Three Poems
BENEDICTION: For My Father
In the gravel driveway
beside the house of peeling
paint there is a motorcycle,
but it does not belong
to you. The bike is black,
a dragon painted
on its gas tank, tail entwining
a woman in fur bikini.
You are getting on,
riding down the brick street,
stopping at the intersection,
where a line of crows
startles from the high-voltage
wire. When you churn up
the bricks the other way,
our collie runs the length
of her backyard fence,
barking and jumping.
You come back
to the bearded man
in a denim jacket
who owns the bike,
and you both squat behind
the gleaming gas tank
to light your cigarettes
in the Oklahoma wind.
The bearded man is talking
about his trip to Montana,
his plans to camp
beside the highway.
From behind the screen
door I watch you
watch the man ride
away over the viaduct bridge.
When you come back
inside you rest
your hand on the top
of my head.
WASHING MY HANDS IN THE MEN’S ROOM I FINALLY
UNDERSTAND POUND’S CANTOS
The water stepping aside
for my freezing hands
like a boxer working
for an opening,
the tile so cold white
it gives back my ghost
as a reflection:
finally I see it’s all
about the trying,
like us, my
dear, keeping up, year
after year, this Bottom
and Titania act,
you never letting
on how tired you are
of combing the gnats
from my long, long ears.
I understand Pound
was given to
wearing a bathrobe
the yellow of scrambled eggs
and to leaving bits of cold cuts
in the street
for the cats of Rapallo.
This year I might finish his Cantos.
This morning the sun was as nectarine
and speckled as the beach at Ramla Bay.
No matter what just keep
loving me.
LINES WRITTEN WHILE SITTING ON A STUMP
Even we Christians know
it’s a serious matter, this carving
up of a living creature.
So, grim behind my safety goggles,
I notch the tree on one face
and make in it a woody, toothless smile
before turning the chainsaw
on its side and slicing though
from the opposite wall of the trunk.
Then the real work begins:
cutting the trunk into sections and splitting
each round with the heavy maul.
Master Chuang says Cook Ting
could carve an ox without
hitting a single bone or sinew,
working the knife like an underwater
ballet. I knew a man who could carve
a tree that way, but today
I am not that man. The chain stays
nervous, jumping often from the bar.
My maul falls too much to one side.
I sweat even in the cool of early November.
I had expected Father Hopkins to meet
me here, after I spent the morning
reading his poems and waiting for sunrise.
I keep trying to recite “The Windhover”
in my head, but you, Li Bai,
what are you doing here
sitting cross-legged between two scrub oaks,
leaves falling on your bald head?
You keep telling me to slow down.
Or stop. You say, leave
the wood here and it will split
itself over time. Or, better yet, leave
it long enough under wind and sun
and you won’t even have to burn it.
About the poet:
Benjamin Myers is the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma and the author of two books of poetry: Lapse Americana (NYQ Books 2013) and Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press, 2010). His recent poems may be read in The Yale Review, 32 Poems, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, and many other journals. He teaches creative writing and literature at Oklahoma Baptist University.
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