This evening, in the amber gloaming of a September day, as the Simpson's writers put it, I looked over the Gary "Zeke" Seppala Softball field to see someone stirring the garbage in the can near home base. I had walked past the can earlier on this 85ยบ day, noting the contents: many pounds of large fish heads, swimming in their own blood and wrapped in plastic. "Good Lord." I thought to myself "I wonder what the DPW will think of that when they next come to empty it." It's a difficult disposal problem, because you can't put offal in the town dump, you can't really do anything with it except bury it under your corn seedlings in the spring. It was definitely too late for that.
The local softball league is a fiercely followed institution. This year the Wainos beat the Mudhens in a surprise upset. After having ceremonially dunked the team in Plum Cove, the teams retire to the parking lot and grill hot dogs, smoke and drink Bud. The conversation gets louder and louder, and eventually dissipates with the sound of screaming tires around midnight. We would complain to the police, but since the police constitute an equal force on the teams with firemen and DPW workers, there's really not much point. We've come to enjoy it. Sometimes a slugger will hit something onto the front lawn, to great applause.
So what were the fish heads doing on the ball field? Another great Lanesville tradition is the annual bluefish tournament. Lane's cove, the hub of Lanesville, is a tiny fishing port. It is shielded from the north easterly winds by a mighty granite wall made of uneven blocks probably weighing half a ton to a ton. The No-name storm of October 31st 1991 removed a couple of feet of those blocks from the top of the wall, but they've been replaced. The big celebration at Lane's Cove is July 4th, when a huge bonfire used to be built and an eccentric and seemingly disorganized parade. There are plastic buckets and cola cans for percussion, the odd trumpet and car or boat horn, a man dressed as Amy Winehouse, a giant papier mache lobster with moving claws and long feelers that have to be lowered to pass under the utility lines. The parade usually ends at the bonfire, twenty vertical feet of waste wood, palates, a piano perhaps, topped off with a small shed or outhouse, and decorated with a nasty sign excoriating NOAA and especially Jane Lubchenco, who believes that fisherman are piratical, anarchistic criminals who should be driven out of business. The bonfire is no longer built, because last year's event attracted a lot of outsiders who started fights (probably by standing around not looking like locals) There were incautiously lit fireworks and a couple of quarter sticks of dynamite, a remnant of the quarrying days, thrown with sparking fuses, at the last moment into the cove waters.
The locals are mostly lobstermen and tuna fishers (mostly both) for whom the bluefish runs are a recreational opportunity. "The number of entrants have been increasing each year and this year it was 540. It was an exceptionally beautiful day--no clouds until late afternoon, light to no breeze, flat calm seas, and moderate temperatures." This was fair weather sailing for the fishermen, who fish in appalling conditions in most seasons and impossible conditions in the winter. "The winner of the tournament brought in a fish that was 10 lbs, 6 oz. Not really a big Bluefish--15 pounders were common in the last few years. One entrant commented that though the fish weren't large they had stopped counting because they caught so many."* So someone from the tournament had dressed the fish and dumped their remains in the sandlot can. This may cause a tiny friction between those who dumped and those who will have to clean up, but there is such closeness in this village, it probably won't last.
Lanesville has been an isolated community, developing it's own ways of getting along, and preserving their traditions with jealous pride. There has always been an admixture of summer people, who are important to the local economy, but they leave after Labor Day, when metaphorical tumbleweeds drift down Washington Street. There are those who consider the village to be an unusually weird place. Kory Cucuru, from the urban center of Gloucester, calls Lanesville "Gloucester's Area 51" in his book "St Peter's Fiasco", a knowing parody of "The Perfect Storm". It is full of writers, architects, potters, dancers, artists of all kinds. It has had this adjunct population since the middle of the 19thC, when the railroad opened up the Cape. It has a very large number of AA meetings for such a small town. It is reputed to be a center of witchcraft. Many folks practice Oriental religions, martial arts and yoga. The woods of Dogtown, the little known (until recently) center of the Cape have always seemed mysterious, though they are little more than a hangout for teenagers to light fires and get drunk or high. Hunters, tree-huggers, housing developers - all kinds of interests are fighting to change Lanesville's ancient and shabby innocence. I hope it preserves itself and its eccentricity. I wouldn't want it any other way.
