Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

2001

March
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
March 2001

The spring blew trumpets of color;

Her green sang in my brain . . .

Harry Kemp "Blind"

 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 22 Number 3 March, 2001
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s
Joy Hewitt Mann 4-5 Bill Roberts 17-18 Pearl Mary Wilshaw 29-31
Will Inman 6-11 R. Yurman 19 Fredrick Zydek 32-33
Geoff Stevens 12 Joan Payne Kincaid 20-22 John Grey 34-35
David Michael Nixon 13 Ida Fasel 23-24 Albert Huffstickler 36
Sylvia Manning 14-15 Jean Wiggins 25-26 cover photo by B. Fisher
frontispiece adaptation of
Joanne Seltzer 16 Paul Grant 27-28 Bloemaert study by R. Spiegel
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 RESTORING THE MILL - Joy Hewitt Mann

The frogs have come to an understanding with the sand bags;

they spit out their gallumphing and listen

as it echoes back from the wall the workers have piled up while
trying to clear the mill's foundation of water.
The frogs do not understand why these men would destroy their habitat
for the sake of a few old stones:
they have seen these stones up close
and can attest to their ugliness.
The young frogs trapped on the other side
scree back in meandering vocals
of the mud:
how it is browner and deeper
how they will bury themselves here for the winter
how wise the humans were to do this thing for them.

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The bullfrogs continue to disagree with deep,
thundering voices that shake the surface of the water.
Like Joshua they will trumpet the wall down;
like Joshua
they will bury the young.

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 seasons when - will inman

seasons when every pore is an eye with bode and cope

when spring waits in your skin and wakes in your marrow
when blood goes fulminate with irises
when air touches your nose with violin fingers
when you go naked under your winter clothes
when you know with your entire being, open

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 skyfingers, earthfingers - will inman
Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata
skyfingers stroke designs inside veins,
arteries, meeting, crossing, reversing.
earthfingers
stroke body, limbs naked
rhythmic to touch, torso lifts and rounds,
body turns to stroking.
veins become slow
rivers, trees lean over water stretches, rain
falls fingerstrokes on surfaces.
flesh goes
prairie deep and wide, beach dunes lift fallow
with turtles hatching, tiny feet stroking.
springwaters
wake arterial skyfingers with high rock knowings
bend and bring sky wisdoms into limbs
and loins.
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 earthfingers reach from marshes
into riverbanks, meeting skyfingers.
how high
touches and deep strokings cross like opposite
waves, keeping directions, sweeping inward,
outward, slow, dark
beat, god-seductive. lips
join fingers, tongue brushes a slow drum, sweeps
in corners of steep lick and listen.
touching
grows an eye in each fingertip, seeing in rhythmic
press and scull.
skyfingers see open entire
from inside, out.
earthfingers see entire from outside,
in.
feeling touch-sight brings valley scan:
feeling sight-touch brings summit reach.
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sky and earth sing osannas down people.
be cradled in cradling hands singing fingers,
taste the bright surge.

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with real your center leaping calm - will inman

new reals do not come just from the tips of sources.

origins awaken in centers and stretch, move
whole
universe creates self new in every forming:
essence precedes, resonance emerges, they are divisible
only by time, and time
makes them one
process
level by level unfolding

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 i take you
in my arms, rainbows
sing around us, turtles
hatch under our feet with dark
dreams, we
walk intrinsic ocean, we tread
fire
embers stalk us in our ribs what beating
ingot drinks and hisses
tides of sea
and stars, i take you in my arms you
bring dance down my stirring dust you sing me
source with real your center
leaping calm with reach

first published in Erete's Bloom, No. 1, Spring 2000

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 Spring is - Geoff Stevens

Spring is the fresh-cut cucumber-smell of moistness,

the salad greenery of grass and trees,
the band in the bandstand oompahing frog croaks,
drumming up lawn worms,
trumpeting the rise of umbrellas
and taking them down after showers.
Spring is a brass band glistening in the sunshine.

