USA

hsc@traverse.com 

Smoking on the Back Porch

Smoking on the Back Porch, Drinking Rum, 
Watching Planes Fly to Europe

On the Pont Marie an English woman in orange 
plaid carries a mystery novel. She spies 
a log floating on the Seine and watches it 
disappear beneath her feet. Books, maps, 
photos, small black and white faces. Fear 
and promise, looming, retreating: Everything 
and its opposite. An orangerie, a pyramid.

Racine and La Fontaine are fortified with robes 
of fruit, literature, lambkins. And Moliere’s paw 
was never tempted by that perfect youth, 
unconnected to a platform, so life-like in texture,
size, the glowing age. Here a rock cries
fragility, and yet with such a pressure holds
its finger on the tourist longing. Everything 
and its opposite. Old Voltaire, naked 
and smiling in fine creases and sags-- 
this feeble gravity of being 
no larger than a man.

Pile of Rocks

Redbud runs over the hayfield,
wild apple snags the pasture
and what is left is inconsequential--
a little earth poured from a shoe.

Here my father walked behind a horse, 
turning sod. And once again to gather rocks 
into a wagon. Two hands, twice 
handled, the rocks freed 
upon the slope. They formed a monument 
to the end of the roll. 

Hay, cattle, horses; then beaver 
flooded out the birch. Deer paths 
and cougar spoor discovered in the mud. 
A pair of nesting eagles: But we have not 
come to rest in the valley 

like the crossroad or simple grave. 
And this old man with his yellow dog. 
He breaks at the crumbling shaft of property 
driven to the edge of magma’s flower.

Caliban

My daughter brought home a fish from carnival
and put it in a bowl with green pebbles 
and two planet Earth marbles.

A creature like a minnow, shy and rippling 
invisible: the children lost interest. 
When I remember, I feed it flake by flake. 

It watches me-- glimmering shade 
incomprehensible in its enormity. Two tails 
press their shape into the curve of glass.

I thought the fish might need a companion
and in my daughter’s room I found 
a gilt-framed mirror to tilt behind the bowl. 

The creature now lives before a grotto. 
Certainly, it haunts the hard entrance 
to its phantom cave. The sea lies 

beyond in half-heard connections. The rest 
of the island with berries, fresh springs, 
a shimmering and devoted angel.

© Copyright, 2000, Heather Cauchy.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.