Gary Metras
Carpet and WallsThirteen years in this house we built.
It is no longer new. Each room repainted, faucet and toilets repaired so nothing drips in the night except our hearts. The moon rising over the mountain no longer startles its cold beauty across the bed spread; even that mountain out back is older, already become part of our bones. Remember how we made love in each room that first year, soaking carpet and walls with our own heat, physical, moist, and more real than mortgage. Midnight ShowerNaked but for wedding band,
he slips out the shower, towels off and slides into bed. Her breath slow, steady, the dreams calm, or none at all. He settles, sinks into the rhythm. In this cave of sheets, blanket, and bodies, life continues unnoticed, a ring of gold in the dark After Five GenerationsThe auction was yesterday.
All the milkers went and the breeders. What’s left will be trucked to the slaughterhouse. A few pounds of tough steak for the freezer. Next week the tractors and balers go. After that, the memories. In a June HourBefore dusk frantic starlings
spy one more beetle in slanted light piercing grass a king bird snaps from dampening air mayfly mayfly mayfly those little eager tongues the eager little songs bounding, leaping from lilac branch from fence post descending from roof top from cloud root chirping in the changing light air growing dense an easy glide above the field a too easy deceit in a world they have no choice but to love The Anonymous ClosetThe dark is just the dark
where moons lack phase, shadow upon faceless shadow. The still air of being minus the being itself where smile is indulgence, lips of nothing. Without Helen, no Hektor. No death, no story. Only Iphigenia growing old, bitter in her anonymous closet. An empty mountain throne. Heroes everywhere silenced. Slugs slugging along cold stone. Let Briseis shout to all the warriors, I am no man’s prize as she withers among dented armor. See: Vultures rising on thermals. The Heavy Trout
Amid the thrashes and splashes
of this heavy trout I kneel to in the low water to remove my fly, a fat hopper whose hook holds the trout's jaw like Zeus' thunderbolt would, sloppy but sure, the fish awaits no plea or promise of release, sheds not one tear, not a single moan, as it twists and bends toward freedom that doesn't come, yet, even when I heft him completely in air to turn him on its back across my knee, this simple fish will not submit, struggling all the while my fingers probe and grasp hook, balance trout and myself in this little world, this dance enacted, until the hook is free, the flesh free, and I right the fish, lift it a moment in the sun's caress to see the rainbow stripe glow on its own, then lower the trout to water, submerge it in currents and flows I only guess at, as it swishes and sways, disappears, becomes the river once more. Little Book, Little Reader
Ten pages in this book only
and the child loves them all. In grandfather’s lap turn colors and shapes, round ball, gold star, nine blueberries they count each time, as if she needs to know some things don’t change the way her clothes do day to day, stripes to flowers, red to denim. When they find the black kitten, her voice is not in words but the language of joy. Street MusicianHe leans against the wall
that says No Parking. The crowd light tonight. He hugs a guitar, chin fallen to shoulder, eyes trying not to close. The last song evaporated an hour ago. Vocal cords as flighty as night moths. The worn velvet of the case, opened on the sidewalk like a pinned moth, is sprinkled with the few coins he scattered there himself, small silver stars constellating beneath the lamp post. The Beautiful Language
She sits again on a bench along the canal
in Rotterdam, waiting. This is where he will come, she whispers to herself. She feels him stirring under her bones. Behind her the Euromast rises, swaying gently in the permanent breeze, its tiered café full of quiet activity. Tourists smile at the demitasses and the scenery, both grateful and awed to be here. Even their children are subdued with this now in their lives, this moment they will not remember as adults. Lovers gaze into their narrowing eyes, knees kissing beneath the small tables. They could be anywhere in the world and that place would still be heightened by their inflamed blood. On the roof a young American and his bride brace against the tall wind and marvel at these vast lowlands that fill someone else’s lives. On the bench a woman waits for the angel who appeared in her dream. His silver eyes glowed with rapture. He drifted by in a boat on the air. She doesn’t know if he will greet her in Dutch or French, or some language known only in the soul. Her heart is ready. The young couple high above her sway in the wind washed air and embrace in the only beautiful language possible between flesh and flesh. |
My SpiderI’ve invented a spider,
