Pigeons
Your letter arrived
today from Zanzibar.
The hand
was yours, but
the ink had gone green,
victim of the peculiar
side effects of oxygen
and distance. I picture you
gone from Africa, sipping
liquor I’ve never
heard of on some Thai
island in the South China
Sea. Might as well be
the moon, Mars, Montana.
Is it bright there? Hot?
Are you pestering
flies, spreading
some exotic oil, butter
on your unfamiliar body? Are you alone?
A million questions. They are like faith.
I see you in a plastic chaise lounge
beneath a canopy, a curious vision —
vaguely erotic, slightly familiar.
60s music is playing
with no precision.
I feel I should know the words,
something anyway, but I don’t
know anything at all
about this scene.
The serenity is overdone, like
vanilla pie.
Your eyes are closed.
You’re sweating
barely breathing
wearing yellow
nearing stillness.
I see you —
you dream
twitch.
You said, from Zanzibar undated,
you were coming. I’ve been seated by
this dripping fountain since,
pigeons gathering closer, shitting and
cooing at my feet and hips.
Not one has taken flight.
For all the walking they do
pigeons must find it very hard to fly.
They prick about, nodding and scratching.
They pop into the air, whallop down,
accomplish no distance, waste their time.
The neighborhood cries out for
imagination. My house
is just up the street. You’ll
know it by
your name on the mailbox,
the picture of your dead cat,
alive, nailed to the wall.
Get up in the air, fight.
I’ve lured the pigeons so close
we’ll never want for food.
You could bring the necessary chill.
Fly.
Mocking
He sang as if there’s nothing to it, barely
Moving, as if that sound was magic.
He sang, cocked an ear, waited
Sang again.
As day is the song he made
All night is the quiet.
In morning, he sings again
As if singing is enough
He sings another song, a song of whales
He heard once, distant screaming
Barely alive
Another, he tries, another, a cat
A breeze, robin, mouse, singer
He sings and she listens
All summer is the song he makes
All fall, all winter is the quiet
She listens, listens, listens
And there is only the song until she goes.
Fishing Current
You find yourself up to your armpits in fear
so cold it stuns your blood to slime,
your feet seeking purchase
against the current on what
must surely be the pure-
oil bottom of the broken James.
You pound against the forces
one hand beating the water
the other flailing a slender
rod against the useless air.
You pull on the delicate staff
as if it could hook something,
rescue you, drag you up
from your certain fate. But there
is no hope below, above.
Suddenly you rise, your head
among the living, your feet
entwined in prey. You stand,
at last, on a rock signed
in Greek, and cast, and win.
That night you dream the shadow
of the office tower that crept
toward your safe rock is driven
to darkness and all about
tails rise to the sky
and what pass for lungs
draw deep.
A parable
That cardinal could boil mud
in the Dismal Swamp. She perched
in that Midlothian hickory well back
from the beaten path sometime toward
noon. Since then the cat
hasn’t missed a twitch or flutter.
He is smitten. He’s been still
as Tutankhamen all day
drooling with anticipation.
She doesn’t even bother preening
just twists a bit, pecks a stray
feather, leans over slightly and slight,
flashes a little hidden plumage
unconcerned as a pre-adolescent.
Still he sits, gazing up,
soaking in the smallest recognition.
Was that stroll up the branch for him?
That cockeyed peek? That cute little chirp?
Then off to the right, a bright
utterly different flicker.
A flash of blue
and he is gone.
Bat, hanging
Someone is shuffling cards she said, her three
in the morning face giving the tale
real possibilities.
So I rose up, reluctant to leave the grasp
of the other dark world to join her nightmare fantasy
of Alice among the royalty. But there, dry
as a brown sock hung between the Esprit robe
and gone fat Army fatigues, was a bat.
Simple as a comma, it might as well have been a free
gorilla. It hung inscrutable, absolute silence,
exuding danger in its stillness and overpowering fear.
It watched, unmoved, as I quaked in the closet door.
Its shiver was near vibration.
She wraps herself in self-proclaimed darkness.
She weeps, I think, internally like a bruise, oozing
blood just out of sight until the plain volume of pain,
separateness, speaks so directly it is impossible
to ignore. She, little brown bat, myotis lucifugus, descendant
of holy birds, center of centuries of contempt, hangs
unwavering, waiting clearly for me. And I can not contemplate
her existence.