*Report from "On the Cove" blog, http://lanescove.blogspot.com/2005/09/lanesville-bluefish-tournament.html
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Some more poems
Courtyard of the Museo des Belles Artes
She’s brought January rain to San Miguel.
The poor people here are wearing
garbage bags to keep out the wet cold
and at night they are dying. Despite this
men in the square still call out Hey, chica
to the blond northern whore as she passes by.
She sits in the courtyard, skin dead-white,
served tea by a Mayan with blue-black hair
thick and strong as a cable-tow.
Four cobbled paths converge in the courtyard
from the points of the compass to a stone Lamb
of God, bathed by a fountain.
All around there are leaves like falling tears,
tongue-like, arrow-like, all pointing fingers–
there is the pagan, she who does not believe.
The church bell’s clang begins– single beats,
tranquil at first, familiar, but then
a furious alarm, a mad-man’s hammering.
Mexican Silver
In the back of every jewelry store
there is a girl who is kept busy polishing away
the taint of disappointed love,
spread through songs
of white-haired guitarists in the public park.
The corrosion of funerals
penetrates even midday in the square
with its heavy equestrian statue
flanked by papyrus reeds–
exhalations of the misunderstood,
the jilted, the abandoned,
effluvia that burn the nostrils
each adding a distinctive tinge
to the patina on the wide bracelets like shackles,
the yellowing waxen figures
Mexico
Bless her with pink
and bleak citron yellow of paper flowers
with the penetential green of funerary tiles
Bless her with onyx, glossy and faceted,
with verdigris and noble oxidized silver,
square paving stones of agate.
Bless her with blue jasmine,
with Madonna lilies and the grey pads
of prickly pear.
Bless her with flaking clay pots
and domes of eroded stone coarsened with lichen,
gold leaf and the crystal of chandeliers.
Bless her with fountains and with arches,
with palm trees and oranges hanging like lamps–
let black and silver mariachi play in the public park.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Honey Jar
Aubade
The shutters shift on their hinges
in the dawn wind.
All night it seems the swifts have been screaming,
whipping between the ancient houses
whose stucco walls are pink, yet not pink.
Empty thunder woke me.
I am as I was last night
in meditation:
a channel of breath, a glass vase containing thoughts
swimming in harmless circles.
A flock of pigeons is blown across
the aperture of my tall bedroom window.
White muslin curtains lift and swell.
Can I be swayed by desire?
Hotel of Dreams
Welcome. This is the entrance hall. Yes, it is
grey and unprepossessing. We don't need
to be attractive. The dreams you see lounging
in the dormitories, slouched across old mattresses,
smoking unrecognizable substances by the pool,
are all unavailable.
Although it is difficult to understand
why anyone would want them
when seen up close, their very inaccessibility
and aloofness makes them desirable.
We often have break-ins.
The dreams don't want out, of course.
They get three squares a day, only
have to help cook and wash up every other week.
They are perfectly happy watching TV
or listening to baseball games on the radio.
Here they don't have to live up to anything,
are never a disappointment to anyone. Now,
would anyone care to make a reservation?
Exhibition
Your upper lip forms the couplet
to the octet of your nose.
Your lower lip droops, a ripe fruit
or not quite ripe, mostly carmine
red and firm to touch
with the tongue, but
your mouth is slightly open, dumbly
wondering at the machinery of perspective
with that most intelligent part of you,
the bitter black coffee of your eyes.
How sweet it would be
to investigate the slope of your shoulder,
to compare the monument
of your nape to that of the marble Apollo
we circle like opposing planets.
If I could only for a moment
make you stop thinking about art.
