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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Volume 25, #9

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,This is the common air that bathes the globe.

Walt Whitman

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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 25 Number 9*Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $33 for 11 issues. Sample issues — $3.50 (includes postage).

Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. Waterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127

©2005 Ten Penny Players Inc. *(This magazine is published 4/05)http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Andrew Fader 4-6D.T. Bolling 7-10David Chorlton 11David Rogers 12Sylvia Manning 13-14

James Penha 15John Grey 16-17Joan Payne Kincaid 18Kay Bache-Snyder 19-21David Koehn 22-23

Robert Collet Tricaro24-25Geoff Stevens 26Fran Farrell Kraft 27Donald Lev 28

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photo by Barbara Fisher

The Milky Way — Andrew Fader

Often my father’s friends showed upat our backdoor on those Saturdays in December,long before dawn, to pick himand his telescope up to drive deepinto the Jersey Pinelandsto gaze at a black sky smearedthickly with a crush of stars.In my room, after they leftwith all their telescopes packed into the rearof an old step-van, I staredat the stars I created across the skyof my bedroom ceiling till, past daybreak,

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they returned, exhausted, and filled our kitchenwith talk of the heavensas Mom fixed them breakfast so Icould sit and listen to their conversationsabout God-as-a-shooting star.I heard their storiesabout Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus who opened up the year so long agoand ploughed the furrows of the zodiac;about his battle across the heavenswith Orion who chases the Seven Sistersstill, though Jupiter made them doves, then stars.I would talk with them anxiouslyuntil they ignored me; then, I’d slip away

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to help my mom, who by nowhad brewed more coffee and turnedthe kitchen window blinds to keep the sun’s glarefrom striking a breakfast tablestrewn with stories of stars.

Father, years later I recall the thoughtsof this child, still warm in flannel,against the coarse wool of blanketsstretched over an adult earth that bearsthe chill of night air as I stretch outbeneath the ceiling of the Milky Way.

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In the Doll Museum — D. T. Bolling

In the doll museum nothing moves but the travelers,those who have arrived to remember themselvesin eyes of glass.A private transaction, ritual of return promisingcomfort, even the comfort of small sorrows.And the bright expectant eyes never close, so muchhave they to perform.Eyes that tell the stories of their visitors,histories almost forgotten or new made or soldin the common market of everydayness.Or again, in all their numinous opacity, eyesserving as confessors witnessing guiltwithout blame.

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Here in this small house of diversion what isit that passes through the speechless air.How is it that silence says so much, even thechildren holding their cries and chatter,bored perhaps and preferring other games.Is it that long withdrawn days and the newmeet best when words subside and only eyesmeeting eyes commune.Or is there more.What is it to be a doll, what to be the longexiled adult at last returning homeor almost.Who is seer and who seen and where does mindreside.

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Whose gaze holds the force that defines things.Is this a place for building a mind from theshards of innocence, loss, pain, aharbor after private navigations.Or is something missing here where timegrants luxury of meditation.

In the storehouse one finds them: jumble ofdecapitated heads thrown in a box. All colorsof hair, all pigments of flesh, dust crowning all.And under a table rows of crumpled figuresdressed mostly in rags and bearing labels:dolls salvaged from torn bodies of childrenin Auschwitz, Wounded Knee, stations ofthe underground railroad.

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What message in these bowed heads of toys,bodies of cloth once loved by childrenof short passage.In this museum of dolls, sanctuary of memory,what is to be seen, what forgotten.What private, what collective guilt.What failure of vision.

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One AM — David Chorlton

The late night tram in a rainswept cityturns a corner with lightblaring out of its windowslike a theatre on rails.It rattles and rings

as it passes through the narrow streetswhere all houseslook the same, with their grey facesand doors locked to holdback the silence of rooms

in each one of which a clockplays a muffled pizzicatoabove somebody’s bed;oblivious to the outside worldwith each second

devouring the nextin the untiring marchof sleep’s metronome.

