Is, Is Not

by Tess Gallagher

  of the face, otherwise subsumed

  by filigree of blue tendrils. My gypsy soul—out

  of which I reach for words to

  carry my life and the lives of those I love—

  gazes like a fountain of wonder from every corner

  where your brush touches down. You know

  that the soul of a poet, like blue gentian

  growing alone in the forest, should never be

  lifted from its incubation of shade. Providing

  against this, you hide the stem, the long pedestal

  of neck Modigliani might have exposed. Your life’s work

  forbids the soul-death of any living thing—so we are joined

  in our reaching and finding, our having slept

  under the same stars, wandering the fields

  of our ever-emerging imaginations,

  as if our vagabond natures could exact something

  precious from air itself. Your poetry—of strokes,

  of line and color—un-words me, stammers me

  into myself like laughter in rain, so I am

  lifted by your intensity out of self, by

  gratitude. In every painting you bestow a democracy

  of means as we gaze, remaking the world as

  accessible and renewing to even the poorest of us.

  What can a poet give in return—I who suffer often

  the condition of word-poverty in the universe

  of the ready-made?

  Waterborne moonlight can lave a shore. It’s

  yours. Candles lit in a circle charm

  and protect. I give them to you. The sky-white bay

  below my window. All yours—with its ocean liners,

  cruise ships, tug boats and skiffs. They are to dream

  on. May a halo of hummingbirds attend you

  on your walks so you’ll be recognized

  instantly as a deity from the Administration of

  Delight for the Banishment of Misery. While I’m

  at it, wouldn’t you like a few golden eggs that won’t

  bother to hatch? And a bunch of blue grapes picked

  by hands from your birthplace, Morelia? I’ll also

  empty my sack of about-to-be-dreams near

  the basement wall that is your easel. There is

  no last thing I wouldn’t give you, my friend

  and collaborator in the offices of Mysteries Unlimited.

  This poem, like your portrait of me, can never

  end or be finished, only pause, waiting to be seen

  back into our precious continuing lives

  made of light, of air.

  for Alfredo Arreguin

  on the gift of his portrait of me

  RIGHT-MINDED PERSON

  Most of her stories are about

  getting her way, so after even ten

  minutes with her you feel

  you’ve gotten the upper hand

  in your own life. You’d be exhausted

  from taking her stick to the world

  and hearing it whimper that way,

  whack! whack! on its big

  her-way butt. She has purpose and

  moxie. Her head rises up like

  a hen looking for the next thing

  to peck. How I love those bull’s-eye

  moments when at least one person

  is up to the task. But that’s the trouble

  with hen-yard justice and the rectitude

  that runs it. Someone

  could always show up with an axe.

  I’d always walk away from

  these sessions like a woman

  in the ’50s caught out in her rollers and

  hairnet—unprepared, mortified—

  her bingo stare magnetized to my

  wire-sprung curls. That woman trounced

  everything in and out of sight. But

  if she had dreams, I never

  heard of it.

  IN THE TOO-BRIGHT CAFÉ

  The men are comparing

  killing methods for moles.

  I’m ashamed to say my ears

  prick up. Moles have tunneled

  into my potato patch, erecting

  fluffy earth-filtered cathedrals

  both sides of the fence. What

  are they up to down there

  with my baby eye-sprouted

  potatoes? They could be cousins,

  potatoes and moles, each turning

  the earth’s darkness into something

  edible or a way to thieve what light

  is always holding back. Once I caught

  my yard-help stomping the dirt

  over their openings like putting out

  underground fire. Gas. The collaborators

  in eradication are pumping it into

  tunnels as they drink black coffee

  and tuck into eggs over-easy

  with hash browns—“burn ’em!”

  Pellets, some kind of poison.

  They mull this, asking for

  salsa and Tabasco. Are they

  sending down heat-

  seeking devices? Just don’t

  say “dynamite,” I’m begging.