Mermaid
Tonight you watch me
from your porch, wondering
which house I have left, barefoot,
without a wrap.
Moonlight clothes me, my skin
blanched by it, eye sockets shadowed
so deep you cannot guess
their expression, pearls
on my neck thrumming with paradoxical
luminescence, passionate and cool. I sense each step
barefoot on wet sand, sea-smoothed: you watch
my unfamiliar woman-toes grasp the slip of kelp-fronds.
The sky sucks up wind from the ocean
landward, where I am exiled.
You are strong, warm, golden,
like nothing in my native country.
Will you not cover me
with your coat,
lead me back into your home?
The Selkie
They came upon a lake in the summer hills
and no sooner did he, the trickster,
scent the water, than he changed
to a brown otter,
slipped into a new skin,
to roll and dive in a fresh element.
She was left wading in the shallows
like a child, leaning to interrogate the sand.
But longing works on her like a spell
until it lifts her out
on the surface of the water and she walks
there, like no other creature.
She reaches him as he dives.
When he comes up for air,
he will see her
as she is.
Riddle
What is it that has been so long, waiting–
in a sidewalk cafe at noon with pastis and olives,
in a darkened room where fresh figs ripen
on the bedside table,
among lavender flowers that must be bruised
to release their essence?
It comes when it will, regardless.
It chooses to play with dangerous toys,
is never on time, interrupts decent people
when they are having a conversation.
It does not forgive, can
never be forgotten– in this evening
under a linden tree in a deserted square,
bodies resonating like tuned bells, our
hands may touch, grasp,
despite everything,
everything.
Figure of St. Francis in Bronze
He stands on a plinth of broken marble
his hands held outwards, cupping
an intangible gift. Thin streams trickle
from the moss under his feet to a basin,
and more: his generosity pours into a gutter
where all animals can drink–
like the brindled dog that drank from your hands
filled with water from a city fountain
on a sultry night of chattering starlings
when I first knew your touch
and grateful, shivering,
took what is more important than water¬:
gained strength to return love like a spring
unstopped, a flow, soaking,
swelling seed and bud into mortal
grass and flowers.
The Fig Tree
Before she left she stared down the fig tree
outside the bedroom window.
What right had it to be so fecund, so full?
She had let the summer in.
Flowers filled the empty basket of her ribs.
The green figs, ripe now,
give their red hearts to others.
Flagellum
Silversmiths of Avila made exquisite whips,
handle proportioned for female hands,
knopped with an acorn or a fleur de lys,
a mystical number of flexible strands
bound with a silver braid, each filament
bearing a cross or dainty heart, or spears
biting the naked flesh, bruising at first,
then drawing virgin blood, so scarlet tears
drop from each terminating charm.
Later, wounds will fester, glazing
pain with fever and rampant demons.
Then secret scars, the badge of blazing
limitless love, scars that tell of a vow
fulfilled, a whispered detail of the Passion.
Desire, sharpener of senses
Infuriated, she throws the soap
into the suitcase,
packing to leave.
Choked with silence,
humiliated, vulnerable,
she is as dangerous as an empty pan on a high fire.
When she walk past him
neither of them looks the other in the eyes.
She has no appetite, terrible thirst,
can’t sit down, can’t stand up.
She stands outside his door at midnight,
willing it to open.
The Petals
All my friends told me his smile was a lie,
his charm the blackest magic. The sound
of his voice was sunshine on a honey jar.
He arched over me, a ribbed shield:
the skin of his back smooth as milk
while I flowed under him, strong
as an April stream. It was an unlooked-for
blossoming, uncalculated, rash.
When he was gone, the petals, torn by rain, fell.
Looking Once More At The Photograph
When he moved in close to touch her hand,
slipped between parked cars to cross the road
beside her, arm around her waist,
she came into flower like night-blooming
cereus, once in ten years.
Later she kissed his forehead, his ear, his neck
and he claimed to have recited Aves to resist–
In this season her garden is full,
its skin splitting with gorgeous fruit.