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Black Sails - David Michael Nixon

The grass curves over the earth in a

sweep of green blades, making a sharp,
soft carpet, which the feet may walk
shod or bare. I shall protect my
feet with high-top canvas sneakers,
black sails on rubber boats,
riding the green waves

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 Of Spinach from Kitchen Window - Sylvia Manning

This morning you can see the long row of spinach from kitchen
window.

Almost every seed came through to seedling height

visible to you by eastern light as deep green line
from many yards away.

This, the, a proud day for whoever made that soil from waste
and hay,
bought a Lone Star pack of seed (still the cheapest here)
from struggling feed store, down the way,

studied the moon guide in almanac

(complex as a thoroughbred schedule at the racetrack),
built the bed with spade and rake,
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 knowing to do all this from grand precedent, upstate
and in places even farther, where the day
would have to be in spring.

But here it's autumn.

Here you stand at kitchen window in first morning, first

coolness,
in a land which bakes as desert for apparent eternity,
then breaks, then takes cheap miracle of Lone Star seed
and gives you back a vision: the long green line,
the summer gone.

It may not come again.

First published in 'Borderlands: Texas Review of Poetry, Austin

15
Spring Fever - Joanne Seltzer

We can open the windows, I'm writing this for you,

breathe as one again my youngest daughter,
and welcome new beginnings. hoping in your life
only the nose runs
Spring belongs to the young not the eyes
but I too can sniff and only from flowers.
pink and white phlox
lilacs
and other fragrances
that make noses run.

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 Coloring a Boy's Life - Bill Roberts

It was a game they played that summer,

the little boy and the lady behind the counter
at the ice cream store, she little taller
than him but wiser, interested in his education:
What color would you like tonight, little man?
she asked, eager to see how he'd answer.
Blue! he shouted with glee,
and obediently she scooped up and delivered
his mint-flavored ice cream,
lumped lovingly into a sugar cone.
Next Friday evening and the ones after,
when his mother had given him another nickel,
he ran off to High's Ice Cream Store
and requested Pink! or Brown! or White!
or Yellow! or Green! or Red!
and received a generous helping of strawberry,
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chocolate, vanilla, lemon, pistachio,
or raspberry ice cream from the cheerful lady.
One Friday night she ventured
I also have white and brown together,
or yellow and green, if you like.
This confused the little boy,
unable to fathom complex equations,
his mind not yet exposed to intangibles,
so he turned and left without a cone that evening.
He was young, a stranger to addition,
so wasn't ready for the well-meaning lady's
brash adventuresomeness.
But he returned to the store the following week,
the last one before school started,
with two nickels this time,
and ordered a scoop of white and one of brown.
Thus, he launched himself into simple mathematics,
plus the colorful and tasty combinations in life.
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 For Morris While Dancing - R. Yurman
(a ghazal)

Smooth as glass or ice, eyes a desperate blue, you stare,

my breath slows a pulse, we waltz, my heart seeks air.

Multi-colored lights swim and skirl above the polished floor.

Each step dips and swirls. Keeping time, you swing your long red hair.

"She fed him and bathed him and put him to bed" —
then danced alone, embracing a wooden chair.

Arms light as bird wings, soft as feathers, you

move me across the floor. Our feet touch air.

Cinderella nights, ballgowns and tuxedoed lovers.

dazzling greens and blues reflected in your rich red hair.

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 Karma.Com II - Joan Payne Kincaid

Do you remember the times

I had to sit waiting and waiting
for nothing

to dissolve into something

like a lovely bird in the woods
or on shore, a lovely party someplace;

the strange miasmatic vapid

ocean of waiting audience
convention of expectant breed

in high-fashion apparel
packing fast and future moves
smiling in their cell phones

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Saxophone Songs V - Joan Payne Kincaid

All fairytales, myths,

religious imaginings
she had
become her own mother
in the kitchen
flying like die valkerie______________
German extremes of heaven —
hell mouthed~loudly
gazing at a t-bone steak
in blues clubs where talking axes
act-out how it is — on reeds

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 Suddenly - Joan Payne Kincaid

You ask to have a CD played thinking to hear order

but it starts at the end or somewhere illogical
there is no key into the secret garden where bulbs
are planted upside down
travailing with Cro-Magnon in the blue van
which rumbles stream of consciousness trophies
philosophies of Christmas décor lonely monologues
in green rays and orange cloud glitzy stations-of-the-cross.

