Poetry

Spring 2009

 

 

Rob Wright
from Letters to the Lost

xi
To Nicole

You greeted me and said, "My father's dying."
Your face did not show grief at all, but closed,
And I watched as another self was trying
To wrap its shape around the self I know.

Your face did not show grief at all, but closed,
No longer light and mobile, with a smile
That wrapped itself around the self I know.
I sat with you and listened for awhile,

No longer light and mobile. A smile
Crossed my own lips of embarrassment
As I sat with you and listened for awhile.
I tried to feign a Taoist disengagement.

Words crossed my lips with embarrassment,
As I tried to fake the art of being wise
While putting on a Taoist disengagement.
I avoided looking hard into your eyes.

I could not fake the art of being wise,
And so said trivial things — quoted
Rilke, avoided looking hard into your eyes
And felt a impotence down to my bones.

Your face did not show grief at all, but closed,
And wrapped itself around the self I know.
You greeted me and said, "My father's dying."
I could not fake the art of being wise.

 

xii
To the Horse on Queen Lane
(Stockton, NJ)

Each time that I approach the wire
The same ritual is observed,
As if two courtiers were greeting
One another in a mirrored hall.

You teach me manners — all your tribe.
You shake your mane and bow your great
Canopy of hide that's wrapped around
Your intricately jointed bones.

While on my side I stand stock still
And wait for your approach with arms
Held straight and loosely at my sides
Until your breath blows on my face.

I like to think that I can see
Myself reflected as a point
Inside the pupil of the ball
Tucked in the socket of your skull:

A tiny figure on a great
Panorama of blackbirds,
Fence posts, fields, the running wire,
The bales of timothy and straw.

My oldest memory is of
A brief encounter with your clan.
A cigarette was broken up
And laid across my father's palm,

And I was held up to watch
A monstrous head and teeth dip down
To pick up all the strands with lips
As skilled and flexible as hands.

Today I've brought no cigarettes —
No treat. I show my open palm.
You thrust your muzzle in my hand.
Your breath is cool. Your bristles prick.

The tongue gropes and the teeth —
Those gateways to a fort of hide —
Pinch sharply on my palm. You shake
The chain that's linked around your bit.

I'd like to strip and run with you
Across the interlinking fields,
And climb up on your flanks and feel
Your bristle raw against my thighs.

Then naked, dark and light, we'd run
Until your foam flecked on my legs.
Then blown-out, we would stop and cool
Our muscles in the winter rain.

You realize I've brought no treat,
No cigarette, no sugar cubes.
You stop your nuzzling to crop
The frost-burned grass along the wire.

 

xiii
To Myself

I step out on the street and disappear.
Inside my room I feel the boards secured
Below my feet in mortices and joints.
But in the air the sunlight passes straight
Between the stitch and counter-stitch and heats
My long articulated bones.

I pass others with their faces set against
The flow of shock and counter-shock, and trained —
By habit, I suppose —to seal themselves
Against the press of phones and painted shoes,
The flannel, and the swinging leather bags,
And only feet are taken notice of.

A girl jogs up. Her skin is stretched around
Her moving frame. She's bound up in herself —
Compressed inside her flesh and stripped to fight.
She looks as if she'd like to break through me
And all the other people in her path
But is constrained by numbers, if not time.

She's angry, but pure body in her rage:
Big fleshed, as if her spirit's shrunken down
As both her thighs have flexed and fattened up.
She stamps down from the paving to the street,
While muttering a private curse at birds
Who've gathered at some broken bread to feed.

The Poles believe that city birds are souls
Of those who died before they found true love.
But the count — great as it is — is far too low;
They'd make a lonely city to themselves:
An aerial Manhattan or Lublin,
And fight for cast-offs dropped onto the streets.

I step out of my door and disappear.
Inside my room I feel the naked boards
Below my feet in mortices and joints.
But in the air the sunlight passes straight
Between the stitch and counter-stitch and heats
My long articulated bones.

 

 

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