She is writing better than ever
and there, out of focus, wearing
black socks with his shorts, is he,
a plain man, she sees now.
How the Mantis does it
Cut the head from a male in the act of mating.
It will not matter much. The female mantis
is looking forward to a romantic dinner
afterwards.
Relieved of nattering mantis thoughts the spine
remembers unhindered the deep rhythm of sex.
With the head off, it’s more reliable.
Our consciousness is made with memories
pulled from the giddy present. Without memory,
no fear, no regret, no guilt.
Aspire to lose memory in the service of pleasure,
that karmic sense of immanence. For us, a state of grace
can be achieved without decapitation.
The Loser in Love
Like the Commisioner hated Inspector Clouseau
(destroyer of my plans)
Like Wile E. Coyote hated the Roadrunner
(too smart for your own good)
Like Bluto hated Popeye
(more lovable than I)
You, Luke and I, Darth Vader
You, the Whale and I the Captain,
the obsessed, the vengeful:
You, Lucifer and I your jealous god.
I pursue you: injure, vanquish,
cast you out. This is how much
I hate: this is how much I love.
The shutters shift on their hinges
in the dawn wind.
All night it seems the swifts have been screaming,
whipping between the ancient houses
whose stucco walls are pink, yet not pink.
Empty thunder woke me.
I am as I was last night
in meditation:
a channel of breath, a glass vase containing thoughts
swimming in harmless circles.
A flock of pigeons is blown across
the aperture of my tall bedroom window.
White muslin curtains lift and swell.
Can I be swayed by desire?
Hotel of Dreams
Welcome. This is the entrance hall. Yes, it is
grey and unprepossessing. We don't need
to be attractive. The dreams you see lounging
in the dormitories, slouched across old mattresses,
smoking unrecognizable substances by the pool,
are all unavailable.
Although it is difficult to understand
why anyone would want them
when seen up close, their very inaccessibility
and aloofness makes them desirable.
We often have break-ins.
The dreams don't want out, of course.
They get three squares a day, only
have to help cook and wash up every other week.
They are perfectly happy watching TV
or listening to baseball games on the radio.
Here they don't have to live up to anything,
are never a disappointment to anyone. Now,
would anyone care to make a reservation?
Exhibition
Your upper lip forms the couplet
to the octet of your nose.
Your lower lip droops, a ripe fruit
or not quite ripe, mostly carmine
red and firm to touch
with the tongue, but
your mouth is slightly open, dumbly
wondering at the machinery of perspective
with that most intelligent part of you,
the bitter black coffee of your eyes.
How sweet it would be
to investigate the slope of your shoulder,
to compare the monument
of your nape to that of the marble Apollo
we circle like opposing planets.
If I could only for a moment
make you stop thinking about art.
Mermaid
Tonight you watch me
from your porch, wondering
which house I have left, barefoot,
without a wrap.
Moonlight clothes me, my skin
blanched by it, eye sockets shadowed
so deep you cannot guess
their expression, pearls
on my neck thrumming with paradoxical
luminescence, passionate and cool. I sense each step
barefoot on wet sand, sea-smoothed: you watch
my unfamiliar woman-toes grasp the slip of kelp-fronds.
The sky sucks up wind from the ocean
landward, where I am exiled.
You are strong, warm, golden,
like nothing in my native country.
Will you not cover me
with your coat,
lead me back into your home?
The Selkie
They came upon a lake in the summer hills
and no sooner did he, the trickster,
scent the water, than he changed
to a brown otter,
slipped into a new skin,
to roll and dive in a fresh element.
She was left wading in the shallows
like a child, leaning to interrogate the sand.
But longing works on her like a spell
until it lifts her out
on the surface of the water and she walks
there, like no other creature.
She reaches him as he dives.
When he comes up for air,
he will see her
as she is.
