September \ The Assessor's Report To The Governor

Nancy:  Every September a restlessness as real as a memory comes on;  it's as though thousands of years of migrations left some marker in our cells.

September

Unseen,

the leaves are sealing themselves off from life.

September is secrets,

noon suns that lie,

night filling the lowgrounds with mist,

a tensing for journeys that were.

September is choices,

accepting small deaths on faith,

relinquishing known lands for new.

September is songs without singers,

follow the herds and the stars,

move to the harvest grounds,

sharpen the spears.

September is blunted,

by the walls,

by the fires,

by neglect.

Sealed off,

our ancestors pass us unseen.

Alan:  When I first moved here “from away,” I sometimes felt like a functionary of yore, sent out to a far corner of  the empire and required to file dispatches on everything I saw.

The Assessor’s Report To The Governor

In this country, many men have bad backs.

Women often damage their hands and wrists in seasonal occupations.

The children work fast when they have to:

a distinct advantage.

Dwellings frequently stand incomplete:

perhaps only a roofed-over cellar to a family.

Some houses, in towns and from a prior era, are sumptuous.

Many have burned.  There is much pride in ownership.

The chief dangers to the workforce are logging, fishing, clamming, 

     berry-raking, hunting.

It is recommended, wherever possible, to promote regular industrial  

     employment.

Small-scale farming may reduce income needs:

difficult to record, this should not be encouraged.

In-migrants have reinforced the local population;

after many years, they become similarly inured to adversity.

Barter is rampant, a terrible evil.

A stubborn independence runs through all things.

Poor roads and distance from markets put a limit on commerce.

Travelers bring much-needed cash and are generally welcome.

In the event of war, the populace will have to relocate.

It would be unwise in the meantime to risk major investment.

Swift Shadows \ September. Distant Thunder

Nancy:  All it takes is the pass of the hawk to suddenly silence the chattering morning.

Swift Shadows

Sometimes I see it:

the improbable leap of the fox,

the snap of the jaws, or,

the body of the hare, hanging,

swinging, as the big cat

turns its head, stares,

and disappears into the trees.

But sometimes,

this morning, early sun,

bright air, I see nothing

but this: a puff of feathers

falling from an empty sky,

an almost visible silence,

immaculate light.

Alan:  To be open, expectant without expectations, in this moment: that is enough.

September.  Distant Thunder

Two ravens

high,

small

The seals

dance on the

water

far, far

away

Swing \ Trimmed

Nancy:  My feet still know the moves, my mind hums the tunes, my senses replay the routine: lift the needle, flip the record, wind and go.

Swing

When I least expect it, the yammer

of news segues into one of those “best of”

features and I’m not sitting here

in a sagging cabin on the Bay of Fundy

but it’s 1944,45 something like that

and I’m sweating and swaying on the 2nd floor

of the old firehouse, so hot that the purple

ink stamped on the back of my hand

is smearing.  We didn’t air-condition July

in the forties.  The firemen put on

a dance, 25¢, every Friday night in July

and August, 78s and all the water you

could drink and good luck finding a partner,

three hours of maneuvering, or, if you were shy,

of slouching or twirling at the edges of the room.

Eventually the chief called last dance and finally

even the shy guys picked out their girls

and the old floor whispered under penny loafers

and the dirndl skirts and eyelet blouses melted

together and flowed down the stairs into the

night, breaking apart and drifting into the shadows

like a string of pearls.

Alan: Middle age can feel like adolescence inverted: the same disconnect of self and body, body and surroundings, except this time it’s all diminishment, all the way down.

Trimmed

The man in the mirror

looks to be in his fifties, older than he feels,

but there it is.  He reveals

bad teeth, mouth beyond lopsided,

responding affably to the barber’s small-talk;

and neck – much neck tapering to the suggestion of chins.

The man receives his modest trim,

a little off the ears, leave some to comb on top,

grateful for hair enough though gray;

and what are the kids getting these days?

“Mushrooms! mushrooms, mushrooms!”

And then: “Want one?”  A jest: a jape.

Ear-hair clipped, eyebrows tamed again,

the whisk and he is rising,

surprised and pleased that it is less

than expected: surprised to be pleased,

wondering at his small good fortune,

pocketing the three dollars change.

In the far high corner the sports channel

endlessly reveals people with impossible bodies

performing the impossible.  The man

is departing the mirror, or disappearing

into it, considering: next the bank, laundromat;

maybe, as reward, coffee with a little light lunch.

The Rag Man \ Prayer For My Old Age

Nancy: Because my Granny told me so, I believed.  Hid behind the porch railing or the thick screen of the Moonvines.  My realistic bogeyman had a regular route.

The Rag Man

It was a well known fact that children

who misbehaved were taken away by the rag man.

When the rag-man came, you searched your heart.

The sing-song.  Any rags?

Any bones?  Any bottles?

Hide.  Repent.  The bottle-man

with his familiar, rag-bone horse.

Not the ice man, egg man, bread man,

vegetable man, who called smiling.

The shivery man.  Sack of bones man,

bag of rags man.

Oh the awful quiet bundles of the rag man!

Look, don’t, don’t get caught

looking, at the rag-man.

He’s going down the road singsonging

past the house

past the drive

past the last tree

and he’s gone!

Nothing this week for the Rag Man.

Alan: Watching my mother move through the stations of the cross that is nursing home care today, I could see that, whatever else, she remained generous with what she had.

Prayer For My Old Age

Oh, may I not be a saver

of small things, like my mother

and so many old women

and the occasional surviving

old man.

Let me not accumulate

used tea bags in a saucer

or opened single-serving-sized

salad dressings in the fridge.

Let me not hoard newspapers,

plastic bags, books, or ideas.

Let me relinquish, as she is doing now,

phone numbers, motor skills

and the days of the week.

And as for memories, when the time comes,

may I take them out, one by one,

and give them up lovingly

to the people sitting beside me,

to my right and to my left,

who have none.

“The Rag Man” first appeared in East of the Light (Stone Man Press & Slow Dancer Press, 1984).