{"id":5276,"date":"2015-08-27T18:56:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T18:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","slug":"the-falcon-waiting-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/the-falcon-waiting-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Falcon Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAn elegance that pursues silence<\/em><\/p>\n

by Gregg Glory<\/p>\n

\r\n<\/pre>\n
PIG’S EARS<\/h2>\n
The gift of speech<\/em><\/p>\n
Sentiment is the key. If the reader can be thrown strongly enough in a certain direction, or into a certain mood, then that feeling can create a connective web or atmosphere that holds the whole poem together: the web transformed into a nexus of human-centered meanings.<\/p>\n
As with Wordsworth or Coleridge’s conversation poems, the reader is hip-checked by direct statements of strong feeling in the direction of the mood in which the poem will actually function as a poem and not merely a collection of statements. It is a wrestler’s work and no mistake. It is not the aesthetician’s golden ladder of words, nor imagination’s grand view, nor the jeweler’s precise chiseling of a potential diamond. It is a gross and direct appeal to the self-pitying piggy heart of common humanity that gives such poetry the emotive energy to soar. It’s the last weeks of an intense political campaign where rhetoric and competition have roiled winner and loser in a single vat. It is five seconds to go on the fifty yard line. Desperation, excitement, and commitment are all called up from the slop bucket of survivor’s guilt of evolution which has hazarded us this far.<\/p>\n
But how to achieve this peanut-cracking rhetorical gore and gong-show ga-ga excitement in the current age, when rhetoric, speechifying, and fine sentiments have been frowned from the field of human communication? Only in television ads, charity appeals, and the Sunday sub-culture of evangelical shtick are such techniques still commonly employed.<\/p>\n
Unless I was going to print my poetry on the side of a collection tin underneath the photo of an abused puppy, I was S.O.L. I thought to myself, How would Gomer Pyle propose to his lady-love and manage to be heard as more chivalrous than cartoonish? A proposal of marriage is a domestic moment of high drama in our reproductive lives, with a long shadow of consequences that hang from the act, casting back from the future a certain darkness or atmosphere upon the proposal’s moment. So, in imagination, I put myself into Gomer’s size twelve army boots and bent down on one knee. And shazzam! I saw Polly Pureheart a-blinkin’ down at me–so unbearably lovely in the moonlight near the babbling cr’k. And as much as I wanted to marry that Pureheart, and cherish and care for her, and hold her in my clumsy arms under the sighing weeping willow tree . . . . I, I, well, I just couldn’t say anything at all. I had been struck dumb by the immensity of the moment, and the intensity of my own feelings. The fear of rejection and the vulnerability of showing my truest soul were there as well, like a lump of flour in my throat. Yet, for all that, my intentions were clear to her, and Polly in her pity looked down with love in her eyes, and a simple, life-altering \u201cYes\u201d on her lips. I was blessed.<\/p>\n
What I took from this hillbilly vision was that clear intention–or direct statement of strong feeling– followed by silence, or a break from the intensity of that intention or feeling, can moisten the wry eye of the reticent reader, and cattle-prod a passive Polly into action. I wondered, with my personal penchant for potent possibilities and alternative scenarios, if a rhetorical question, sincere in the motivating gears of its feelings, could work as well as a bald blurt of hurt or happiness to create this space of silence in a poem– and which would then invite the reader to lean in and leer– not as a vampire umpire calling strikes– but as one of the dusty boys in pin-stripes ready to get dirty and knock some mud off of his cleats. I’ve tried this approach in the following poems too. (How’d I do?)<\/p>\n
A question, such as<\/p>\n
\u00a0     How can we talk about love when everything's wrong?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
creates a silence of need and self-doubt projecting from the speaker. If the reader has ever felt a similar doubt or moment of confused longing, then, I figured, a space of receptive silence and co-creation will occur. The poem just may succeed its way into meaning.<\/p>\n
A direct statement of strong feeling, like<\/p>\n
\u00a0     It's going to take a very great person\r\n      To just stand there and love me.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