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Rabbit — David Rogers

My eye returns again and againto the rabbit at the edgeof the grape arbor.He hovers there, feeding

on small grassesand other things I cannot see.His shape wants to move fastthrough a lot of air. His fur

is the color of old leavesstretched like an accordionor balled up like an acorn.The back legs work

like a pole vaulter in slow motion.The dark brown eyescan see all directions at once.I look away

and when I turn back he is goneas if the Earth itself had revealedfor a moment its soft, fleshy partand then grown suddenly shy.

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Daring — Sylvia Manning

daring to put here what cannot be called conceiteven by she or he who might understand deviceand metaphor

daring one Sunday morning the mid-summer glareof farthest back lot, where two peach trees stand between usand the cars, all cars of good Catholicsparked along the street for mass

daring to suspend curiosity for whyour María, blessing us by being here,fundamentally,does not seek congregation,assembly of her own kind

daring mostly the wasp, which has found this peach first,

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to sting me, for I will have this one peach, our only,our small harvest from three hard years, and drought.Daring wasp to more than buzz.

Bringing it then to all — washed clean, its blemishescut away — a taste for each of us of peach, durazno,avowed favorite fruit of María,this Sunday in late June:

here together only because we dared and arereal — not characters — and because our lives are that, notnarratives, here thoughdaring to plant trees and waithowever longto taste dry summer fruit,its sweetest juice, however scarce.

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Paradise — James Penha

Spring aerates my wineand sweetenswith the sun’s bouquet.It must remind the grape of homeand rain that badeits blood to runand the dirtthat gives it body stillbut for this sparkleof spring.

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Parades — John Grey

At the July 4th parade,we go there late andthe streets were crowded.Even my father couldbarely see the floatsfrom behind a throngfive or six deep,and I was lost in legsand shoes and looking upat the wide backs of men,the fancy feathered hats of women.

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Even when my fatherhoisted me up on his shoulders,I still peered througha jungle of arms,of bobbing heads.I barely saw a baton,a shiny band uniform,a tumbling clown,a giant pumpkin.

Eventually, I just drifted awayfrom the excitement,amused myselfby digging in the dirt,

picking up pebbles,playing hide and seekwith my reflectionin the hardware window.I didn’t feel as ifI’d missed anything.I knew early onthat I was my own parade,that there was a quiet, intimate joyto the watching of it.

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Travelogue IIJoan Payne Kincaid

Replete with epiphanyto be read by another youdon’t know looking at Oyster Bay Peopleand the paintingspushing you outrefuse to be marketedtraining and feeding all these yearsthere is a writer’s block comingdown at the dock where wealthy yachtsof decadent love affairs bring your life to heeltripping out of control

listless as silent canvases...abandon ship!at a front tablepeople with umbrellas passlistening to raindreaming acquisition

Joan Payne Kincaid

this blueberry bushthe size of a small treehas grown pale and vein-yswaying in powerful windsit waits another turn

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Walking on Geyser HillKaye Bache-Snyder

Are you here?Upstairs or down?I call out to Him, as I have,entering my house at nightto husband at his desk;to father, working woodin basement shop.

I would talk,of this quarrel in my head,as if someone is here

at Yellowstone andI am not alone,walking from the lodge,wind rising, sun settingred on glassy snow.

Old Faithful blows:towers of water rainbreaking glass below.The hourly crowddisperses: a flow oflong blue shadowsseeking inner fires.

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I wander Geyser Hill,a field of steaming snowand twisting vapors.A coyote lopes ahead.Bison and elk convergeon warmer ground andtrumpeter swans glide downto fold the night besidethe Firehole River.

Are you here?

If so, then saywho or what I am,

going where and how.A blue shadow I become,walking, pausing;listening tocaverns hissing,mudpots popping,cones erupting,earth thudding.