Up the tree to add to the neighborhood glitz

(there was a woman who lived in a giant tree, etc);
a play happens in entre'act
allat once . . . the little pickle of life in three acts
now it is celebrations of return of light to the universe

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 Piano Lessons - Ida Fasel

There was talk she had won an international

first prize, had played with symphony orchestras
in the great capitals of the world. She sat
beside me year after year and never touched
the keys except to let her right hand
with a few notes make a passage clear.

In some ways I fancied I could play better

than she. I read easily at first sight
and that advanced me without much practice.

My last lesson before we moved to Boston,

my fingers ran the keys like a cart
in a downhill spill. She sat, as usual,
intensely listening, left hand in her lap.

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My fourth or fifth try, suddenly
her left hand, mute so long, leaped across
my shoulder and linked with the right
in a series of notes
swiftly, gracefully, surely,
like a waterfall cascading
from pool to pool
down a terraced hillside.

I never heard her play again,

nor heard myself play as well.

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 Borderline Personality - Jean Wiggins

In this lush neighborhood I walk past lawns

manicured, edged like a lady dressed in chiffon
waiting for a gentleman to call;
yet weeds, harmony not their object,
grow to be sprayed with weed killer
or be pulled up, only to creep back in,

defying edges like Bonnie in Athens, Georgia, years ago,

a carnival worker whose husband died
while the carnival was in town.
She stayed, renting a trailer in the shabby side of town.
She showed up at churches, her small dog trotting
by her side, asking for help, attended church suppers
and church on Sundays, dressed in eccentric attire.

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Sitting for hours in the public library reading,
she engaged people in philosophical discussions.
She was accepted as weeds are accepted—
because they are there.
They demand presence.
Faithful to nature's wild, profuse, irrational ecstasy,
she died still unedged.

26
 A Little Slow Blues - Paul Grant
(for Bill Mathews)

Bill, if you disimpaled my memory of you

from a honey locust thorn on the ground
in the curve at the bottom of the rocky, rutted track
that serves me as a driveway, and if then you drifted
up it watching the hunter twilight leave its home
in the cracked windshield of the '69 Coup de Ville
buried in the oak and elm and walnut shadows
of the scrub woods guarding my front door
from the spendthrift road and the overlook,
you'd find some blues, if you wanted them,
marinated and then left to age
in idyllic near-oxymorons like broken heart
and minor key and good left hand.
As Fats used to say, One never knows, do one?
A bass is walking the moon
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up South Mountain and introducing her
to the skyline; if they hit it off
(& they always do, you know, they always do . . .),
they'll leave the party together
and just before sunrise, we'll be given the best
view we ever had of their stardust lees.
Meanwhile, there's a fairly good Cabernet
in the back of the cabinet
under the picture of the woman whose house this was
and whose ashes are displayed in the old dispenser
there in the living room above the legend
A Festive Flavor Fortified By Freshness.
There's scotch too — brandy, gin, all kinds
of hootch she left behind. No, none for me.
I don't mean to be smug — we both
know how worthless that is — but we're traveling
in the same near-oxymoron: sober now.