creates a similar silent space. The adjoining observations about a menacing sky, an aggressive squirrel, and some quietly patient horses all give that sentiment its fertile dung in which to blossom. Exacerbating or contradicting–both–can call that statement into greater relief. The squirrel and horses have nothing directly to do with the feeling the speaker is bludgeoned by– and yet, in the explosive silence of embarrassed eavesdropping the criminal reader has been plunged into– these props take onto themselves all the concomitant feelings that the words of the poem refuse to provide. They are the willow tree and moonlight to Gomer’s gulping proposal, his brown eyes swimming with unsayable sentiments that must still–somehow–be understood if he, and, downstream, the species is to survive.<\/p>\n
Will you take my hand?<\/p>\n
GREGG GLORY\r\nFeb. 14th, 2009\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
MILES TO GO<\/h2>\n
This poem has no details\r\nIf you won't carry water\r\n100 miles in your hands.\r\n\r\nBreak through the skim of ice \r\nIn December, right behind that silent glass factory\r\nAll one tall shadow on the Raritan.\r\n\r\nWatch your hands shiver.\r\nFeel your wet cuffs the first 20 miles\r\nUntil the sky is a shard in your palms,\r\n\r\nAnd you fret about cutting your wrists\r\nAccidentally.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
LIGHTING ROCKETS IN THE BACK YARD, JULY THE FOURTH, 1969<\/h2>\n
Kneel down in darkness\r\nBeside my dark.\r\nFlow your free hand\r\nInto the rolling stack.\r\n\r\nEach breath anticipates the next.\r\n\r\nExcited, we lean\r\nNearer than the night.\r\nNearer than the spur\r\nOf sparks about to start.\r\n\r\nHold my hand.  Hold this match with me.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
CLIMBING MT. TABOR<\/h2>\n
I don't belong here, in this creation.\r\nThe clear air flies around me,\r\nOne frenzied blue wing escaping.\r\n\r\nThe path up is all grey wrecked stones\r\nMade naked where the runoff comes bursting in Spring.\r\nThey hint at the uppermost, topless spot\r\nAll bald flat bold long rocks\r\nVeined with autumn-leaved vines and dry ivies.\r\nNow I can see what \r\nI have been pushing for until\r\nMy head and shoulders are slick with afterbirth.\r\n\r\nOver the cliff, the landscape patches itself together.\r\n\r\nA bare, thin\r\nCigarette smoke of veiled haze\r\nPuts a varnish finish to the valley.\r\nThe Delaware lays like a wet, crooked stick\r\nAbandoned in a ditch.\r\n\r\nFrom up here,\r\nAt the brownish prow of lookout rock,\r\nI can almost see my whole stupid life.\r\nClouds assemble, whispering frigid things against me.\r\nI have no idea why nobody's here with me,\r\nWhy I have no lovers at my age,\r\nOr why I'm tearing my loafers out on a mountainside,\r\nScoring water off of strangers\r\nAnd trying to forget my face\r\nWith my back \r\nAgainst this cliff.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
DELIBERATELY<\/h2>\n
Deliberately\r\nI drove until\r\nThe only thing I was\r\nWas lost.  Scrub pines hunched\r\nLike dwarf men under the lowering roof\r\nOf eggshell heaven, each man bent into his own\r\nPosture of Dantescan agony.  I kicked uncomfortably\r\nAgainst the sterile pinecones large as a fist\r\nOr dud handgrenade until they rolled into the shadows\r\nFull of needles, with a sound like crumpled paper.\r\nThe patient preoccupation that had bade me lose my way\r\nLoosened like pneumonia phlegm with every cracking kick.\r\nNow, at last, quite lost, I laughed!\r\nNot even my own troubles could find me here,\r\nShadow-mottled as a forgotten fawn.\r\nUnder a wing of vines, beside some swirl of wet,\r\nI sat contemplative in my self-forget.\r\nThe vine-leaves' yellow eyes, all rimmed with red,\r\nOffered inedible tears of berries cheerily,\r\nWhich, if I ate as offered, would let the sick inside\r\nSlide up slick as a roar.  I smiled aside\r\nMy wry temptation to see\r\nJust what it was was in me,\r\nAnd pulled my fingers from the vines like a half-plucked harp.\r\nI put away my need to know\r\nJust what had gotten lost when I had gotten so,\r\nTo see it sized and sorted on some obscene plate\r\nCuriously served up\r\nFor I and eyes to eat.\r\n\r\nLow above, on a white dry pine bough overhead,\r\nThe sinuous weight of a great black snake\r\nWaits in its hisses.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
INSOMNIA<\/h2>\n
Better off dead,\r\nI keep poking my pillow with my elbow,\r\nLooking for sleep--\r\nThe cold pleasure of unconsciousness,--\r\nAn apricot kept at the back of the fridge\r\nSweating quietly in a lightless box\r\nUntil the sudden click of dawn\r\nBares its teeth.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
IF ANYTHING<\/h2>\n