Is that eternal laughingat the absurdity ofasking to be heardamong the multitude of tangled prayers, telephoned

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on overloaded lines?Or is this bubbling,steaming, boiling, drumming,whooshing, overflowing,your talk in tonguesto be divined, as from the maddening ethersof the Delphic oraclein ancient Greece?

I feel tonight, as ifI have become more who,than customary am,as distant pine is not

a tree except withspace and light around.It is as if an emptiness,both swallows me and fills.

A mauve glow lingerson earth’s jagged edge.Wind shifts and chills.I drift downhill in darktowards light and fire.No answer need I morethan the overflowingin this earthly place,this Yellowstone.

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The Auctioneer — David Koehn

“Find what the sailor has hidden—that thefinder cannot unsee once it has been seen.”

Vladimir Nabokov,Speak, Memory an Autobiography

You have all gathered here to bid on what remains of one man’s life.I am not here to tell you when he died or what he died of.I am here to call out the items though we have but a few,And the rest of the goods will be auctioned off in unmarked boxesWhich you can bid on by size, by weight, or by whim.Consider the boxes empty except for what is inside them.

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I do all the talking, and I talk quickly, so listen carefully.Each “going” should not excite you. Do not move a fingerUnless you want to bid. If you so much as twitchI will call you out as a buyer, and I will make you pay.Watch my hands, when they turn out to you for bids, offer.Do not watch my eyes, I may assume your glance means you’ve bid.

We have a coal burning stove, two bookshelves, and a filing cabinetFull of who knows what, perhaps his blueprint for an afterlife.In these boxes may be his wife’s diaries of her illicit affairs(She died young.). Or maybe his journals, which one always readsOut of fear and curiosity, gambling that each pageOne turns to is not the final page or that its date is not today.

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Escarole and Beans — Robert Collet Tricaro

I caught her in the innocent act of eating dinneron the cheap — a meal of escarole withcannelloni beans. Sauteed in olive oil and butter.

Cheap greens with white beans never gracedher parents’ carved mahogany table.It was a dish for peasants.

The grand regency-style house in Normandy,oleo-black Peugeot, sailboat, private school.War collapsed them all, sending my young Nannato Ellis Island, then on a steam engineto a five story walk-up in Boston.

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Her eyes brightened when I asked for someand dipped warm crusty bread into the sauce.Sweeter inner leaves tempered the long tasteof outer bitter ones. Plump meaty legumes.Who needed an entrée and dessert?

Nanna died spry at 94, never knowing that herbitter greens were repositories for phytochemicals,or that a trove of protein and soluble fiber bulged her cannelinis, her oil, chartreuse with good fatty acids.

I ordered escarol and beansby its French name in a trendy Manhattan bistro.The “gourmet” side dish cost six fifty.

We all profit from bitter taste now and then, one way or another.

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Geoff Stevens

Pollution is a localized phenomenonis a blot on the landscape.When it becomes commonplaceit ceases to be pollution

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Musings — Fran Farrell Kraft

What a vacant lot this is

Not a shiny hubcap in sight

Nothing but dim bulbs,pizza boxes, soggy napkins

Not a stray daffodilnot even a dandelion

Where are the fresh-faced daisiesyearning toward the sun

the sunflowers, violets, baby’s breathreaching for the light

Not even a thistle or a burrto focus attention

How can a seed germinatein this arid soil

— a daunting prospect.

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Just Think — Donald Lev

Just think what it would be likeif everything went wrong — if youwere old and weak and all thewrong turns you took in yourlife that you hoped wouldsomehow find the rightdirection after all, definitely proved irretrievably wrong,deadly wrong. You aretremendously in debt, your wifeis desperately ill, and you don’twant to burden her any more

with the results of yourfoolishness, where should youturn? To God? To friends?From all of whom you’ve created such distance as willnot now be decreased. I amstanding in water up to myknees. The tide is slowly butsteadily rising. Perhaps a hugebird will pick me up and fly meto some beautiful land whereall I love is healthy, happy, andat home.

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