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Beating Time - Pearl Mary Wilshaw
Whenever I open a closet
door, a musty canvas case
tumbles out on the floor,
unreeling a lifetime of
feelings stop-framed on
memories dealing with my
nemesis . . . drums.
As a toddler, I found by lurking
around the serene mountain scene
painted on the head of Dad's
bass drum, a touch of the
pedal produced a dull thud,
while strikes ad infinitum
made mighty thunder rumble.
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Excitement ceased when
cleaning became a bore,
keeping black-trimmed traps
free from dirt, an endless chore,
what with wood block, maracas,
brushes and such attracting
too much dust — then along came war.
Drums to the wall, Dad answered
calls to play at wedding feasts
and balls. I played piano with
a quartet of teen-aged siblings
who traveled by public bus.
So, I had to tote cymbals and
snare drum, to and from.
At college, I spent a summer
playing paradiddles, becoming
a drummer. Too bad my first
school band had a rhythm-dumb
beat keeper, creeping to an
aberrant meter, who thought
skipped measures ought to mean
syncopation, then upped and
quit amid mega frustration.
I also recall one spring day
when the firemen's band, due to
play in a Memorial Parade, was
shy a bass drummer 'til someone
remembered me. Washed and
starched, in whites I marched,
beating a spirit stirring bass
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drum up to the cemetery, where
on cue the group slow-marched,
ceased playing . . . except for
the battery that tapped rims
of instruments with sticks,
while I plowed forward pounding
heads in turn, until I noticed
and stopped dead . . . ears aburn.
One autumn day, a handsome science
teacher glanced my way. By the
time I played piano at his assembly
while his class did the "Bunny Hop"—
that he punctuated with rim shots—
Cupid had pierced my heart
with a drum stick dart.
By then, I found that this
handsome sailor had rolled his
snare through ranks of the Naval
Militia up to the drummer's throne
of the "Blue Harmonies", Catskill
bound, ad-libbing big band charts.
Post war he taught and plied his
percussionist's art for support.
Besides . . .
how many wives in this world
can boast about getting a gray,
mother-of-pearl bass drum for
some birthday, or claim they
unwrapped a Zildjian Cymbal
when their anniversary came?

He married me for piano lessons,

free of course, not all that bad,
since notes graced our lives as
we shared jazz and classical vibes.

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Near the Bottom of Our Oldest Dreams - Fredrick Zydek

Sometimes they surface in the long moments

just before sleep. These are dreams that know
the secrets of trees, primordial rhythms
where the hearts of fishes, worms, and men

know they are kith and kin. These are dreams

that understand survival or being awed by
a blade of grass — dreams that recall and ancient
time of beginnings, the security of sleeping

safely in trees, of being a gangly furry thing,

stomach full of berries and ants, clinging with
all fours to a strong branch on the family tree.
And there are older dreams into which we

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sometimes fall. We are water-bound
and sometimes live in mud. In these dreams,
outer shells, solid as rocks, house dreams
thick as ambrosia. There is one more dream,

older than the rest. In this dream darkness

is gathered into something akin to song.
Deep within its melody, sparks begin to fly
until the dream is spun and born to light.

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 The Sleeper - John Grey

Corn grows in my sleep.

So do dogs mate
and sleet splatter the windows.
The earth rolls slowly around
and grass seed awakens from winter.
All of this
while my head wears the pillow
like an expression,
my snoring is louder than
a low-flying plane,
and I dream hawk-men flying
and Tarzan's lost city.

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When nothing's going on in it,
my life is at its busiest.
People step inside this doing shell
to watch me like stars,
to love me.
They pluck their days with me
from my coiled body,
like books from shelves,
read them over and over,
even in the darkness.
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I can crawl into bed,
twist up like a gnarled tree trunk,
and all I protect
is protected,
all I watch over
is still watched and watched and watched.
What I am, Gale sometimes tells me,
doesn't just rest with me.
Boundaries - Albert Huffstickler
Rothko wanted to go to the
heart of the matter. He
wanted to paint the spirit,
to paint light then have
you stand close enough to
be in it with him. Forget
objects, bodies, forget
table clothes, trees and
ashtrays: he was not content
to point. He wanted to
first published in Pitchfork #3, Austin, TX, 2000
36
put it there and have you
be in it — no middle man,
no art, no artist. He
scares me. I think he
wanted to stand on the other
side, beckoning. And you
can't do that while you're
still in a body. I guess
he found that out.
ISSN 0197-4777

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