There's something crappy in the sand along Belmar's shore.\r\nThe grains are too big, or there's too much weird junk\r\nTo run it\r\nSmoothly between your palms.\r\nTar from the pier pilings sticks\r\nIn your dungarees.\r\nAnd the Shark River inlet, no longer busy\r\nWith chaotic traffic or crab traps\r\nKeeps spitting at you.\r\nEven the dying flounder\r\nFrom some old drunkard's afternoon haul\r\nStares up at you to go.\r\n\r\nBut you stay,\r\nStuck on your perch and your thoughts--\r\nA little helplessly.\r\n\r\nAnd when the oil rig lights twinkle on like an evening dress\r\nAll along the bottom of the sky's deepening scythe of green,\r\nIt's hard to know what to call it.\r\nIf anything.\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
COMBING THE LONG BRANCH BEACH, 
I LOSE MY LIFE IN THE DEBRIS<\/h2>\n
I feel trapped in my old life\r\nLike a hermit crab that won't abandon its shell\r\nIt is so intensely curled\r\nInto its stiffened whorl of habits.\r\n\r\nThe seashore wails and wails\r\nIts single, filial demand--\r\nRepetitious as a herd of commodities brokers\r\nShouting in their calico patchwork of blazers\r\nUntil the final bell.\r\n\r\nHow can I change if the sea won't?\r\nMy yearning stands straight out like a flag, same as ever.\r\n\r\nSeaweed everywhere,\r\nBeaten brown and soft as a drenched felt hat,\r\nFits itself alluringly\r\nTo the suavities of the rocks,\r\nAdapting crash by crash by crash.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
WHISPERS ON THE COT<\/h2>\n
Nervous and warm as mice\r\nThe skinny cot at Camp O\r\nSqueals with our comingling.\r\n\r\nWet nose to nose, past midnight\r\nWe whisper the dawn awake.\r\n\r\nHow can we talk about love when everything's wrong?\r\n\r\nWe touch through frayed fingerless gloves\r\nIt is so cold.\r\n\r\nIt is so cold,\r\nOur breath wets the cinderblocks\r\nAnd almost freezes.\r\n\r\nOur shoulders get sore,\r\nFacing each other in the dark.\r\n\r\nLight comes into the room\r\nLike a page turning out of its shadow.\r\n\r\nBefore I could see your eyes,\r\n--Before I met you even,--\r\n\r\nI would cry remembering them.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
BURIAL AT SEA<\/h2>\n
This keeps happening:\r\n\r\nIn the field outside\r\nMist gathers in little clutters\r\nUnswept.  It glitters and sags.\r\n\r\nNothing in my life is very tidy.\r\nThe stamp collection from when I was 12\r\nBlows off the shelf in a windstorm\r\nOf colorful, cancelled leaves.\r\n\r\n        I am older than I was yesterday.\r\nWhen Lisa calls on the phone, casually blank,\r\nI don't care.  It hurts.\r\n\r\nShaving, I cut someone else's face.\r\nThe watery blear of blood flows away from him,\r\nDown the well-formed hole in the porcelain\r\nMade for the purpose.\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
“DON’T YOU KNOW ANYONE ELSE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH?”<\/h2>\n
The waters that tumbled us together\r\nNow are pushing us apart\r\nThe way sometimes pond ice\r\nWill throw over an old tree\r\n(A decaying oak even)\r\nAnd give its roots unwanted air.\r\nNothing is lost, and everything is changed.\r\n\r\n2\r\nWhat is the purpose of a fingernail?\r\nIt feels nothing and keeps on growing, \r\nEven when you're croaked.  The only time\r\nI ever noticed mine was when I lost one\r\nIn a dumb moped accident.  My thumb one.\r\nIt was OK though, really, or at least\r\nIt grew back long enough to cut me\r\nWhen I wasn't thinking.\r\n\r\n3\r\nThings keep turning out this certain way.\r\nThe moon keeps meaning something angry and sad.\r\nI hate that.  It makes me want to cry.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
THE BLACK RATTLE<\/h2>\n
Yesterday's lime, and yesterday's,\r\nSplit at the meridian,\r\nMummifies in its little ceramic dish.\r\nIts green is almost white,\r\nAnd it is dry to the touch as an almond.\r\nStill, I remember when it was\r\nFresh and bitter.\r\n\r\nNow, is there nothing else for the mouth to hold\r\nBut these thin syllables?\r\n\r\nEvery day, I wash my face\r\nBeside your dusty toothbrush, the black rattle.\r\nThe sky is square and bright in the window.\r\n\r\nWhen a man's love is mocked away\r\nDeath becomes beautiful.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A HARD MARCH<\/h2>\n
Stars drag and spark.\r\nCold ponds soften and go black in the March moonlight.\r\nValedictory icicles fall ringing from the eves,\r\nInhabiting my sleep.\r\n\r\nDeep in the fallow meadow's gopher holes,\r\nNear the golden hibernates\r\nHead down in their breathing dark,\r\nSpring ripens.\r\n\r\nGoodbye winter, goodbye love!\r\nNothing shall remain fresh in this winter's-light\r\nEven one more day.\r\n\r\nI lift my arm\r\nAs though it were a bough of evergreen waving.\r\nNothing can save us at this point.\r\nAnd I\r\nDon't want to.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
THE GIRAFFE<\/h2>\n
Some things are so proud. A giraffe, proud of its tallness, looks down with its wet stone brown eyes through Maybelline lashes keeping the dust of the sun out. Looks down on us as if we had fallen from the sky too and had forgotten how to get back up. We are the broken-hipped, the pitiable.<\/p>\n