This doesn’t go with a thing, I told my girl,
her pick-up-stick frame buried now in princess and pea quilts
while I warily eyed the sleeping leviathan.
To grab it, throttle its little rat throat, bring it down, even
destroy what small, inconsequential bug eating, blood sucking
life it surely must have guessed was hanging by its nails, was beyond
my ineffectual abilities. I gazed unseeing, in dread and knew
It was harmless and I was weak.
Close the door, walk back to bed, my wife
still slept, my daughter surely so small the years would purge
her of the fear of canasta, solitaire.
The moment, the second when something unexpected
could have been accomplished, the chance to win, out think the black
slate-clean bat, hanging, passed, and I thought of the racquet;
rejected in a synaptic flash of Western grip
heavy top spin splat of bat against the white wall,
glazed silver ceiling stained with rainwater.
I went for the bag. But at my decisive sign of approach, off she
took, circling me as I spun bag outthrust, twirling, fluttering,
free, looking for escape until with a sudden jolt and rasp of
brown, heavy paper I smacked her. She skidded to the corner and stared
stunned. I pounced, wrapped her in paper, shouted for the
door and my daughter ran before me, unlatched our safe home
to the black backless night. Finally, like a young lover
I threw her out.
Now, after all this my daughter grown,
accomplished at poker and rummy, the bat is back and I
grasp at it, circling my worthless head,
and I wonder what was it there
hanging, bat, vision so wildly discarded?
It circles again, always.
Cat
She is light-maned and imperious
bursting and righteous
with vacant stare
to one side, wall-eyed,
refusing to acknowledge;
she sits, royal bearing,
puts her tawny fur flat
ragged and uncaring, torn
even, at heel and unkempt.
She is queen and no one’s mother.
She is magnificent, leaning slightly
indifferent and dreamful, tough.
She wants nothing to do with you
except more
except much, much more.
Sustenance and ignorance sustain
her. She is a vacuum and draws on you, slow
slow.
She sucks
breath from babies,
makes men grow
fond then shamed. She marks
you with claws and sweat.
She slinks, turns away, rolls
on her back legs out and panting
and then runs, runs.
She hurts you and stands away,
she draws you in, draws you out;
she is royal, deserves nothing,
wants you to go
to be another, to moan
for her, to barely touch her.
But then she sidles toward you, pure and sideways
gliding in, dream eyes glancing up
and then she purrs.
And you are 15 again
and afraid.
Seabiscuit
All night cicadas holler from crape myrtles and maples
lining the avenue where you sleep. Just past midnight
I begin to shuffle down the paving stones and back
up the sidewalk. Occasionally jogging mostly
just a slight cantor, staying lose.
I am empty and ripple
with anticipation, fight the impulse
to break into gallop. I save myself.
At dawn I am ready. Songs fill
the air as the heat sinks. Swallows
replace bats and dart about the
lit monuments, spearing the morning
bugs. The buildings,
bent over and crowded in the dark,
heave a sigh and settle back.
I hobble along, tossing my head.
I pass your place, all gleaming,
walking, step up to cantor again, break
into easy run. I know you have
come out behind me. I feel you bound
and sniff, spot me, pick it up.
Just under my breath I hear
you coming. You draw up slowly
and slowly you catch me. I am wide open now
digging in, gasping, pounding the stone.
But you catch me, reach out
and place one tiny hand soft
on my forearm. There, you apologize.
And for a moment we run together, your high
stride matching my low shuffle.
But you lean forward, strong, determined.
As you pull away I see
how I could run, once.
If I could I would climb inside you
and ride all the way to darkness.
Seeing her sleeping
She sleeps in utter silence, empty of sound
Often breathing softly, muttering in languages
I can only imagine, never dream to know.
She was so bright, once, my simple meaningless
Self sent her to shudder, to throw back her head
In blind wonder, to rush to me, to encompass.
Then I knew her, knew her secret names for me,
Understood that magic, went to her when she
Whispered, I want you so much, touched and shuddered.
She would leap, fly, metamorphous to angel
Her hair lose and glowing; smiling, she’d run
Aimless as sunlit dust motes, and I would laugh.
Those days, we could play till darkness and sleep
All tumbled together. At least it seems.
She would be mine forever, somehow holding on.
Now she barely knows me, has sometime slipped
Away, forgotten my name, not even allowing my sweet touch.
If she is alone, she keeps it in her profound silence.
Gordon Hickey 