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Wally Swist


Selected Haiku

Note: Although Mr. Swist is now known for his longer poems regarding nature, with several books to his credit, his new volume, The Windbreak Pine: New and Uncollected Haiku, 1985-2015, is slated for publication later this year by Snapshot Press, of Ormkirsk, U.K."
​


at the riverbank’s edge--
the muskrat redigging
its muddy burrow

​                                        ❦

                              cool June night . . .
                              the great horned owl rouses me
                              hooting who-who, who-who, who

               ❦

beside the river
among cockspur hawthorn bowers--
a catbird’s cry

                                        ❦

                              above blowing meadow grass--
                              the tree swallow’s sudden dips
                              and swoops

          ❦

the harbingers of autumn
nodding in woodland shade--
purple asters

                         ❦

                              sailing among
                              cabbage whites and coppers--
                              thistle seeds in the wind

          ❦
 
drought summer--
falling yellow leaves trickling
across pools of the river

                         ❦

                              parched September earth--
                              joe-pye weed’s early sepia
                              inflorescence

          ❦

rippling
in shallows and grassy shoals--
drought river

                         ❦
 
                              scrub meadow--
                              the tops of stalks of mullein
                              starred with yellow petals

          ❦
 
September meadow--
yellow sulphurs fly among
the patches still green
​

The Swist

The Swist is a brook.  As child, the name
was often intentionally
 
mispronounced by classmates who would
also insert the word cheese after rending
 
the air with hyperbole.  As a grown man,
particularly women, on a date, would
 
rhyme Swist with Twist, and then say, Just
like Chubby Checker, right?  Often enough,
 
I have needed to have to speak each
letter of it over the phone to a Customer
 
Service Representative, enunciating
the letters twice; only to hear, Yes, Swift,
 
repeated back to me, the consternation
rising in my pulse and shooting right
 
through the top of my head; my ire
surfacing through my repetition, once
 
again, of the four consonants protecting
that one vowel in the middle, with
 
the sinuousness of the soft consonants
providing a rush until the final hard sound,
 
as in following a straightaway before
a sudden meander.  The Swist rises in
 
Rhineland-Palatinate at 330 meters
above sea level on the Eifel.  The brook
 
is nearly 44 kilometers long, and in
North Rhine-Westphalia it joins the mouth
 
the Erft.  The Swist flows through
my veins, as readily as it tumbles into
 
Swisttal, a municipality; and its rush
may be heard in Meckenheim and
 
Flerzheim, which is considered to be
a berg of the town Rheinbach.  It is here
 
that there are cycle paths along
the edge of the brook, where lovers lie
 
in the grass and children play among
wildflowers.  The Swist also gives
 
its name to the town of Weilerswist. 
The source of my namesake is
 
found at the northern edge of the Eifel.  
Considered to be the longest brook
 
run in Europe, the Swist may explain
why I find healing in moving water. 

Portrait

Ed is leaning against the chain link
Of the portable cage he has moved
 
To the grass in the barnyard where
He is speaking to the Rottweiler,
 
The aging rescue dog, who cocks
His head, and holds his muzzle up
 
To listen to what Ed is saying to him,
As he coaxes him back to health
 
After the surgery in which the massive
Fatty tumor was removed from
 
His back and side.  Ed speaks to him
With as much care as he solicitously
 
Places the old faded tablecloths
In the bed of daffodil shoots, whose
 
Spears have been warmed these nights
Of late April frost.  Through Ed’s
 
Tenderness, the Rottweiler has nearly
Grown into a dog whose visage bears
 
The look of supreme loyalty, even with
A glint of gentleness mitigating
 
The ferocity in his steely brown eyes,
Although it would be against
 
Anyone’s better judgment to stick
A finger through the woven steel
  
Of the dog pen.  When Ed unlatches
The lock and walks into the cage to place
 
The shiny metal bowl and the plastic
Water bucket on the ground, the dog
 
Backs away to make room then sits down
And looks up again in tribute to the man
 
Who has taken him walking the meadow
Behind the barn late past twilight
 
And into many a dusk.  The stiff April
Wind blows through Ed’s white beard,
 
That flutters against his chest, and his
Shoulder-length hair.  The dog’s eyes
 
Sparkle as Ed rubs his head and beneath
His chin with one of his calloused hands. 
 
When the wind lets up, everything appears
To be resolved again, everything seems
 
To have been restored to its proper place,
Within the sacredness of the day.

Long Mountain

When I look up at Long Mountain,
Northern promontory of the Holyoke Range,
 
It is merely a ridge to what it must have been
When prehistoric Lake Hitchcock
 
Pooled upon its shores when the flood plain
Was immersed in the waters of a glacier
 
Millennia ago.  Worn down by the wind and the rain, 
I think, and look back up,
 
Neverending to be mesmerized
By the mystery that its slopes hold through each
 
Season and during any
Weather—just as is sorrow diminished by time.

