The Alley Man

Last July (2014) in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, I read the Penguin Book of WWI Poetry, cover to cover. It also occurred to me that I ought to write something, in memoriam and commemoration, of all those who...

Also, having read Keegans History of WWI, I remembered, after the armistice, the descriptions of things French Farmers found in their fields, even into the mid 1920's.

The Alley Man
 (in honor of the centenary)

In the lean years there was no work in Paris,
  Non, rien
So I hired out to the summer farmer,
  who, these few years later, still toiled to reclaim his plots
  from the scythe and plow of the Great War

Upon his farm a new barn stood,
  but stumps stood for his country wood
He detailed me to posts and wire,
  as if, perhaps, at hun gunfire
  his goat might jump the fire step,
  her horns set forth as bayonets,
  and charge these hallowed fields once more
The farmer scoured his barren Earth,
  by plow and bony working horse
He’d trench a row, then wipe his brow,
  then turn and work another course
At times I’d see him stop, and thrilled,
  he probed and picked at what he’d tilled,
  and smile, as by a jewel enchanted,
  then brush off clean what earth had granted,
  which, once buried in his pocket, then,
He’d pull the horse’s reins again

Over lunch, of his cheese and bread and well water,
the Farmer showed me the relics he had found
‘You look at this, a bone of the jaw. You surely see the warring on these teeth, from years of grinding the rough Kaisers gruel.’
Then a much smaller one,
‘And, see here? A fragment, a bone from the arm. The Boche, they could not take the pressure, it was all to pieces they would go, under our French exploding shells!’
And then crudely joked
‘That is the funny, non? The bone, of the arm, the humorous, I make the funny bone, Non? You laugh later, Oui?’

Then he told me then about these fields,
  the horrors that each Spring they’d yeild,
  they used it as a potters yard
  for the Kaisers men they could not save,
  (or what was left of them)

 ‘The bones, they rise. I find them. Like the stones of a garden in Springtimes, the frost heaves them up. Stones they float, you know? Mud in Spring is much heavier. They rise to salute the sun in Spring. So do the bones.’

Before sunset we returned to the barn,
  unhitched and watered the horse,
He rinsed the plow, I set hey in the paddock,
Then he said
  ‘Now you see something
We climbed the climb ladder to the loft,
  which, like most post war barns was not full of hay
  where in the back a table and chair,
and … The Bones!
  like those from his pocket, they covered the table,
  sorted as if they were no more than an incomplete jigsaw
  that he planned to finish at leisure, perhaps in Winter,
  after the crop was in
Alongside lost buttons of brass and campaign ribbons,
  their valor forgotten,
  also mustered in their musty place

But My God! The chair!
  He’d tied bones to the chair!
Leg bones to the legs, arm bones to the arms,
  dirty broken ribs and vertebrae to the back,
  like a macabre column of old soup bones, for dogs,
And all bound in sinews and ligaments of twine,
  which suspended them in animation,
  with proud buttons and medals tied to the ribs,
  all present and accounted for
With atop this gruesome desecration; a skull,
  topped with the well tanned but decrepit leather and metal remnants
  of a Prussian pickelhaube

‘There he is, "Fritz", the "Alley Man."’
‘The what?’
‘Fritz? We call all the Bosche the Fritz!’
‘No, Alley Man.’
‘Allemagne.’
Then ‘He doesn’t talk much, Fritz.’

That poor ghastly face, comically bucktooth,
  had only several top teeth hanging down about the palate,
  he had no lower jaw.
My employer fumbled in his pocket,
  ‘Perhaps today, we make the complete’
As he held the jaw in place, he tied twine to one side,
  threaded it on through the ears, the skull,
  and tied off all tightly on the other mandible
‘Who knows, maybe even he speaks, yes?’
We watched as the jaw slowly dropped open.
‘Non, rien.’