  A voice by the window claims

  he heard of a guy who hooked

  up a loudspeaker and piped in

  so many decibels the moles popped

  up like mushrooms, and you didn’t

  have to pick them off with your

  shotgun because they just kept

  running. The men are laughing

  by now and I’m thinking: they’re

  just talking, right? That merry

  cash register by the door

  is ushering a regular out, allowing

  the moles a brief reprieve. The men

  wave their friend onto the street

  as I holster my purse. My sympathies

  buzz the enormous windows like

  doomed flies, those reverberating

  in plain sight in the corners

  where darkness will fall

  and everyone above ground will

  have gone somewhere to sleep

  this all off. Me? I’m opening

  a little café-of-the-mind where

  moles can talk to flies. Intricate

  labyrinths under the apple trees

  and glassed-in fantasies of escape

  at head-high altitudes. Moles paddling

  through earth or flies foozling the air

  over steak on a campfire near

  the ocean. Moles will claim daylight

  oxygen overrated—preferring air

  filtered by darkness on the run. Flies

  utter “What cute snouts you have!”

  and moles have to consider life

  with wings. By the time I get

  home they’ve unionized and are

  working out maternity leave and

  pensions. Above it all, elk antlers

  wait for tinsel and mistletoe, or

  tune in to moles going on and on,

  rhapsodic about ants after rain. But

  because I’m the Boss, I interrupt

  at the top of my smart-ass Boss-voice:

  “Hey, how about a little respect!

  Whose café is this anyhow?”

  iv

  If your time to die has come

  and you die—very well!

  If your time to die has come

  and you don’t—

  all the better!

  SENGAI GIBON

  LET’S STORE THESE HOURS

  while you are with us, but not

  like a memory that says something

  important is over so we look over our

  shoulders to figure out what. No, let’s store

  your presence in our blood and breath

  so when we step, you step, and we never

  get to any future which puts even one of us

  out of sight. Let’s take hands

&nb
sp; just to make sure. And if anybody stumbles,

  we’ll all stumble onto our knees

  like a sudden joint prayer. You’re cracking jokes

  the whole time like always

  because always is a safety zone

  you carry us to when the health headlines

  undermine the candelabra of the moment.

  Come into our ancient cave of delight

  and let us scrawl onto your heart

  the graffiti of angels who favor bison and deer—

  those earth signs by which any future welcome

  might embrace you as tenderly

  as we do. Because we are helpless with you

  to hold back the days and hours

  sweeping over us like a magician’s cape.

  You let us be helpless together—which

  is a special gift that takes down

  the night sky, like a woman taking in her wash

  at dawn, spilling starlight from shirttails

  and sleeves, into the dew-struck grass.

  For that you will never leave us. For that

  these words turn up their palms in supplication

  and innocence. And to receive,

  as the sea-air of words does,

  every nuance of your only-ness among us.

  for Jim Fisher

  SEASON OF BURNT-OUT CANDELABRAS

  The sunken blossoms have melted

  from the rhododendrons as surely as wax,

  leaving ragged claws

  the garden books advise to “snap

  off.” I could do this all day

  —the narcotic jerk of my wrist,

  the sticky juice of beauty come and

  gone accumulating on fingertips,

  its debris tossed to the ground like

  ridiculous party hats crushed

  while a lot of somebodies got drunk

  and danced all night.

  My hands flick stem to stem until

  memories fumble my labyrinths, my

  caves and alcoves. Way back

  in there I remember a woman who was

  gorgeous and young, who let an old man

  take her to bed. She wanted to experience

  everything from the inside out, and

  probably there was a little alcohol

  in the mix to help ambition along.

  This man had a brain like Grand Central

  Station, unbelievable traffic coming

  and going. He was courtly, a gentleman.

  She considered she was sacrificing herself

  on behalf of experience, that kind of glib,

  young notion. He was a great kisser,

  putting everything that was slipping

  elsewhere right up front so promise

  crashed through to a whole other dimension

  where you didn’t really care if it ever

  got satisfied. What a surprise! She wasn’t alone

  as with some of that young stuff, panting

  past her like locomotives, who

  left the station empty and in aftermath

  leaped out of bed for a smoke. Her sweet

  old man took his time. Before sex they

  would have a great meal at a great restaurant

  she couldn’t afford. Candles would have been

  lit. Music of the sultry twenties tumbled

  over them like fountains alone under stars,

  say in some Italian piazza at midnight,

  though that phrase would never have occurred

  to her then, since she hadn’t been to Italy. You

  could say this experience was like visiting

  an exotic off-the-map island with room enough for

  just two bodies. If he wanted rejuvenation,

  she was sure he got it. And she?

  She felt that kind of old that savors everything

  to the last. They threw their bodies away

  while they accomplished all this, and that young

  alabaster cocoon of hers with skin a challenge

  to velvet, became something transparent,

  like the idea of never-being-old. They met

  a few times like this until his reason for

  being in that city took him out of even

  her country and to where it was unlikely they’d

  ever meet again. But somewhere now, with

  age-spotted hands like mine, she could be

  tossing the gaudy aftermath of rhododendron

  blossoms to the plush of lawn, hauling him back

  from whatever death he must surely

  have had while we were both busy throwing

  ourselves away on others, becoming those old

  soul types who ripen young, maybe as an

  unforeseen consequence of being quenched

  and revived too often, before they know

  much about life. It’s only luck

  I lived long enough to understand who

  in that fated pair was doing the sacrificing.

