| Doug Tanoury, Associate Editor USA Voice of Bartemaus And I will say once again that darkness Is persistent and gives way only With great reluctance In small spots as if to delay And discourage This I know for I have sojourned Like Bartemanus a blind man In plutonic gloom so dense Light does not travel Or penetrate its reaches I have waited a lifetime For one spark or shimmer A lone glimmer a glint or gleam and I will continue to call out A voice from the darkness My Father Dying In the gulls cry I can remember My father’s voice and recall his smell In the coolness of air drifting off The lake that lay translucent green Like the jade backs of crayfish Its surface still and the only motion A black-hulled lake freighter that Travels the horizon like a body being Wheeled down a hall on a gurney The glint of sunlight that stretches Across the surface is the silver tails Of minnows swimming in schools And the glassiness of his eyes as he Falls into a stillness where unmoving He becomes without wind or waves The lake where mahogany earthworms And ebony leeches are bait For stained-glass bluegills Nocturne In the early hours of the morning, At 2:30 and sometimes after, I would hear my father, Unable to sleep, couching, His footsteps moving about, As he transformed the kitchen Into a concert hall, With refrigerator doors closing loudly. Jars could be heard opening. Their vacuum seals hissing, Lids rolling, spiraling and strumming Across table or countertop, The sound of him rummaging Through the silver for knife, fork Or spoon, and the glupp-glupp of him Pouring it in the glass. Some nights now I wake up At 2:30 or sometime after, Unable to sleep. In the summer, I sit out In the quiet on the front porch step, In winter, in the darkened living room At the rolltop desk, but always Avoiding the kitchen. Indeed, I tiptoe through it, for the Silence there has grown Into a monument to him, And I fear that if I click the Glass of the pimento olive And the sweet pickle jars It will disturb his peace, And any slight rattle of silverware Will conjure his spirit.
© Copyright, 2000, Doug Tanoury. |