the green-back-spider: arachnia verdiga domesticus. Its habitat: suburbia, the foundations of houses and middle schools, where boys with handfuls of spiders still chase girls. Not tarantula, no black widow, it resembles the daddy-long-legs. But isn’t. It is the green-back-spider. It happened like this: I was painting the cellar hatchway forest green, painting and whistling when a spider started to climb the metal wall, shaking its feet free of the sticky paint. To save its life, I swept it aside with the paint brush that left its back green. I watched it angle across the grass, perfectly camouflaged, to the side foundation, which it climbed and hung vertical, drying in the sun, my green-back-spider. Visions in JuneEach time I round the bend
on this forest path down to the river, I am tricked by a mountain laurel in full bloom on the far bank. From this high angle, its soft, pink blossoms peek out the dense foliage in the shape of a girl poised to dive into the cold water. Thoughts of trout and hand-tied flies dissolve. Suddenly, I am a simple village boy sneaking along River Akheloos in Thessaly with a man's spear and dreaming the glory of the hunt, when a nymph glides out the river, her body gleaming; her arms gather me to her, my lips tremble…. With the next step perspective alters, the vision evaporates. I am again wearing waders, fishing vest, holding a fly rod. When I come to the bank across from that flowering bush, I wade through the water, take her hand in mine, and kiss the flesh of that delicate petal. New ShoesHolding Piper's
shoe box, I marvel at how small it is, how perfectly compact, like the shoes, themselves, inside, T-strap dressy, with leather smooth as her skin. Toddler size 7 1/2, her third pair since birth. She will journey a couple months in Marianna Navy Blue, each step a new word, muffin, chipmunk, hel-ee-cop-r. Though shoes wear out, words pave new roads to discovery. MaroonedHe fights the weather in the sky,
in the heart. Waves crash against the rocks and erode the beach of innocence. The air cracks like pistol shots. There is no refuge, no bullet- proof vest to protect his chest. Blood becomes engaged to darkness. Still his sleep swells with sun and sand and girls who dress like butterflies. Bird Eggs, YesThe sparrow eggs have hatched,
the sparrows who stole the blue bird box. Yes, the tree swallow eggs have hatched by the neighbor’s house; the parents swooping again and again over the hay field. Yes, the mocking bird eggs in the thick spruce hatched and the parents can’t stop bragging about it long into the long evening atop the roof, the tree, the fence post, shortening the dark with those melodies. Yes-yes, the gold finch eggs have hatched, these birds as beautiful as flowers when they alight on iris stems, on liatris stalks to trap bugs to feed their young, for the young they brighten the air. And yes-yes-yes the blue bird eggs in the other box have hatched! I counted five eggs as blue as the sky in August, as blue as a child’s best dreams; and I touched all five of the bare-blind chicks, a baptism of sorts, felt their hearts pulsing with such hope, these small singers-to-be. The Yellow ShovelThe child squats to fill the plastic shovel with beach sand,
then stands straight as she can, lifts the shovel arm even higher, and lets the sand slowly slide off to drift in the ocean breeze. She smiles as sand blows down her hand, on her bathing suit, then back to the beach where each grain disappears into the largeness. She can barely spell her name, but here she is testing the world a shovel-full at a time. Destinations
“Sometimes the most real things you can’t see.”
—Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Engine noise in the sky above the fields where I loaf, reading, then a helicopter on a straight path to somewhere grows larger and louder and leaves a wake of angry air wasting minutes. Afterward the white and gray clouds resume their play while in front of me a dragonfly, as large as a hummingbird, hovers before darting around this field where it zigs to random patterns of mosquitoes hatching and rising to their deaths. A hawk’s faint cry splits the meadow’s new calm. I put the book down and search for the brown streak circling against the dark mountain. Another cry. Another. The neighbor’s telephone rings. They are in New Jersey all this week. Ring and cry. Then silence. I pick up the book. August continues. Frost Lingers
A late sunrise licks December frost off lawn.
In the spruce's shadow, frost lingers, laughing, but only a little longer, until it becomes the ground we walk, the air we breathe. The angry words of lovers the night before dissolve into morning's hug, the day advancing as it should. Snow will soon layer the earth, its lightness deceptive, its brightness blinding. The shadow, too, moves with the sun, daydreaming of nightfall when it marries darkness to rule the world. The snow within the shadow's arc baring its teeth. This is not a mere season's rhythm; winter is more stark, more black, more white without the venial sin that prompts a momentary argument, a stay against reason. Before absolution, the green again coated with frost. Touch it too long and it stings before it melts. |