Perversely we repeated this same joke on our grotesque puppet several more times,
Even though no unearthly ventriloquism ever came
So I proposed
‘We could set up that Ouija board before him, perhaps then we can read what he says.’
‘Ah, Oui!’
Done so, I set a disembodied fingerbone on its side,
  in the center of the board
  that it might roll with the storming winds that gassed this drafty barn

Over that summer, the farmer and I grew to be comrades,
  ‘Oh, mon bon amie!’
  and never was I mistreated, as if just a hired man
Daily after work we revisited the loft,
  we made many jokes at Fritz expense,
  but mostly to record his letters

One wet day, weeks later,
  he declared a Holiday, ‘Non la work aujourd'hui,’
  and we agreed also to make sense of all we’d tallied,
  to solve Fritz’s enigmatic letters,
  with paper and pencil
I did not find odd, it seemed no more perverse
  than to solve a weekend magazine puzzle,
  Fritz’ crossword, if you like

 Later, as the sun broke through the gray retreating sturm clouden,
  we read his dispatch thus;

THE FOLLY OF A TYRANTS PRIDE
IS WHAT HAS MADE ME NATIONS DIED

‘Poor Fritz, he was not to know grammar’

　

The Highlights of Summer

Who needs another poem about summer birds?
  Each warm day brings us new visitors.

The Highlights of Summer

The 11 to noon to two day sun
  is a mad place for man and dog,
  and the August cricket,
But the humid blaze of ol’ Summer Sol
  is no vexation for the goldfinch,
Whose piped black wings and lemon shine
  of yellow chiffon cream, 
  with highlight tints fluorescent green,
  capped by a jet black diadem
Outshines the source of brilliance itself,
  he begets spots before my eyes

I fought hard to raise this garden,
  nasturtiums, zinnias, beanpoles,
  and tall sunflowers in the years the Woodchucks didn’t eat gnaw sprouts
A neighbor, I concede, could not be blamed
  to mistake what I’d planted for a welfare garden,
  a green free lunch for our suburban pests
Although personally I do believe I’ve spent more time
  at fending off groundhogs, rabbits
  and all other Mother Nature’s beguiling fuzzies
  than actually tending to the flowers
   (welcome friend, to gardening)

Yet behold! These are for The Hummingbird,
  that emerald jewel of our New England summers,
  who poses as a painted angel
  while she sips the ruby blooms
  of their sweet tears of nectar,
  shed from each pistiled saffron eye,
  as she zigs, she zags, a flit flit flit she flies,
  then whoops off in a knowing line
  off to a neighbor’s bed divine

Until in time the season brings that ravager of a Summers end
  (oh yes, he’s been near all year round, but it’s just now that he’s come down)
The August Goldfinch King!

He flies in on a beeline from that place I don’t know where,
  and perches on a zinnia stalk, just below the head
He twitters to his love, unseen in her tree
  as he flexes his mighty neck sinews,
  his muscular bulging shoulders
And with a beak ruthless as any threshers flail,
  and without even a ‘hello’ to me
He sets to tearing at the bloody red petals,
  shucking them rough about my flower patch
  then hulling every black seed in the cone
Even at the shadow of a passing kite
  he takes no rest nor finds there reason
  to pause or break has task;
That of converting the pride of my flower barrel
  to a Valentine’s massacre of zinnia petals

Yes, these I grew for The Hummingbird,
  that blessed emerald jewel of our New England greens,
And from high on God’s view I dream
  I must be seen as comically mean,
  to have fended God’s own hungry ones,
  I’ve shooed His poor, them all away,
  while this rough ravager of a summers end,


Well,
  Yes, I welcome him

An August Hawk
  (for our times with Gus Ben-David)

Unwelcome is mid August,
  as the cricket chirping starts,
And our Robins of red breast,
  who sang cantatas to the blue sunrise,
  who for long summer days danced about our yards,
  gathering moustaches of wriggling worms
  to stuff in their begging young ones gape
  even after they had grown as big as their parents,
Have you noticed?
They have flown, all gone
  and lonely in the place of their chat
  sing just the white noise of green grass cicadas

It drapes an autumn pall to see
  what for common knowledge we mistake,
Birds never fly North in Summer,
  they learn to follow for it, that collective annual odyssey
  for which they flock in January
More the pity, none go South in winter,
  the young must learn fly for it

In a seasoned adirondack, upon an autumn deck
  I was chilled by an angry screeching sound,
  a sound most people hear only on TV 
  as a Bald Eagle flies by
I assure you,
  no reputable Haliaeetus ever screeched like that
  for none of their pride would ever demean to be mistaken for what I heard 

That, to my birding ear, was one rusty crank,
  an elder righteously pissed off red tail hawk
  who, like an antique New England Farmer
  with his practiced Yankee swears
  was sounding off at someone, and quite rudely about it

I spied him on that bald a dead branch,
  his perk chest feathers puffed,
  hump shoulders meanly ruffed,
  and his face a scorning mask as he yelled again
‘Key-Yaarhhh!’