But the giraffe moves on, too proud to grow hands and help us back to the sky-world. Taking slow, liquid steps as though pushing against an ocean we can no longer feel, her concern moves forward to what concerns her. And the pale afternoon moon follows her, I notice . . . indifferent to clouds or poems thrown like rocks or bouquets to bring the moon down to us so we could touch it and wash it and swaddle it with big hands in fresh cotton like a newborn baby.<\/p>\n
The giraffe is done with hands, done with distractions. There’s something else up there, something more important, something necessary. Something has made her spotted neck rise and rise for generations without losing the pull of its helium, the tautness of its string tugging on her shoulders, her nose high as if just above the waterline she has been pushing against all these eons refusing to drown, her lips outstretched as if dying of thirst to reach the tenderest, least green, smallest leaves at the tip-top of the thorn tree.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
THE SEA URCHIN<\/h2>\n
has a mouth full of feelers. It is careful about what it takes in, what it ingests for its own health. It has a hard shell and it traverses along its spines. Yet, for all that shell, those spines loaded with goading poison, it is delicate, delicate. An unwary foot can crush it, turning its delicately waving spines into fiddlesticks. It’s round as an eye, and as wet; a ball of lashes that can sting.<\/p>\n
What comes to this underwater oddball floats to it, mostly. Always it is surprised by what drifts onto its radar. Its small, central mouth is always open; always it is saying: O, o, o, o. Quietly it lies and lives in a world full of fast monsters. Barracuda, all sinister grin, speed by the bristling urchin unmolestingly. It walks, when it does, the way a starburst would have to– carefully on its extended points.<\/p>\n
To me, it feels hairy and lonely. This denizen of tidal waters and marginal sands that never ventures from its furry shell, leaves, at last, a washed up skeleton-ball children rattle by their ears. Shaken, it is still full of worry beads.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
IN QUIET LIGHT<\/h2>\n
The excitement of waking up alone in the morning\r\nHas left me.\r\n\r\nThe ceiling is closer than in my childhood,\r\nAnd less interesting.\r\n\r\nThe yard outside is immaculate and empty.\r\nNobody disturbs my snows.\r\n\r\nLooking at the frozen dogwood, weighted heavily down and down,\r\nBroken branches lay beneath like scribbled hieroglyphs,\r\nWands encased in cold glass.\r\n\r\nWhy is there pity without mercy?\r\nI think, Just as you start getting it right it all changes.<\/em>\r\n\r\n2.\r\nA starving coyote, new to the neighborhood,\r\nTrots from trash can to trash can, too weak \r\nTo tip any over and put his muzzle \r\nIn richness.  \r\n\r\nHis mouth is long and lurid as a croc's.\r\nHis tongue lolls listlessly,\r\nRainy red streamers from a bike handle.\r\nHis eyes rave weakly as he darts between cars.\r\nSongbirds on the snowy fence whistle down at him\r\nUncaringly.\r\n\r\nNo one here has put out even one raw hamburger patty.\r\n\r\nHe bounds with the weak lightness\r\nOf a birthday balloon weeks past its date.\r\nHis fur knots, clumped glumly, \r\nAnd there's a wet patch that defines some ribs.\r\n\r\nAll his life there had been enough.\r\nHe was strong and had his teeth.\r\nAlleys and fields were places to shop for blood,\r\nUntil now.\r\n\r\nHe stops stooping at Mrs. Crenshaw's,\r\nSteals a little left-out cat food, dry.\r\n\r\nCrossing his paws in quiet light,\r\nHe lays down carefully in a snowbank to dream\r\nAnd goes running all night long.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
LONG GONE SALLY<\/h2>\n
The stinkbug lay dead in the carpet.\r\nIn the middle of the room, in the static white\r\nAfternoon, a dull dear dust brown,--\r\nScarab-shaped, but not as sacred.\r\n\r\nI carried her to the dustbin\r\nWithout ceremony.\r\n\r\nThe house creaked for a long time after that.\r\nI was lonely.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
ROADSIDE ADMISSION<\/h2>\n
Listening is the pits.  Admit it.\r\nBut yet\r\nThat long stretch of highway\r\nAsks nothing, is always silent--\r\nAsking nothing in the dusty nothingness--\r\nUntil the littler kids get out at 3 o'clock.\r\nThe white line goes on and on like a dare.\r\nStumbling with drink, Steevio and me\r\nSwitched forsythia whips\r\nAnd traded hot licks from a paper bag\r\nBack and forth.\r\nWe kept kicking\r\nThe yellow, distressed row\r\nOf blameless forsythia\r\nUncharitably, very uncharitably.\r\nSome random car\r\nHad hauled ass through the urine-yellow hedge\r\nLast New Years.  We ducked in\r\nAnd slipped down the slope jubilant with mud,\r\nSpilling everything.\r\nOur arms were numb and warm\r\nAs after a fight.\r\nA delicate old cat skeleton\r\nEmerged like a yeowl\r\nFrom the black mud bank behind us.\r\nBlank white sockets stared\r\nFrom where the rear wheel had peeled it up.\r\nStared\r\nAs if we cared.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
