Radius

Radius


I have rolled into a ball on the
Surface of stone. Snow has fallen
Everywhere but the place I have taken for
Myself, and as I reach to feel the perfect
Radius I cut my hand on a sharp stone angle
That has risen from the blankness.
My blood evaporates before my eyes.
I can feel the redness, the wound closes
Around a moon shaped stone
Fitted to my hand. All of this has
Happened to someone else,
At another time, on other stones.


When I have healed, I move myself
Along the descending pathway, evergreens
Curling laurels. Through the trees something
Glimmers, distant, wavering in my
Sleep blurred sight. I stand against the
Rough bark of a windfall, breathing
The cold thin air. It is a light, somewhere,
And it offers me no way to find
My place.


Because you can never tell how far away
A light is.


All time has left me. The snow still falls,
But does not touch me, as if I am a burning
Stone. I am moved now, not moving 
Myself, and I come near the base of
The stone mountain, covered in a field
Of deep white. Enormous hairy things
Root and grunt through the surface of the
Field, blowing huge plumes of smoke from
Their noses, echoing from deep in their
Bellies a trilling sub-sound, astounded by
Their own enormity, unaware of me entirely.

I start to understand that I am not here, that
I am part of the world, only. Another wind
Comes and I go away, blinded by the circles
Swirling around me, and as I fall again I see the
Same flicker of light, this time within the range
Of my senses, this time walked about by men
Who wear streaks of green paint on their bare
Skin, enduring the cold by some miracle, howling
In words I do not understand. They carry feathers
Of vultures, circular stones, a kind of gourd with
A string that they saw with peculiar dexterity. I carry
The sound in my mind, and again I am blown, carried
Moved in some way to another bare stone. I can see the
Same light, quavering, silent, distant. I have no hands, and as
I look to myself I cannot find anything. I feel even more now.
I can see to the light by feeling. Can see the men as they continue
Their dance, and women have come out from the darkness. Their hair
Falls all around them, carrying the light inside them outward. They are beautiful
In the darkness. They carry a long staff with more feathers, ringing bells of glass,
Lights that circle the bundle by some variable orbit. Their song is one I have
Sung in life, one that was carried to me through water. I watch them for
A time, as the snow falls in wonderful silent waves, and finally the wind
Dies.

The Bald Mountain

The Bald Mountain –


November – The days have been gray and dry for months. There is a ban on campfires, a danger of forest fire, a feeling of electric explosion in faces. The earth is dry. The moon is full.


Moisture from the mouth clouds and freezes,
Fingers curl. There is an orange van in the driveway,
Insanely orange, beyond reason.
The driver is another color, beyond reason.
I do not know him well.
There is another man, a friend, and bad luck
Follows him. We stuff our bags into my truck, I check
The levels, our water, our food.
The driver goes to another room, removes his
Normal clothes, slathers himself in vapo-rub
Dresses in a plastic rainsuit.


The road is a lunar surface,
Large egg shape stones.
I crawl over them, slowly
Never scraping my chassis
Miles above the lake now,
Approaching the bald
Said to be a grassy bed
Below starlight.


I carry a pistol on my hip
Because I have felt a strong
Dread, for days.
Bad dreams, electricity.
We need fire, but are forbidden
To make one. Distance, darkness -
We will make one anyway,
And sleep beneath the stars.


We park in a clearing
In a laurel hell, deep green.
Beyond are meadows with
Dying grass, skeletons of milkweed -
Dried mud and tracks of deer hunters
Turkey feathers and rusted oil cans.
Even though the air is dry,
I feel the earthy smell of rain.


The trail winds for miles
Across rocky outcrops, through game trails
As the sky grows darker, the driver
Falls back, and we wait impatiently
As he staggers to us, each
Time slower and filthier
Than the last; Each time
Looking like a rolling animal.

The driver mumbles to himself
And turns to me, speaking bad poetry
He has written as we walk.
He records his voice into a small
Electronic device, vibrating -
Disturbing waves of purple and blue
Resonate from the spirit world
Into the fading dreary light.


There is no trace of the promised meadows
And the way grows dark and focused,
At the pitch-blackest point,
My friend declares the point,
We have reached to be the point
He has promised, even though
It is a deep woodland
With rocks under leaves. It begins to rain


Continually; We scorch a brush pile
With a propane cylinder
But still are soaked to the bone
As we blaze away, throwing flames to the sky.
We crawl into the dry tent,
Where my friend immediately spills
The water from his canteen -
And so we spend the night soaking.


