Passages Written in Early Spring

1

Creaking wood rubbing against wood

And fallen particles all around

The ancient smiling dragon wound

Bespeak futility neither bad nor good—

Leave questions blowing through the vernal air

Tempting a grasping mind to solve

And stay what must perforce revolve

Around a gash a god could make and bear.

Only draw in blood the mark of death

And fix your seal upon this failing flesh

Till ghostly wind inspire freshened breath

And all my cells and every sense unleash

To toll the knell for what has passed away

And sound a reveille to welcome day.

2

Jam for breakfast, an open honey pot

Among clattering, clanging calls to celebrate,

A mirth that reason cannot calibrate

Nor readily toss into the compost lot

I insistently affirm.  I have been crucified,

No joke, and so am through with sighs

And worries and worshiping the stuff that dies

And from the fingers of the dead is often pried

Loose.  I’ll get on with laughing, making

Others laugh, and in fairy dancing

Wrap a great old pole, and taking

Nothing, not even time for glancing

Back, commit myself to endless gladness,

For my God’s not happier by my sadness.

 

3

Far back in a packed closet

No light shines easily there

Is a box decorated, a simple box

That once held new shoes

And now is stuffed with two

Weeks’ worth of love notes, poems,

Scraps of original art, carefully

Torn pieces of construction paper,

Quotations of writers, sages, saints

Of one sort or another.  She filled

It when our marriage was on its way

To death—a hope chest, given

Me to pore over and riffle through

During a week away.  It is the last

Vestige, this box, of thirty years

Of trials, errors, joys, waiting,

Sins and salvation, of

Warmth and coldness,

Babies and laughter, and great

Nervousness at times.  I

Know it’s there on the shelf

Where I put it last, unable

To let go of all it represents,

Of dreams and promises, vows

Even and even odd moments

When I knew the best of me

And the worst played together

Alloyed under the canopy of

Grace.  I rarely look into it

When I reach for Christmas

Decorations and it falls down

Into a crack, or shift around

Some camping gear when comes

The season for it.  Once or twice

I’ve raised the lid to see

If all’s still there, or whether

Some has decayed, some expired

As the law of entropy wields its will.

I muse sometimes on why it is

I cannot bear the thought

Of trashing mementos of a distant past,

Old pain growing sharper in some

Ways as unstretched muscles

Ache in early morning, wanting

Notice, dissatisfied until used again.

Sometimes it is not love or happiness

Or yet shame or guilt that clings

To us like beggar lice to breeches

In a wintry field—

But unspent tears of what we wished and prayed for

Shoved way down deep into a box

Rarely opened, emptied, shared,

A little casket full of grief

In a dark place away from everyday

Routines, unscheduled for healing.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

4

Catharsis only comes to certain souls

Whose generally uncalculated wounds

Undressed and raw have throbbed and oozed till sounds

A dove-cry piercing stony hearts with holes

A size that sunlight joyfully admit.

O happy fault in human evolution

That wrongs collected see no dissolution

Till great the pain and more the cost of it

Exceeds relentless pressure to repress

What frightened egos do not will to face.

I name all my accumulated stress

And pitch it straight into the lap of grace.

And bows the soul unfettered and unbarred,

Purified and whole though wholly scarred.

5

If swamps are places teeming with life,

Then forests seem to me the land of death.

For three days I’ve meandered

Around woods here and there,

Impressed by all the dead I see—

Fallen logs, a floor of mealy leaves, rotten

Monuments woodpeckers have perforated

Left dying in the spring, emptied of all bugs.

In search of a place to spend a day in hermithood

A little grove I spied

Identified as Hiskitt Cemetery by a little sign.

Two or three old gravestones leaned about,

Decrepit after centuries of weathering,

Their tiny environs established

More or less by a border of decaying

Wood, itself a fitting fence for funeral plots.

I chose a tree, sturdy and inviting,

Against which leaned a smallish marker

To make a kind of headboard for my day

Thinking to keep company with and for

The nameless dead one sleeping next to me.

Just beyond the circle of twigs and branches

I arranged defining my cell

Two old gravestones bent towards

Each other, possibly the way those marked

Had done in life.  Rain and wind

And no doubt snow and ice as well

Had erased the words off one

Beyond reading.  The other tipped

Backward, though, in such a way

As to create a shelter for the lettering

While contributing its other side to

Mold and moss.  I felt at home

Among these few long rotted corpses

Preceding even the oldest trees in sight.

Cemeteries are precincts of peace

And peace is what I came to get.

The dead no doubt could teach

Me a thing or two of peace, so

I asked them to let me in

On what they’d learned.  Silence.

They seemed to say absolutely nothing,

As the dead are in the habit

Of doing.  So I asked the tree

Supporting me what it

Had to tell me.  The tree said, “Be.”

I’ve passed the day almost

Between “Be” and nothing. 

And finally I think I’ve heard

The Word, perhaps the Peace too

I’d hoped for in early morning.

Be.  Nothing.  Or.  Be.  Silent.

It’s as much me to jot this down

As it is for a tree to scan the sky.

I am who I am, though

Who I am is still a project in the making.

As for nothing, nothing seems

Right.  The great silence of the

Thirty-four-year-old wife who died

In June and her now

Nameless neighbor in the grave

Is a clear message on my way to living—

Nothing is the telos toward which my life is moving

And perfect nothingness will be the proving

True of all my gifts and giving—

6

On Saturday of the first weekend in May

Many years ago, a gang of college boys

And their dates struck out with noise

Of blaring radios and horns to pay

A visit to a swimming hole.  Their fun

On unrolled blankets in a field

Delighted some, and others’ hearts were healed

When arms enwrapped them in the midday sun.

I was among their number, and for once

Began to feel accepted as a brother,

A rare experience for one reason or another,

Not being favored by my father’s other sons.

Tied to an oak above a deep place in the river

A rope invited swinging out and falling

Into the water.  Splash produced a shiver

Of either thrill or chill, maybe calling

Adolescents to experience a learning:

Letting go is the soul of all discerning.

April, 2015

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2015.