Picture

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Mary Oliver

My memory of her is as evanescent
          as the light bulb camera flash 
                      of a Stieglitz portrait of O’Keeffe.


The image that remains with me
          is that I furtively studied her face,
                      the quietude of its naked sensuality,

the way you feel the self-conscious
          trembling of a spotted doe
                      when you have entered the meadow

where she is browsing, or the sight
          of the of bearded mussels that 
                      disappear and then reappear along 

the stone quay reaching out into 
          the sea, in rhythm with your doubt 
                      that you may have seen them from 

afar, and the vision of them between
          the white-capped surf, that reaffirms 
                      their existence, washing over their 

iridescence again.  
          After having walked into 
                      the bookstore she was working in 

on Commercial Street in Provincetown, 
          what I noticed more than anything 
                      was her stillness those thirty-five 

years ago, as I browsed 
          the poetry section, occasionally 
                      looking around, and sometimes 

between, the shelves of the rows 
          of books, as fluidly arranged as 
                      the shells among the stones found 

along the sand of the beach.
          There she sat, behind the counter--
                      mist draping the cobblestones 

of the street, the sound 
          of the tide beating time on the shore.  
                      Her living presence made me think 

of Vermeer’s The Girl with the Pearl 
          Earrings, although she didn’t even 
                      require any adornment jewelry 

would have diminished 
          the radiance of, as she breathed into 
                      the study of quiet that she became.  

November Light

The morning sun shining through
the adolescent maple graces itself
 
beyond the two front windows
of my studio.  The light this time
 
of the year is often more
of an inflected silver than struck
 
gold; and the maple’s leaves are
such a shade of scarlet,
 
that is infused with yellow, it is
as if the foliage is nuanced with
 
Monet's vibrant pastels
and cast in Rodin's hammered
 
bronze.  How fortunate we are
to live in the world that offers us
 
its constant reminders of who
we are and what our true being is.

The Word

The word is the sum total
Of what you believe, whatever
 
It is that you are; it carries the tone
Of whatever Ethos you exhibit,
 
What colors expand in your aura,
The arrangement of what planets
 
Orbit around any sun, or whether
Or not there is one exercising 
 
The draw of its gravitational force. 
The word is the master switch,
 
The soul’s lever, what illuminates
The flash of the spirit,
 
What energizes cosmic design. 
The word is: breathing in the dust
 
Of the brushstrokes from God’s
Hand to Adam’s in Michelangelo’s
 
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel;
Shimmering in the vibrant
 
Combination of pastels in the oils
Of a painting by Seurat, in which,
 
As he intended, we discover
Harmony in emotion;  and emanating
 
From the perpetuity in not only
The slant but also in the fragrance
 
Of the falling of autumn rain
Carved in Hiroshige’s woodblocks.

Cry of the Hawk

The hawk’s shrill cry emitting from the twisted
Branches of the windbreak lining the scrub
 
Meadow pierces me.  I remember when
My Labrador and I were walking back from
 
The brook on a summer day such as this one. 
We looked at each other standing in
 
Our own disbelief, water still dripping from
Her coat the color of cinnamon.  The hawk’s
 
Chick must have just dropped down from one
Of the high branches of the red pine out
 
Of its nest, tumbling onto the piles of needles
Surrounding the trunk.  The mother’s call
 
Answering the chick’s shrieks, as it hobbled
On unsteady legs and claws, often balancing
 
Itself on its wings and tail feathers.  The red-tail
Descended in a barely audible rush of its
 
Half-outstretched wings, landing at the base
Of the tree, alarm evident in the flaring pupils
 
Of its eyes, looking at us standing several yards
From her.  She must have felt our wanting
 
To help her because she seemed to have
Acknowledged that in us before turning toward
 
The brush in which her chick had already
Disappeared into, thick with deadfall, detritus
 
Of beech leaves, and runners of princess pine. 
We walked around her, giving her the berth
 
She deserved for her to carry out the rescue that
Only she was capable of.  As she stood erect,
 
Lifting her beak and calling out to her chick, as
It weakly answered with its frail shrieks that rent
 
The air with the sound that could only be
Unmistakable as that of incomprehensible grief.

Marquee

My mother had just died, and as I recollect
I had somehow circumnavigated
 
my strict father for an afternoon to buddy up
with Dennis from parochial school. 
 
My father didn't approve of much, and
as he would say before he took off his belt,
 
after I returned home, Sonny, this is going
to hurt me more than it hurts you, and would lay
 
strokes of leather across my skin
that left purple welts that would last for days.
 
The cinema marquee with the red
capital letters announced not only the title
 
of the film but also the news:
Hemingway dies at 60.  I remember
 
being stopped cold having read those
words, with my inner boy-voice prescient
 
of my wanting to become a writer,
and nothing to base it on. 
 
Then I was transmuted by the Technicolor
I saw on the silver screen amid the crisp
 
wash of the waves and the fluid beauty
of Hayley Mills, whom I was absolutely
 
convinced all girls should choose
to look like when they began to be old enough. 

Picture
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