A denseness in my nose, traveling
Down, deep, lunglife, spreading
Out from the now-damp world,
From an alien stone hurled to earth,
Long burned into the mountain skin,
Long-living in the lonely crags,


Darkness - Chanting becomes unbearable,
A surreal narration of dreams
Into the night, into darkness.
Unable to rest, checking the pistol
At my hip, in case of bears – I tell myself
I walk out and fire into the night.
The forest stops, grows still
Shapes in the vertical lines watch unblinking.


Foxes cry out in the night, running
Along the rims of the Linville Gorge
Their chattering is human-like
Complex and necessary for them,
And I dream of them speaking in
Human voices, walking in narrowing circles
Defiling down narrow corridors of rocks;
Of mist, fur, blood, and bones.


The morning is cold, bone soaking.
I rise and walk along the foggy rim
Along the soul of the world,
Above the scalp of the ridges,
On fox trails and bear beds
My hands graze the lichens, stones
Wet from springs, from the terrible
Darkness deep within the world.


I have never felt the enveloping stillness,
A dimensionless quavering along
Invisible lines, boundaries beneath
The world, the pulsing of mountain skin,
Bloodstreambeats, structureless, yet taking
Me willingly. I am apart now, have
Left the world behind. I lie down among
The leaves, the soft decay. No time.

Legend of the Earth's Forming

Legend of the Earth’s Forming


A crinkle of late winter leaves
A leg moved, yellow
Scaled,
I counted three
Something must have chewed or torn the other
Finally, given up
And you rested,
And closed your wound
Kept on
Even though I had no thought of harming you
I must have been rough
Turning you upside-down
Watching at ground-level for your eyes to emerge
To see me through that impossible-colored lens
And finally,
You seemed to regard me
As you must have done other times
With other boys
Dogs
Crawling things
The old people from this country say
That the earth was carried on your back
As it emerged
After considering this
I think they must have seen you
As I see you
Because I have risked everything
Present, future
To move you many times
In many bodies
Over the harsh alien scab
Trusting that you must know
Some refuge
A trial to follow
From an ancient map
Made at the world’s forming

To Wake and Dream

To Wake and Dream

These stars that form
Are ever changing things
To shift like stones
And dirt beneath the waves
To hear and taste
The earthy smell of rain
To wake and sleep and dream

A Funeral in the Piedmont

A Funeral in the Piedmont

A clear sun semi-circle,

Flat and dusty cemetery off a two-lane Reidsville highway,

In the yard of an old wood church and tobacco barns:

No one cries.

Not from uncaring or meanness,

Only from not knowing what to do.

My uncle Rueben seldom spoke to others

And kept to himself, with his greasy instruments.

 - Off to my left a black man dozes in his digging machine

And accidentally knocks it in gear, lurches backward

Into a cement angel, crashing with a final destructive stone clap.

The preacher never stops

As my grandmother utters a bitter oath

With layers of old racism,

And a vicious personal insult to the man she apparently knows.

Her voice hums like a bitter string, and

I pinch myself through my suit, and finally dig a small knife blade

Into my thigh to keep from laughing,

Because she is so vivid in her description,

And because she means it and is still harmless

In the way that only old women can be.

 Summer, 1980s-

A long maroon Pontiac creeps to the edge of the driveway,

A large southern black woman

In a house dress and slippers

Shuffles up the smooth asphalt,

Raises her hand and cries out smiling.

I watch from under the sycamore.

My grandmother shades her eyes from the doorway

Walks from the carport,

Also smiling.

Memory-

I would like to hear the tune Bud would have played

If he had known about his own service.

I had often played his ancient Gibson banjo

Black and greased

Ringing cat-gut echoes

Heavy and humming- taught, stamped in Kalamazoo -

Which stayed under the guest room bed

As my uncle slipped farther away

Into himself, without caring.

He was the seventh born son

Of a seventh born son,

And so was known to be apart.

Sometimes his brothers would carry him

In their old cars to play in fire departments

Or the churches of Baptists or Methodists

To be a part of the loud ringing choir

And he would hear the words of mothers

And women, fathers and sons

All without understanding.

It must have been one long glorious echo

That carried with him all times

Through dark nights without dark

In the moving mouths of people

As others were born and died

He saw this without understanding.

Dark, summer, 1990s.

Music floats across the tobacco field

I stand in the yard alone

Outside the house

Where my grandparents hide themselves

From a world becoming another place

Neighbors have died

And the music is alien to them.

Inside the sun-circle:

Afterward,

I look backward out the car window

As the slick suited man drives us

And the dust settles around the upright stones.

The black man has righted the angel;

He readies the earth for the grave,

And my uncle, still silent

Is lowered again.