The Blue Anchor / The Earthquake / Ordinary Detail
The Blue Anchor
The future weighs down on me
just like a wall of light!
All these years
I've lived by necessity.
Now the world shines
like an empty room
clean all the way to the rafters.
The room might be waiting for its first tenants—
a bed, a chair, my old typewriter.
Or it might be Van Gogh's room
at Arles:
so neat, while his eyes grazed among phosphorus.
A blue anchor.
To live in the future
like a survivor!
Not the first step up the beach
but the second
then the third
—never forgetting
the wingprint of the mountain
over the fragile human settlement—
The Earthquake
Two people wakened suddenly by an earthquake
accuse each other: You pushed me out of bed!
The floor is cold, they're disgruntled, they start to laugh.
Back to bed. The little hills
just beginning to show dark along the horizon
fold their paws and shove off to sleep again
embracing privacy.
But what can I say for the one who sleeps alone?
in a child's cot? Another dream?
She imagines she must have parachuted out of bed
to escape.
She accuses herself.
Stubbornly, in a mummy-roll of blankets,
she lies awake explaining her usual day.
Ordinary Detail
I'm trying to write a poem that will alert me to my real life,
a poem written in the natural speech of the breakfast table,
of a girl spooning yogurt, pausing, the spoon held aloft
while she gestures toward the exact next turning of her thought.
It would have to be a poem dense with ordinary detail
the way the sun, spilling across walnut and balled-up napkins,
can pick out cups, plates, the letter from which someone has just read aloud,
with evenhanded curiousity, leaving behind a gloss of pleasure.
And yet this poem too must allow for the unseen.
Last night the girl dreamed of a triple-locked door
at the head of a short flight of steps. Why couldn't she get in?
How to take possession of that room? Will it be hers to keep?
Remembering, she loses track of her sentence, frowns suddenly, smiles
excusing herself to the others. A friend's brother died of AIDS.
Sensuality is not the secret; it's more like redemption, or violence. . . .
The girl is walking furiously, under a mild, polluted sky.
In the Last Few Moments Came the Old German Cleaning Woman
Our last morning in that long room,
Our little world, I could not cry
But went about the Sunday chores
—Coffee and eggs and newspapers—
As if your plane would never fly,
As if we were stopped there for all time.
Wanting to fix by ritual
The marriage we could never share
I creaked to the stove and back again.
Leaves in the stiffening New York sun
Clattered like plates; the sky was bare—
I tripped and let your full cup fall.
Coffee scalded your wrist and that
Was the first natural grief we knew.
Others followed after years:
Dry fodder swallowed, then the tears
When mop in hand the old world through
The door pressed, dutiful, idiot.
Rent
If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let's have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.
If the rocking chair's arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.
I don't want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle's flame when we eat,
I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.
The Winter Road (Part 4)
Where I have been
Where I have been is of no importance
To live to be a hundred is of no importance
only what I have done with it
But we love the particular
Where I was born
Where I was born is of no importance
torn shoe, nursing mouth, patchwork-cushioned chair
still rocking quietly in the light wind
of a late summer evening of some life
Nor how I have lived.
with a handful of rocks
a wooden bodhisattva in a niche
a black door
and the continuous great adventure of the sky
Only what I have made of it
what I have been able to finish
To live to be a hundred is of no importance
This landscape is not human
I was meant to take nothing away.
The Flashboat
1
A high deck. Blue skies overhead. White distance.
The wind on my tongue. A day of days. From the shore a churchbell clangs.
Below me the grinding of floes: tiny families huddled together
earth-colored. Let me explain, the ice is cracking free.
They were cut off unawares. From the shore a churchbell clangs.
When the ice breaks up it is spring. No
comfort, no comfort.
2
And here is that part of my dream I would like to forget. The pursuer is at his desk, he is leaning toward me out of his seat,
he is my torturer who assumes we think alike. Again and again he questions me as to which national boundaries I plan to cross.
Are you a political activist? No, I'm a teacher. But already the last villagers have been swept out to sea. We are cruising north
of the Arctic Circle. Without haste he locks my passport away in his breast pocket. Was I wrong to declare myself innocent?
3
(I did not protest. I spoke nothing but the truth. I never spoke of that girl who kneeled by her skyscraper window, falling without a sound through
the New York City night.)
4
Now it's our turn. Three A.M.
and the Queen Mary is sinking.
All is bustle—but in grays. Red lanterns crawl here and there.
The crew makes ready the boats. One near me, broad but shallow,
looks safe, women are urged, the captain will be in charge.
Far down now: a trough. A smaller dory rocks
in and out of our lights; black fists grip the oars.
Room only for six—we will
all need to row.
For a moment I hesitate, worrying about my defective blood.
A rope ladder drops over. My voice with its crunch of bone
wakes me: I choose
the flashboat!
work,
the starry waters
(c) Jane Cooper. All rights reserved. Audio (c) 2001 Jonathan Blunk.
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