George Wallace
From
THE POEMS OF
AUGIE PRIME
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SAMPLE POEMS |
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From
THE POEMS OF AUGIE PRIME |
From
BUTTERFLIES & OTHER TATTOOS |
From
TALES OF A YUPPIE DROPOUT |
From
THE MILKING JUG |
From
TIE BACK THE ROSES |
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| From THE POEMS OF AUGIE PRIME |
| (Writers Ink Press 1999) An Old Fishing Village At Dawn There is a time of day in the earth's remembered stillness when the sun breaks hazy over the left shoulder of the oversized remains of an industrial building and geese hold steady to their pre-flight positions, forming up in memory of previous migrations out across the flat gray harbor. A time of day when fish by the dozens, you can hardly believe it, come flipping out of the meager, almost expressionless, face of what many in these parts consider to be dead water. Guess again! Between the semi-yachts and the last true fishing boats, before the swirl of oil and suburban commotion can spoil the morning, a whole school of fishes, predators themselves at the moment, and some of them quite full-bodied for harbor dwellers, break water and in such numbers that a seagull, which had been floating peacefully somewhere mid-harbor, is suddenly compelled to take shelter on a pylon close to shore. It is at times like these that I walk home with the Sunday paper and warm rolls tucked under one arm, encouraged by the continued presence of two pigeons pecking their way down Main Street, and this unexpected communication of life from the harbor And am content, by God, to ignore the sun's weak performance in the October sky. Imprints The smell of wood smoke at dusk, the feel, through laced boots, of blue snow crust breaking with my every step. Above all the coming of night and you. And the earth's letting fall, through a century-old wooded path down to a seawall by this harbor, the moonlight. Now add to that the salt smell of winter. There is nothing cruel in weather like this despite our shared reflection on the effect of ice, which creates plated mounds where beach grass grew with profusion in summer. There is nothing cruel in the complacency of snowy hillsides, deflecting heat from the sun all day, though it may contribute to the cold. For us, this winter night, what is true and valuable is how we humans collect, beneath a watchful moon, each to each; how you gather yourself to my side. Or how we walk together in watchful silence along a frozen harbor. Here, for example, where I take the imprint of your body on mine. Here, where we measure the pulse of a star's persistent warning. Here. A Dogwood Sapling Made Clear of the twisted battle for sunlight on the edge of the thicket will right itself in as little as one season. Not at first, mind you - but before your average gardener has time to start cursing, the green tips of new leaf will pop out, promising riches in a direction formerly occupied by honeysuckle vine, silverlace, and the like. Imagine for yourself a new window opened to the sun! Wouldn't you tend towards it? In a few months, tendency has grown into intention; your young, tenderleafed stems are climbing skyward against a grain that now exists only in sapling memory. As it happens, I know all this to be true - because on this land, I have been the one to set a dogwood sapling free. Skinny, perhaps, but no longer overcome. And by this I have learned that nature, in the form of a dogwood tree at least, in adversity may seek only survival - but given its freedom it will strive for something higher: balance. Which is to say that philosophy, it now appears to me, sometimes requires the intercession of an outside hand. Especially in modest grounds such as these, so badly in need of clearing. Black Eyed Susans I see the bright face of this our still young and hopeful nation more in a parking lot weed than in the display of its proud public gardens, untamed as the original North American wild, outwitting us to the last & filled with the breath, a continent wide, of unplanned vitality. In the lowest dandelion, in the fairy clover, in the dusty sway of goldenrod where two highways merge, the ragged memory of prairie grasslands calls out to me & praises still sung to the sun-rippled expanse of northern forest. I leave to Europe the curve and grace of horticultural refinement, manicured intention, & tired topiary imagination & rather, stoop to worship her, even at this crumbling bit of earth, your voice, America - stubborn, plain, strangely triumphant. So long as a single unplanned flower raises up its head to greet the expectant sun, I too shall greet, in celebration, the promise of your ragged, wonderful world, which is the reason why we came here in the first place & yes, pretty as a patch of Black Eyed Susans.
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