2009-10-18T10:19:00.018+01:00

Anchor

I’ve sloughed off skin so many times,

cast rattlers in the sand behind.

In Phoenix and Los Angeles

I burst into brand new selves,

cleaned out the ashtrays and moved on.

The Captain understands all this,

the four careers but no gold watch,

as he unwraps a new needle,

latex gloves arranging tubes

like some old deckhand tying line.

A last smoke halo sailing off,

the iron buzzing in his hand,

he etches lines on my triceps:

a kedge that moors me to a shore

less fading than my identity.

I tell him this and he just smiles

as if he’s blessing death away

with something certain to survive

the blood vessels and graying hair,

the dead reckoning that remains.

Published in Measure, Volume III, Issue 2, 2008

Living Will

While filling in his living will

he discovered the will to live again.

For unacceptable qualities of life

he checked the boxes on the form

for chronic coma, feeding tubes,

persistent vegetative state.

For a week he lived his testament:

didn’t sleepwalk through the frozen foods

or ignore the glorious fluorescence.

Quickened by the canteen’s quiche,

he lost track of what a colleague said,

smiled about a project gone awry.

He notched his deepest ever breaths,

exhaled slowly like a yogi,

was dazzled by his prism paperweight.

Published in Smiths Knoll 39

Watershed

You’ll see both rivers from that watershed.

And though it’s understandable to cling

turn gently to the one that lies ahead.

Even if the edges of an umbra spread

and you worry over flocks scattering

you’ll see both rivers from that watershed.

Although you will have gathered words unsaid

and unsung love sighing and blustering

look gently to the one that lies ahead.

Though you know well the frame is limited

you’ll wish another spring were issuing.

Accept both rivers from that watershed.

Of course you’re bound to be unsure, misled

by science and religion wondering.

Turn gently to the one that lies ahead.

Perhaps there are no images to dread,

no forests of darkness and reckoning.

You’ll see both rivers from that watershed.

Go gently to the one that lies ahead.

Published in Agenda, October 2007

Ice Cycling

The puddles of a sudden thaw

were refreezing fast to sheets.

Centered above the seat and frame,

I didn’t tip the scale an ounce

but pedaled at an even speed,

did not accelerate or brake.

It struck me how this symmetry

was only more neutrality,

another fence to perch upon.

I caught the sketch in black and white:

slush pixels spattering off spokes,

a rider denying gravity.

Then I was sprawling on the street,

resolved by a cracked clavicle.

Published in Red Wheelbarrow, 2008

Still Life

On any given bough

in any given spring

buds sprout to sprigs

inexorable;

then stalks stretch vertical

towards open space,

perspective, light.

Prune in spring,

new lengths

are there the next.

Leave them be

and they become

twig and branchlet

living to quiver

against slate skies.

The sunset seems the same,

as do these skeletons of beech.

Children walk from school in pairs;

traffic buzzes back from work.

She’ll be mist, rise in rain,

become a single crystal droplet

dangling from a brown branch

waiting to fall,

come to muddy soil,

abide, a weed of stiff strength

with berries feeding birds,

disperse, arrive

the egg of that desert fish

that waits for years

beneath parched creek bottoms

to be born in a flash flood,

carried to a sudden lake,

evaporated into mist.

Yes sweetheart, it’s fall,

when the leaves turn

to golds and reds

then brown on the ground.

And winter waits,

perhaps with snow,

for Christmas

and your birthday.

Spring will surprise

with warmer days,

leaves of green

brightening the trees.

Finally summer comes

and you can swim,

run naked in the yard.

Then another fall will come.

Published in Poetry Salzburg Review 14

The Montefortino Helmet*

After airports and autostrada

I’d driven slowly back in time

through quilted hills of vines and groves

and into potter’s fields of grain

lining the road to village roots,

the cradle of my maternal line.

I’m led out through the family plot

into the Montefortino fields,

the homeland of grandmother’s tales.

We taste tomatoes from the vine

and cousin points to a Celtic shrine

hiding in oak and asphodel.

In this spring of mother’s people,

where Italian names on family trees

have tilled these hills for centuries,

he shows where archaeologists

also sifted through the sediment.

Their harvest wasn’t sentiment

but a Neolithic necropolis

of fifty Celtic skeletons,

the former settlers of these hills.

They wore the golden crown of Gaul

and the helmet now buried again,

under layers of museum glass.

*This Gallic helmet style later became standard Roman

military headgear and is now called the Montefortino Helmet.

Published in Italian-Americana, Spring 2008

Holes in the Ice

A farmer friend has goldfish too.

He keeps them in the concrete tank

they used to use for pig urine.

They’ve now weathered two winters there,

at times beneath ceilings of ice.

He says an inch of water is enough

and then dismisses them till spring.

Today his keyed up kids report:

both fish glimpsed through the cracking ice.

My own little girl’s brow crinkles.

She thinks about her fish at home

glassed off from weather, sky and fear.

We created a world for them,

bestowed upon them love and light.

She vowed responsibility.

When white-spot struck their paradise,

fantails flailing in the pump’s stream,

we delivered them from their plague.

She says her fish are happier than theirs –

where water and refracted light

cast fathomless patterns in her room.

Through widening windows in the ice

the farm fish bask in the stark sun

that hers will never know.

Published in Equinox, June 2007

Darius Degher

Watershed

Ice Cycling