Riddle
What is it that has been so long, waiting–
in a sidewalk cafe at noon with pastis and olives,
in a darkened room where fresh figs ripen
on the bedside table,
among lavender flowers that must be bruised
to release their essence?
It comes when it will, regardless.
It chooses to play with dangerous toys,
is never on time, interrupts decent people
when they are having a conversation.
It does not forgive, can
never be forgotten– in this evening
under a linden tree in a deserted square,
bodies resonating like tuned bells, our
hands may touch, grasp,
despite everything,
everything.
Figure of St. Francis in Bronze
He stands on a plinth of broken marble
his hands held outwards, cupping
an intangible gift. Thin streams trickle
from the moss under his feet to a basin,
and more: his generosity pours into a gutter
where all animals can drink–
like the brindled dog that drank from your hands
filled with water from a city fountain
on a sultry night of chattering starlings
when I first knew your touch
and grateful, shivering,
took what is more important than water¬:
gained strength to return love like a spring
unstopped, a flow, soaking,
swelling seed and bud into mortal
grass and flowers.
The Fig Tree
Before she left she stared down the fig tree
outside the bedroom window.
What right had it to be so fecund, so full?
She had let the summer in.
Flowers filled the empty basket of her ribs.
The green figs, ripe now,
give their red hearts to others.
Flagellum
Silversmiths of Avila made exquisite whips,
handle proportioned for female hands,
knopped with an acorn or a fleur de lys,
a mystical number of flexible strands
bound with a silver braid, each filament
bearing a cross or dainty heart, or spears
biting the naked flesh, bruising at first,
then drawing virgin blood, so scarlet tears
drop from each terminating charm.
Later, wounds will fester, glazing
pain with fever and rampant demons.
Then secret scars, the badge of blazing
limitless love, scars that tell of a vow
fulfilled, a whispered detail of the Passion.
Desire, sharpener of senses
Infuriated, she throws the soap
into the suitcase,
packing to leave.
Choked with silence,
humiliated, vulnerable,
she is as dangerous as an empty pan on a high fire.
When she walk past him
neither of them looks the other in the eyes.
She has no appetite, terrible thirst,
can’t sit down, can’t stand up.
She stands outside his door at midnight,
willing it to open.
The Petals
All my friends told me his smile was a lie,
his charm the blackest magic. The sound
of his voice was sunshine on a honey jar.
He arched over me, a ribbed shield:
the skin of his back smooth as milk
while I flowed under him, strong
as an April stream. It was an unlooked-for
blossoming, uncalculated, rash.
When he was gone, the petals, torn by rain, fell.
Looking Once More At The Photograph
When he moved in close to touch her hand,
slipped between parked cars to cross the road
beside her, arm around her waist,
she came into flower like night-blooming
cereus, once in ten years.
Later she kissed his forehead, his ear, his neck
and he claimed to have recited Aves to resist–
In this season her garden is full,
its skin splitting with gorgeous fruit.
She is writing better than ever
and there, out of focus, wearing
black socks with his shorts, is he,
a plain man, she sees now.
How the Mantis does it
Cut the head from a male in the act of mating.
It will not matter much. The female mantis
is looking forward to a romantic dinner
afterwards.
Relieved of nattering mantis thoughts the spine
remembers unhindered the deep rhythm of sex.
With the head off, it’s more reliable.
Our consciousness is made with memories
pulled from the giddy present. Without memory,
no fear, no regret, no guilt.
Aspire to lose memory in the service of pleasure,
that karmic sense of immanence. For us, a state of grace
can be achieved without decapitation.
The Loser in Love
Like the Commisioner hated Inspector Clouseau
(destroyer of my plans)
Like Wile E. Coyote hated the Roadrunner
(too smart for your own good)
Like Bluto hated Popeye
(more lovable than I)
You, Luke and I, Darth Vader
You, the Whale and I the Captain,
the obsessed, the vengeful:
You, Lucifer and I your jealous god.
I pursue you: injure, vanquish,
cast you out. This is how much
I hate: this is how much I love.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