  THE BRANCHES OF THE MAPLE

  have stepped back from

  their white dimension, their beauty

  of barren thatch forfeit to a rim of snow

  holding on by its clutch

  of cold. Rain in the night

  changed all that, took

  the laden slopes of evergreen

  boughs as challenge. Seldom do

  they bend so penitently

  as they did this winter. Released

  by downpour

  they arc again toward

  sky. My getting-younger

  seventy-year-old friend has

  returned from Burma, teaching

  English to young monks. He sends

  a photo of them smiling, says

  they are “poor,” knowing the word’s

  injury revised by their

  delight-quotient beaming

  out into the universe.

  Gazing at them, the single bough

  of my unburdened heart sloughs off

  its snow.

  for Lage Carlson

  YET TO BE BORN WEATHER

  From inside the drought

  it’s all we think of. Low

  hanging puffy clouds,

  promissory but secret

  in plain sight—like

  the pregnant teenager

  buying Milky Ways at the grocery,

  pretending to just be

  getting fat.

  With the weight of it,

  we also are yet to be born. We

  yearn and get a fever for equivalents,

  suffer midnight hungers, then toss

  all night trying to carry a dream

  of rain into morning. Thirst allows

  wild things to be called up by

  the tame. Birds flock to the birdbath,

  deer nose the trough left under

  the apple trees. The chipmunk

  scribbles itself down

  the hemlock

  to the half-buried tea cup

  we filled from the faucet. As long

  as the reservoir holds out

  we can spray the inverted stars

  of rhododendron petals.

  We are like school buildings

  closed in summer and not

  reopened in September. Where

  are our children’s excited

  voices? Where the ringing

  of bells through packed

  corridors? How can we be

  so full and empty

  at once? Trees

  that endured many things

  turn brown. Yet a glossy green

  taunts from native salal

  living on ocean fog. We

  murmur like two gray voices

  reduced to one injunction, both

  noun and verb: rain!

  We live only in the future now

  like the ever-yielding moon

  and the light-giving dying

  of stars.

  I
WANT TO BE LOVED LIKE SOMEBODY’S BELOVED DOG IN AMERICA

  —those you see let run, let cavort on golf courses,

  ears flapping—papillons, breed painted

  by the masters, gazing up

  like cherubs at their overstuffed mistresses

  in the lounging days of other lost

  empires. Bounding past flags, they orbit

  the solitary figure they possess, swirl

  the green knoll, not led or managed, tethered

  or commanded. I know they are

  fed by hand on a lap as they age; palms up

  the moist offerings arrive. They pick

  and choose, leaving something behind

  to indicate they are aware of bounty, of the bounty

  bestowed upon them, the love with its lap,

  its pamper and cloy, the voice above them

  at a height like a wooden flute riffling the universe—to

  soothe, to mollify a beloved glance among

  comets and dying suns. Theirs not to be

  held like coyote or slow-eyed wolf

  at the rim of the fire-circle, but

  invited in, tempted by the half-picked

  carcass, delivered from snarl and tear,

  approach and withdraw. Still, wildness

  confuses my tameness. If I scorn,

  you supplicate. If I cower, you assume

  my past was of the usual brutal sort that leaves

  my like—abandoned. If so, let me

  be abandoned in America, then sucked up

  by the greed of guilt. Pull down from the high shelf

  the one thousandth variety of Bison Mixed with

  Chickpeas. Oh, America, allow me one day

  of your righteous disdain

  of poverty. I have a longing, a passion

  to belong to something heedless and full

  of mock-conscience. I might design a few

  domestic habits to let it seem

  I’m adjusting. You wanted a slave, a heel-licker,

  and to enter the house first

  with masterful stride. But I changed

  all that with your beneficent rescue

  of me—my pleading gaze,

  as if worship came naturally to me, whereas

  it plunders me, scrapes and hollows me out. What

  had I hoped for in this intimate duet

  to which I proffer only the arsenal of teeth

  and primitive memories of a hunger

  that knows how to tear

  life out by the throat? And I gave that up,

  for you? Caress me, my Lilliputian centaur.

  I have a much-delayed appointment

  with adoration, with the mercy

  of your half-baked causes. Let me scratch out my

  little-American-dog-will, leaving you

  my rhinestone collar that used to casually strike