AT THE LAST SHORE<\/h2>\n
Having grown up some summers by the beach\r\nI always hear the ocean, wherever I am,\r\nComing down out of a long tunnel\r\nFrom far away.\r\n\r\nLong mists hang around the gravestones, the even graves' grass,\r\nSo much mischief night toilet paper.\r\nI'm here, Dad, can you hear me?\r\nEven the twigs break with a gracious softness underfoot\r\nIt is so wet.\r\n\r\nThe mist is on my face mysteriously.\r\nI am a mirror, here.\r\nMy breathing thickens like the blood of a pear\r\nRunning a long droplet along the paring knife\r\nUntil my finger feels it.\r\n\r\nBaumer, Bowen, almost, almost.\r\n\r\nIt's so wet,\r\nEven the souls of the place must be saturated with it.\r\nEven your soul, Dad.\r\n\r\nIt's alright, I guess,\r\nRunning into you here.  I came all this way\r\nTo damned Alabama, and you\r\nWaited.  What else\r\nAre you waiting for\r\nIn the flagrant dirt?\r\n\r\nAt my back, a dull looped booming comes\r\nFrom the tunnel's other end.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
SPEEDING<\/h2>\n
Flowery Xs flip past the passenger window.\r\n\r\nDan, Mom, Dad, Granddad, almost Geoff\r\n\r\nWho breathed suspended\r\nBy steel and morphine and coma\r\n\r\nFor a month in that room alone\r\n\r\nWith the light boiling through the blinds\r\nBlindly\r\n\r\nUntil the pain came back.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
FINALLY, SOMETHING<\/h2>\n
Anyway, it's like this, too.\r\n\r\nI am getting so old, so long in the tooth,\r\nMorality is finally creeping over me.\r\nWhat my life should be\r\nIs longer than what my life can be.\r\n\r\nLife is like an airport.\r\nEverywhere in the world to get to\r\nBut you're stuck where you are--\r\nChewing peanuts at a neon bar.\r\n\r\nAnyway, my heart-meat \r\nBeats its somnambulist's drum.\r\nAnyway.\r\n\r\nI don't want to have to ask permission!\r\n\r\nHeaven is like this, see.\r\nA giant empty hanger, walls all windows\r\nWatching the skirl and stop of snows always.\r\nNobody stays very long,\r\nAnd no layovers.\r\n\r\nI keep wanting to be dead, and I keep\r\nWanting.\r\n\r\nAnyway.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A SHYNESS<\/h2>\n
Sepulchral Perth Amboy\r\nRears past the Driscoll bridge\r\nWhite and final as any heaven.\r\n\r\nThe Raritan overpass feels so high\r\nOnly clouds\r\nCareen off the railings.\r\n\r\nBelow us in the sky\r\nA shaggy hawk abandons the chemical bay\r\nTo play in the updraft.\r\n\r\nHis wings move like hands\r\nToo excited to ever stop clapping\r\nIn loud gratitude.\r\n\r\nIn the city,\r\nLights stipple on\r\nLike fine rain across a pond.\r\n\r\nSycamores and rowans\r\nPoke through the sidewalk,\r\nTearing the concrete with careless ease.\r\n\r\nTentatively, stray commuters\r\nFind homes among\r\nThe towers.\r\n\r\nThere's a shyness there\r\nI don't know how to know how\r\nTo understand.\r\n\r\nSomething in me loves this dark night\r\nAnd keeps on loving it.  Somehow\r\n\r\nNever falling asleep again\r\nFeels right.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
TODAY IN HISTORY<\/h2>\n
Two bees hurtle past me\r\nToward the pink azaleas.  \r\n\r\nOnce,\r\nI was mystery enough\r\nTo interest them.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
GOOD MORNING DOG<\/h2>\n
Twice before like this:\r\nDawn talked the wet hills white in Cliffwood.\r\nThe catbird said allegiances to the air\r\nFrom a nailed and narrow balcony.\r\nThere's a coolness in the nearby square of grass\r\nWhere the exploited moon will wreck itself \r\nExhaustedly\r\nSome evening soon.  There, by the busted gutter\r\nTippy yawning lifts his leg against\r\nAnd pauses,\r\nAnd paces past to the gum-gemmed pavement\r\nBlack--beyond all knowing black, I swear--\r\nBeneath its apparent glare.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
INAUGURATION DAY<\/h2>\n
Once, I was adrift\r\nOn Cezanne's jumble of pastel icebergs,\r\nMy feet swallowed in shadow.\r\n\r\nStasis, not stillness, filled me then.\r\nI wasn't awaiting a kiss,\r\nWet in my yellow slicker beside the empty mailbox.\r\n\r\nI didn't know which way to go in those days.\r\nNow I know the answer is Just go.\r\nAnd the landscape'll follow you like a loyal hound\r\nLicking bacon grease from your open fingers.\r\n\r\nThe road goes all colors\r\nWhen you tread it.\r\n\r\nFar as I can squint, and past that.\r\n\r\nChange grew in me, unnursed,\r\nLike a seed of the sun\r\nToo hot to touch.\r\n\r\nYet I swallowed it whole, sucking my lips,\r\nAnd it sits in my belly today\r\nBurning.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
