Wally Swist
Selected Haiku
The SwistThe 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. PortraitEd 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 MountainWhen 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. |
Mary OliverMy 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 LightThe 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 WordThe 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 HawkThe 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. MarqueeMy 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. |