At whom in a backyard tree, I heard
  ‘peeped’

She’s begging
  I see it every year
Needy in her time of trial, she found one whom might hear her plea
  as if to say, ‘Uncle?’




I pity you, young Hawk,
  you never read about migration in school
  the parents you knew, who once showed you all
  who fed you since the egg,
They have flown, and you’re alone,
  grown, yet abandoned with the mind of a bird child
That common knowledge, the instinct,
  was not what you were taught

Can one balm the cruelty
  of a one once welcomed stranger?
We all learn

Watching me, watching her,
  and having seen enough to despair of the both of us
The rustic old raptor jumped off,
  winging on towards the Southward glow, where
  his crow plucked tail blended to the sun’s decline

I plan to buy new leaf rakes!

Yet hours after hours, even past the dusk
  I heard the fledgling beg,
  to the quiet trees, the passive clouds
  and all the neighborhood’s closed doors

No one answered her

The Luna Mist

The Luna Mist
When first I started writing this, I didn't intend it to be so Pirates of the Carribean-y.
But yes, it does help to read it with a Captain Barbarrosa voice.

The Luna Mist 
Unfurls the moon her high Earth rakes,
  she sails the nightly sky
Her cruise a silent waveless trek
  the zodiacal she ply
And don’t ask if she frigate be
  or could she be a bark
She’s a pallid powdered bloodless corpse
  a’fore the diamond dark

Excepting tarred and chapped deck hands
  there’s no Man in the Moon,
And as all ships, even them men named,
  her troth you’ll learn too soon,
That hulks a Grand Seafaring Dame
  not found on scrolls of fame
The Luna Mist, by blackfate kissed
  God fear you know her shame
There be no port she calls a home
  in olde world or in new,
A cursed Flying Dutchman, she
  a lorn, a curst, a scorn

She’ll cut a broadside when she’s full
  as once a month she’ll do,
A left or right lee crescent when
  she’s bow or stern to view,
As she runs the fires of hell
  she cuts right through the sun!
Where she’ll discharge her spectral crew
  to the Devils forge and chains
And next could she return for you
whence thirty days have reined?

From Earth it’s plain the sun does rise
  the stars they timely set
And gravity, as one can see
  from Earthly force begets
For Faith and Science I see proves
  it’s not our World that moves,
The Heavens stroll in fixed grooves
  like clocks divinely let

May I feel smug on God’s green Earth?
  here’s Heaven plain to me
And I am sure I’d not prefer,
to sail that Luna Sea,
Yet when Soul’s sundial’s shadow’s long
  may be that purgatory,
To haunt Miss Luna with chapped hands
  condemned upon night’s sea?

No Song Sparrow

No Song Sparrow
Prologue – For no reason I can fathom, I woke this morning with a song on my mind.
Coffee on the porch, and then…

No Song Sparrow
Upon a bird bath   on our lawn
  a sprite Song Sparrow lit
He drank a taste   and turned his waist
  but never did he sit
Then I could see   not like was he
  adorned as other birds,
His rump was rounded,   in a stump
  no tail in other words

I asked him
  Happy Song Sparrow,   tell
  me of what do you sing?’
He said
  I have no tale to tell,
  no story do I bring,
I fell out of the sky one May,
  a brown and striped thing,
I’ll return back   on high one day,
  a simple gracious being,
But of the time   these dates enfold,
  a life time in between,
I have not got   a tale to tell
  I can’t sing of a thing.

He took off on two splashing wings,
 our discourse at an end,
I watched him rise up to the skies,
  then to a tree he wend

For tho’ he did   not sing a note
  while he stood in our dish
Yet by my word,   I loved that bird,
  what burdened he, my wish
For he knows no   affairs of Man
  how we keep our estate
Tho’ for his simple   minded care
  a few short years his fate

He was a bird, and in a word
  a better man than me,
Yet as a man, I’ve time to plan,
  Corrupted as I be