this”—and putting out a youngster hand,
Which shook, I slipped a finger through its legs
And so became its leaf. Its filaments
Shuffled for a hold upon my skin,
And there it dangled, groggy-sensed, and free.
“The thing is holding me.” I thought of all
The butterflies I had kept caged
Inside that hand, beating wild against
My skin, and I, wounded, sprung my finger
Bars at blows softer than sleeper’s breath
And watched the insects stagger, fear-drunk, to the air.
Then, left looking at my dusted fingers,
I shamed my motives and hungered by that shame.
“Here, hold.” He reached out his work-etched hand.
The fumbling creature hooked its spurs and clung,
Still, like dew. The valley’s dusk set deeper.
We hung the insect on its shelter-leaf.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to cross the creek.”
We crossed the creek, me feeling the way after
Through flowing shadows, the waterway turned velvet
Dark of forest face and leafy, long
Reflection, and he an image fading off the stream.
The Pear Tree
When early autumn’s storm wrung from the clouds
Summer, wearing the last thundering rain thin
And sharp on the wind’s rasp; when thorns
Of the first frost bloomed over the grass,
And the morning glory hung brown and bitten
On the garden fence; on those first nights
Of cold window glass and the drip of chill
Onto the plank, when I wrapped in the blanket
And the dog curled at my feet, I heard,
Above the clay clink of wind-churned chimes,
Above the wag of the unlatched screen door,
Round blows of fruit fall against the ground.
I have been here three years’ windfall
Not hearing the bump of pears, but when the tree
Burst blossoms against the window, I watched
Crawl across the floor shadow from thousands
Of swaying cups lifted into the storm of pollens,
And when after petals leaves screwed from the nodes,
I looked out into green overcast: fruit had pushed
Off flower and bent down boughs as with old age,
But more mystic that blunt drop of fruit earthward
That jerked my ear like a new word.
Someone else should hear it: I could better tell
How, when the wind rattled its sticks upon the houses,
I heard a pear fall to a bruising; how it struck
Above the rip of water from passing cars’ tires;
How, as I let slip with sleep my garment of senses,
A tree caught the last thread and plucked it
With a ripe pear; and how I lay awake beneath rainy
Leaves or sat for spells by the window, as one haunts
Heaven those nights her globes bear down the branch
For a single star to fall away in flame.
“The Pear Tree” was first published in Irreantum 4.2 (2006): 99. You can hear
Patricia read it here.
It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist
(for Saul)
My son, seven, says, in passing,
“To travel at the speed of light
You must become light.”
From the apparent blue, this bolt
Blasts me from terrain
Of rolling, languid thought,
I am forced to leap by precipice
And, after thrills of floundering,
Beat together wings of suspense
And impetus, igniting flight.
He is only seven, and it is my duty.
Breathless, I ask:
“Where did you hear such a thing?”
He tosses “I just know”
Over a shoulder, stoops
And is gone, uncaring
The grace he has done me.
For him, it is simple collection
From some garish bush, but for me—
They say accidents of real consequence
Happen among comforts of home.
First published in Irreantum 4.2 (Summer 2002): 80.
Dry Year
It’s been a dry year. Rivers rise into the sky.
Some places worse; here, not so bad, but—
thunder, rain scraping leaves,
spatter from the eaves
wake me.
I come to,
wondering,
Is it raining?
Mist pricks my face, a damp breeze
tumbles loose papers.
The ringing in the air is loud now—
everything whispers with water.
Evening Drive
Mountains and evening: aspen leaves,
Pale as moth wings,
Reclaiming the wood.
The car clove spring.
A flock of yellow petals, heads hung—
I wanted to stop,
But seeing you, said nothing.
You were not much in your face,
Your words, better remembering
Some breathtaken childhood
On this exalted road.
On the peaks, winds blew
Clouds to dust
In parching cold.
We rode through green flush below,
Windows pleasantly rolled down.
With dusk, winter came a little down.
On the road above the gorge
I sat in the window.
Raindrops broke across my face,
Burned off in the wind.
You turned the wheel
As if you held the reins
Of a mare, a bold girl
Standing on the saddle.
Beside us like a hound
The river ran panting.
The last brightness came down
Cascades branching like ivy.
Your mountains, losing
Their faces like sleepers,
Slumped out of the light.
The car went always
Toward the edge of that small clearing
The headlights cut.
Inside, your face,
Your chest, glowing faintly
From dashlights
As if you stood in a room
With a fire.
When I came in at last,
Breezes still running
Over my skin,
My hair cool as grass,
I had no warm words.
You had no cold,
So we sat like two birds
On the same wire.
I thought,
Language is an odd thing:
You can go no further
Than you have words for.
First published in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film; Volume
8, Number 1 (2006), pp. 100-101
Patricia Karamesines roams and writes in southeastern Utah. She has won
several literary awards for her poetry, essays, and fiction, including from
Brigham Young University, the University of Arizona, the Utah Arts Council, and
the Utah Wilderness Association. A poet, essayist, and novelist, she has
published in literary journals and popular magazines locally and nationally. Her
novel The Pictograph Murders (2004 Signature Books) won the 2004 AML Award
for the Novel. She writes for the blog A Motley Vision and runs AMV’s
companion blog Wilderness Interface Zone, a blog focused on nature writing.
Art~ Fredrick Leighton
| Featured Poet Patricia Karamesines |