FAR, FAR AWAY . . . .<\/h2>\n
Far, far away . . .  the steep mountain path,\r\nSkinny and tricky, 10,000 feet up.\r\n\r\nGreen lichen inches over boulders and stone bridges;\r\nA waterfall stands suspended in mid-air, a bolt of blue silk.\r\n\r\nThe moon waits in a deep pool, glittering.\r\n\r\nI climb into magnificence.\r\n\r\nA single crane will arrive.\r\n\r\n--Shide<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
BORN SOAKING<\/h2>\n
Born soaking, man lives in the dust,\r\nA bug struggling in a sand bowl.\r\n\r\nHe jumps up, reaching and scrabbling;\r\nFalling, his mouth fills with sand.\r\n\r\nLove comes sudden;  a mist, no more.\r\n\r\nImmortality escapes his fingertips,\r\nHunger and greed flow infinite within him.\r\n\r\nMonths and years shift fast as a river;\r\nWet again, he lies lonely and old.\r\n\r\n-- Hanshan<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
OUT OF THE SILENCE<\/h2>\n
Out of the silence I am coming!\r\nLike a stone that has learned to cough,\r\nA little,--\r\nA little, grey cough\r\nNext to the roaring, pouring roughhouse song\r\nOf the sea.\r\n\r\nYet still, I am coming!\r\n\r\nThe tambourine attached at my hip\r\nShivers to be shaken--to be taken up\r\nAnd touched and whacked on the thigh\r\nUntil its silver leaves fall like the forest in autumn:\r\nEach leaf a tinsel bell: vivid, dying, ecstatic!\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
LAST DRAG ON A MARIJUANA CIGARETTE<\/h2>\n
There's not enough words to carry\r\nWhat has to be carried.\r\nEven the birds,\r\nWith their sharp mouths full of unbelievable angels,\r\nCan't say anything about it.\r\n\r\nAbove me, and above them,\r\nThe sky.  I can't look at it.\r\nIt's bright as the reflection off a discarded can.\r\nA few tendrils of clouds\r\nHone it to ribbons of razory blue.\r\n\r\nThis afternoon, floating on the bronze smoke in my lungs,\r\nI lean back against the deep hillbank\r\nAnd let the grass carry me\r\nA thousand miles dreaming.\r\n\r\nA lone red ant\r\nSmall as a spit-clean cherry pit,--no, smaller,--\r\nBites my knuckle, fiercely proud.\r\nI smile indulgently.\r\n\r\nAnd then another language altogether\r\nCrawls along my skin, hair by hair,\r\nScreaming: Wake up!\r\nAnd, at the same time,\r\nWalks like a water spill across a counter.\r\nThere beneath all that blue blaze of sunlight, on that hillside,\r\nIt is saying, saying distinctly\r\nAs an owl's invisible wingbeat:\r\nBe still.<\/em>\r\nStill.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
WHEN SLEEP COMES<\/h2>\n
The flies have died off for the most part.\r\nThis time of year they lay uneaten\r\nIn the small grey tents of their bodies--\r\nStill too solid for the wind\r\nTo take them with it.\r\n\r\nThis time of year\r\nFrost discovers jewels in the unkempt grass.\r\nThe spider's web blows unrepaired\r\nAmong the ruby hoops of wild raspberries.\r\nAll the song of summer is moving south,\r\nAnd I am moving too.\r\nThe robin's nest tilts half-frozen in the storm drain,\r\nUnlamented.\r\n\r\nWhen sleep comes,\r\nImprobably, on my side in the crunching briars\r\nIn sunny bare woods growing October cold,\r\nWhen sleep comes then, I go down\r\n\r\nTo meet my shadow.\r\nAnd my shadow,\r\n\r\nFrom whatever burning place it lives its dark life\r\nAnd seeks release\r\nComes to me.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
NEAR MIDNIGHT<\/h2>\n
Near midnight, I get up from bed\r\nTrailing smoky dreams from my pillow\r\nAs I head to the toilet.\r\nJust past the open window,\r\n\r\nDull \r\nWith a darkness I do not understand,\r\nDull \r\nAs the blood in my slippered feet,\r\n\r\nSomething tangles in the telephone line--\r\nA starling trying to get through perhaps.\r\nIt struggles to get free\r\nWhile I struggle to ignore it.  We both succeed.\r\n. . . .\r\nMy dreams are long gone\r\nAs if they'd been dead forever.\r\n\r\nWhen I finally turn back toward sleep,\r\nFragile laughter\r\nTitters in from the windchime.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
PASSING A SPRING PUDDLE, I WAVE AT MY REFLECTION<\/h2>\n
Afraid of falling through too soon,\r\nI do not wait for what\r\nWaves back.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
THE ONLY ROAD IS LONELINESS<\/h2>\n
August comes, hot and open\r\nTo our swayback porch, ticking in the afternoon heat.\r\nEven the old pasture horse is too sleepy to whinny\r\nAnd abandons apples to the bees\r\nUnder the solitary tree's silhouette\r\nDark as an iron filing.\r\n\r\nHow can I cry when no one is watching?\r\nWho is there left to surrender to\r\nIn this heat?\r\nTears trail tears\r\nUntil the only road is loneliness.\r\n\r\nAnd memory, that bitch-bastard,\r\nIs worse than handcuffs,--\r\nA bright pair of water rings\r\nSloppy on the formica.  The little \r\nGlittery stars seem trapped there,\r\nAnd entirely beside the point.\r\n\r\nOutside,\r\nThe decaying magnolia blossoms\r\nSoften and rot like burnt rubber.\r\nWhen the wind holds their flayed hands up,\r\nThey seem small and useless:\r\nBroken jacks\r\nNo little Jill will ever collect.\r\n\r\nSuddenly,\r\nA wind jimmies the screen door awake.\r\nAnd suddenly,\r\nThe dirty flowers are everywhere--\r\nIn my lap, in my face, in my mouth,--\r\nCrying\r\nLet go, let go.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
