Air
' '
THE THREE GREAT RINGS CLOSE
IN UPON THEMSELVES REVEALING
-DARK PLACES
capture the sound of toppling waves
a small boy
burning eyes shut tightly
races back and forth
back and forth feet lost
in the white swirl of
insane water
The great moon of the planet earth
balances on an edge of water
a vase so ancient it can no longer
hold its cargo of light
which spills out across the sky
to our outstretched bodies
losing heat through the
cold sand.
laying as still as crabs do
just before they scuttle sideways
into their small empty places
to hide
Steven F. Daly
4 * 4 i :9
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A TERRIBLE STORY
TRAIN RIDE
We will voyage up the hills
To where the river's power lies
Scalloped in beds
And crusted by ages into rock.
Our climb will drain the fields
To plains of snow and straw
And we will go to lands where
The track is kissed as god
And where the wind will bless us,
Rustling through our locks
Of drying hair
And down the beds of centuries.
Kirk Hampton
Fall/69
When he was seven, he got a black Lionel
train. All that night he was laying tracks
in the cellar, stopping and starting, trying
the patience of Wabash Pacific Great Northern,
and Texas Chief. Their hum cleared the dark
like a candle. They ran all night, till the legs
of chairs kicked them over like centipedes.
In six months they'd nosed through the walls.
He heard them tapping the wires, pleating
the asbestos and shaking the beams.
They always brought back news of the interior:
sounds of plaster in transit, his mother talking
to herself, the teeth of love.
So he kept he passage open; they came
and went like cats. Growing older, he set them free.
Now he goes to the gameroom. Pulling a silver nose,
he maddens the pinballs to light his fortune.
Always he listens for trains, telling him what to do.
Somewhere are temples built to the worship of travel
and under them, trains buried in tracked cells
are combing the earth and playing his life away.
Nancy Willard
DETROIT
I have seen a cool river
which flows among the red and yellow
pennants of the gas stations,
and through the black brick
of the car factories
when I see through them.
Smoke does not dirty it.
It does not disturb the drought
which burns the evergreens
on the square lawns of foremen.
Here willows grow
from the moss on the bank.
Under the mist of the branches
I recognize William Blake,
Thomas Jefferson,
Huckleberry Finn,
and Henry James.
They are thinking about fish.
They are watching the river: it flows
through the city of America
without fish.
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PHOTO
Donald Hall
the picture showed him standing by the car,
stiff as he always was for pictures,
squinting sadly in the light.
he did not want to show his age,
he had begun to back into the shade beside the porch
when he saw the camera risen
and he knew it was too late.
pride had not deserted him,
and he refused to smile.
i had said,-the day before,
that i would not be home again.
his-eyes grew dull, but he remembered
--he was always quick-
to cough before he'spoke again.
"i will come to visit you,' he said.
his thinning hair was turning grey,
he hated parties and could not even -give his love away.
eyes," i said, "that would be nice."
the picture does not show the night before.
my mother says he came to bed as usual.
he must have lain awake, his grey hairs flying
before the open window as the rain fell in the garden,
dreaming of his three years at college
and smiling to himself:
that he could love an unathletic son.
after,i remembered our first baseball game
and other little things i had not counted on.
THE FREAK SHOW
I am Giuletta, the bird woman. I
the rain man and learned to fly.
Together we walked the high wir(
over trees, churches, bridges, green
straight into heaven. We saw the'
after a child blows it, and were m
Though I had nothing but him, I
Even in falling he blazed like a sta
The next night I went on, knowir
A brave girl, the clowns told me."
I knew that people who never fall
danger is all and their blood goes c
Listen, the ring-man said to me o
You've lost your shape. You've gc
You're old.
Waiting in the dark trucks I am c
to nibble the sweet fruits that the
We walk among the orchards and
the silence of tensed feet on the b
So much walking affects the appe
says-the dwarf with a sucking leei
And so much sorrow gives enorm
I am round and simple as a Persiai
so earth-shaped now no wire coul
or support the weight of my. falle
When you hear the dwarf crying
of my marvellous flesh, you will c
Blinded by footlights, I hear you
and whisper in the pit below my
My God ! Arms like tree trunks ci
Must be hard on the heart, a womr
O friends, it is very hard on the h
For your.delight I devour loaf aft
of stale breadtill the. silken tents
and wide-eyed children, bogeyed
remember my cavernous mouth
Sometimes I pick at my food like
The taste of the wire in the apple
e-.
,'
Steve Daniels
Winter/b7
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