in Aleppo

COMPLACENT WEATHER

A green kid from Appalachia

gone to fight in Fallujah

– someone explain?  Aya,

Babylon!  O generations!  A

late-night flashback (this time

not a war zone) – the stone

cave, the Mezzo-Eon...

the wooden man (half-lamb,

half-king) splayed on an axle

of Lebanon cedar.

Adam, 2nd mate (bare).

In Aleppo, the shells relax

theological distinctions

(strange how disaster

nets cousins together in

dense swallow-clouds).  Sons

remember their angry fathers

in another atmosphere –

benign, complacent weather,

a constant world.  Who bothers

to refit owlish waste places?

Earth presses toward

obstructed Adam, stymied

Eve – each watchful heart races

to reach Yezidi Paradise

(jade Peacock Angel,

over the next hill

from Sheol).  Sol breaks the ice.

6.11.16

 

- thinking of previous post, remembered this from the last poem in Way Stations, "My Byzantium" (1996):

7

Not the flower, but the whistling stem,
the stump still sprouting
desire from pain, pain from desire –
a homeless voice, roadside day-
lily in rearview mirrors,
unstemmed longing, infinite,
to the barren node of the
horizon.
Not for itself,
but in response, a choral thorn-
crown for harvest of black-
eyed Susans tempered
by drought – the keening
proud repentance
of Appalachian eyes.

From the fissure, a breath
of warm air – the frozen flower (touched
by a human hum) blooms.

In cliffside cave or hermitage,
a prehistorian, unfrozen now, draws
out Nativity from spring charcoal:
under the modal drone of mountain
banjo, streambed clay (glance
of a goldfinch) rose infant lips
are moving (do, re, mi. . .)

A big shipment of new poetry books for the library from SPD crossed my desk today. High arty, low arty, avant, etc. I took a look at most of them. Only one of them caught my attention, moved me to continue reading:

Kettle Bottom, by Diane Gilliam Fisher
Florence, MA: Perugia Press, 2004

History poems in different voices focusing on the West Virginia mine wars of 1920-21.

Fisher seems to aim for a middle ground between poetry & colloquial speech, music & history. The bio note points to family background in Appalachia; the poetry shows a clear affinity. Achieves a certain readable-not-glib objectivity of feeling, perception, expression. Looks like a fine piece of work.