DREAMING OF SLEEP, THIS IS WHAT I GET INSTEAD<\/h2>\n
For weeks now,\r\nEvery night I go to bed\r\nAs to a grave.\r\nMy breath, a steam engine all day,\r\nIs knocked out of my body.\r\nMy body winds into the sheets,\r\nSour and heavy.\r\n\r\nWhen the harsh dream comes,\r\nI am crucified on a kite.\r\nBenjamin Franklin's lightning key dangles\r\nFrom my staked ankle.\r\nI pass over farms the colors of a mellowing bruise.\r\n\r\nFucked-over farmers\r\nLie stone asleep\r\nIn the dainty, starved arms\r\nOf their wives.\r\n\r\nTheir beards grow long into their pillows.\r\nTheir red, heavy hands\r\nPull at absent tools.\r\nTheir breath stales.\r\nNo horse looks up.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
OVER THE JERSEY SHORE, IT IS SNOWING<\/h2>\n
We had stopped talking an hour ago.\r\nHad stopped listening \r\nAn hour before that.  You know how it goes.  \r\nWith friends, everything is permissible and \r\nEverything hurts.\r\n\r\nWe held the winter rail down by Belmar\r\nHours maybe, \r\nAs the light hail hissed\r\nInto the sand.  \r\nSomehow, we thought,\r\nWe can take it if the ocean can.\r\n\r\nThe ocean was towering over the shore, \r\nLike it sometimes does, brown foam splitting \r\nIts pure, curved glass.\r\n\r\nNo gulls cried on the rocks.  \r\nWater slowly turned \r\nThe color of evening.\r\nBreath chafed our lips, and kept chafing.\r\n\r\n2.\r\nThe dune grass was too sharp to sleep in, we knew.\r\nMice curled featly in their nests,\r\nScenting the airs' raw salts.\r\nThe parking lot emptied out,\r\nWhitening as the dark drifted in.\r\n\r\nNewspapers, full of yesterday's news, \r\nShuffled restlessly about.\r\n\r\nI began to feel\r\nHow mangy everything human is.\r\nEverything humans touch, everywhere intrude.  \r\n\r\nIce slipped \r\nOver our eyelashes, and our ears\r\nFilled with little hailstones.\r\n\r\nTo be honest, I can't tell if I was alone then\r\nOr if I am alone now.\r\n\r\nA german shepherd circled back to taste a dead cigarette. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
SHIMMER<\/h2>\n
Knowing and wanting to know\r\nAre two different things.\r\nI know what I want to know\r\nIs innocence.\r\n\r\nNo matter how many times my boot with the hole\r\nGoes through the thin shimmer of prismatic ice\r\nOver the mud-tan road-puddle,\r\nI want it to be the first time.\r\n\r\nThe first broken bone, the first bruise\r\nThat blossomed fist-shaped on my face\r\nBlue-black to purple to yellow\r\nWas innocence.\r\n\r\nThat first day, slides were all surprise.\r\n\r\nClouds slide by dizzyingly\r\nLying in Billy Costigan's backyard.\r\n\r\nThe smell of grass and slickness in his sister's pants\r\nLeaves me serious and elated.\r\nSudden things rush to my ears,\r\n\r\nAnd our tongues click through the ice.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A SECRET<\/h2>\n
Growing old can be OK,\r\nBut you can't like it.  Like stealing.\r\n\r\nThe grizzled woodchuck behind the house\r\nIs so fat, he rolls downhill\r\nTo his hole.\r\n\r\nHe squeezes in seamlessly\r\nLike water through a narrow neck.\r\nWhen I hear my daughters scrape home late,\r\nBanging and forgetting the screendoor,\r\nMy shoulders ache with kept-back laughter.\r\n\r\nWho knew that serried grey whiskers\r\nLooked like snowy pine trees on a round hill\r\nOn my chin?\r\n\r\nThe calendar fritters its paper numerals away\r\nIn a time-lapse wind tunnel.\r\nThere's a sound inside the house of echoes.\r\nEchoes move sounds around inside the house.\r\n\r\nSomething strong\r\nPulls a weighty object from my grasp. . . .\r\nThe discontinuity seems friendly and appropriate,\r\nLike the popemobile.\r\n\r\nDays are lemony sun-moments,\r\nNights harbor hours of whispery self-talk.\r\n\r\nSo much has already happened!\r\n\r\nSo many times already\r\nI've rolled down this same hill. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
THE USUAL<\/h2>\n
My country is lurching into another slick mistake.\r\n\r\nAs usual, my country is making sex sounds \r\n\tas it does it:\r\nOh, bam! ah.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
LAST NIGHT<\/h2>\n
Last night a poet slept in my living room.\r\n\r\nHis hair was long as a river.\r\n\r\nHis eyes made the corners light up\r\nLike a theater usher's probe light.\r\nNo shadows lived there.\r\n\r\nIt's as if a wild dog has slept here. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
CUT ONCE<\/h2>\n
If you want to live in a civilization,\r\nYou have to put the pieces together yourself.\r\nEvery day.\r\n\r\nIf the steeple leans, don't blame the wind.\r\n\r\nHey, getting your hands dirty isn't the only part.\r\nAfterward, there's singing.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
THE FALCON WAITING<\/h2>\n
My friend Dan's a ghost now since Christmas.\r\nIn this mist \r\n\r\nThere's only a green line of fence\r\nLast night's rain did not dissolve.\r\n\r\nThen the falcon is there,\r\nSnowy in the humid morning warmth.\r\nHe lets his silken shoulders shake.\r\nHis compact head moves like a ball\r\nRolling in your palm.\r\n\r\nHis face is all severe eye,\r\nAnd one closed hook.  \r\nWhen he stares my way, I can't guess what he sees.\r\n\r\nThere is no time in him,\r\nOnly flight that has not yet \r\nRisen to his wingtips.\r\n\r\nWhen he goes from the wet fence\r\nTo the barn's peak,\r\n\r\nIt's like watching an old man shuffle\r\nAll his belongings in one gunny sack.\r\n\r\nLooking back in paler air, I have\r\nNo memory of what we carry with us.\r\n\r\nNo weight keeps me on the ground.\r\nThere's almost nobody here.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
HUMILIATION IN A GREEN MEADOW<\/h2>\n
The sky crowds my shoulders\r\nAs I kick the stubborn tufts of grass in the field.\r\nIt's too blue, or something.  I don't like\r\nLiving inside an eyeball.\r\n\r\nIt's going to take a very great person\r\nTo just stand there and love me.\r\n\r\nAcross the grass,\r\nA gray squirrel emits its chuk-chuk challenge\r\nAt a dog, head down on the ash trunk\r\nDarkened by night rains.\r\n\r\nThe unmolested grass is long and wet.\r\n\r\nI consider how the horses\r\nWill come stand here all day,\r\nAnd all night\r\nAnd just take it.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
HEADING NORTH<\/h2>\n
Taking the Garden State Parkway north\r\nTo a dentist appointment in Brooklyn,\r\nI notice the cauldron of fogs at Cheesequake\r\nIs all colors.\r\n\r\nThe mist makes my glasses cry.\r\nI curse stubbornly,\r\nWiping them clean at the filling station\r\nOn the ratty, untucked hem of my shirt.\r\n\r\nThe ugly gears in my car\r\nWail and whine\r\nLike rabbis at a smoky wall.\r\nSomehow today, every day is too long to endure.\r\n\r\nIt's only later I remember, falling asleep\r\nUnder the pink floodlights of my apartment,\r\nHow this awkward swan,\r\nBeating slowly, rose from the marsh\r\nOut of the soft fogs, his dawn wings\r\n\r\nFlashing sharply.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
INVADING HEAVEN, PRETTY FAR BEHIND THE FREEHOLD WATERTOWER<\/h2>\n
Come closer.  Say nothing about this,\r\nEspecially to the cops.\r\nFollow me following the stray dog track\r\nThrough the close woods behind the undeveloped pastures of Freehold. . . .\r\nNevermind the pine resin getting on your windbreaker,\r\nThere's more, and worse, ahead.\r\nWait a sec.  There, over there.\r\nStop a minute by this overloaded honeysuckle,\r\nAnd shut-up already. Can you hear that?\r\n\r\nFor a moment, we are almost \r\nSilent.  We wait.\r\n\r\nThe dirt waits.\r\n\r\nPearl globes pulse, on-off, through the forest awning.\r\nDuck down.  Here, through here.\r\n\r\nGathering sweetnesses in my bare arms,\r\nI make a benediction of taking your hand.\r\n\r\nThere's a secret waterfall near here,\r\nBig with rain runoff like a pregnant deer\r\nPattering through summer brambles.\r\nThis is where all prayers eventually arrive,\r\nFlushing with ejaculatory force out of the black tar paper tube\r\nAnd splashing, frisky and sheeny, over jammed slate\r\nUntil the light, and the light,\r\nIs beaten out of it.\r\n\r\nYou say no good will come of this.\r\nAnd nothing does.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
FOR THE NEXT 1,000 MILES<\/h2>\n
Stand on this wing with me.\r\nHold my marred arm\r\nUntil the scars feel like fingertips.\r\nThe wind is in our faces so hard\r\nMy eyes go dry with tears,\r\nAnd your smile runs like paint\r\nBehind a propeller.\r\n\r\nIs this what it feels like to be a bird?\r\nDeaf with the engines\r\nAs the Earth veers off weightless and blue?\r\n\r\nAlone in our greatness together,\r\nWe close our eyes.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An elegance that pursues silence by Gregg Glory PIG’S EARS The gift of speech Sentiment is the key. If the reader can be thrown strongly enough in a certain direction, or into a certain mood, then that feeling can create a connective web or atmosphere that holds the whole poem together: the web transformed into […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-falcon-waiting","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7329,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/7329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}