USA

peacewoman@earthlink.net

Suppose These Houses Are Composed Of Ourselves
after a line by Wallace Stevens

Forests are dying, I read,
waiting for my therapy session.
But wait. Waiting, I read,
for the death of trees is for death
waiting. What a strange word,
wait-ing, akin to watch-ing,

more at wake. You and I waited at dusk,
doors open (once, a house open to the night
announced its strength; now, in a city,
it 's asking to be watched). At solstice,
while "the primetime rapist" terrorized
Tucson, we listened for his step.

Dubbed for his habit of catching couples
during the news, the man eluded police,
who'd knock at the front door
as he loped out the back. We watched sunset
through the screen, spoke of stories
you gathered in Peru about strong women.

You travelled to the Amazon, found
the tribes and their tales half-
forgotten in the ravaged forest.
Forest: from foris, OE, outside,
but outside of what? Our houses?
Ourselves? Our world:

from woruld, OE, human existence?
With a fungus for every kind of tree,
we don't remember ever sitting beneath
a spreading chestnut, but all fall
on the streets of New York, they still sell
roasted chestnuts, don't they?

Arcane, magically
reincarnated, wistfully
remembered as aromatic holograms
dissolve in your mouth, on your tongue
the ever so faint taste of dust.
In the Amazon, they no longer school

their children on Amazons
but everywhere in Peru they're pictured
with both breasts intact--
a variation on the Greek.
The locals thought you loca--
crazy or brave--for travelling alone,

trying to prove a myth. Nor do we teach
our children well, though one of them, the rascal,
this morning sent a virus around the world.
On the screens of business and defense:
P E A C E S H A L O M S H A N T I ♥ .
A vaccine was developed to protect computers,

not trees. The conquistadors left an account
of their skirmish with Amazons, forever
to seek them, like Eldorado
and the Fountain of Youth, the impregnable
City of Women. We talked of old lovers,
doors open to all that being

inside human existence affords--
who drank, who didn't, which were men,
which women, and how the moon rose
when you were happy and I, that night
before therapy, sat alone with my dog,
watching as light filled the room.

for Janice

***originally published in Spoon River Poetry Review
and collected in The Never Wife (Mammoth P, 1999)

The Never Wife

Eventually, she composed herself,
shards of words, scraps of vellum,
runes to signify at least three directions
sprouting, scrawling. She wrote,
"Nothing, nothing left" . . .

Who was she but a never-wife?
"Feeling around for something lost," inscribing,
now inscribing, "vanished a waterfall
once veiled in mist." Calling her
beautiful, he left; missed her response.

             The celebrated 1899 Swedish-Norwegian
             race to the North Pole in hot-air balloons
             was lost by the Swedes, who vanished
             for 43 years, discovered by a U.S.
             military survey team, solving the mystery

             after they'd been forgotten by everyone
             save those who loved and survived them,
             their frost-burned bodies half-eaten.
             Capt. Erickson's journal detailed the last weeks,
             confessing the error of sewing huge sheets

             of tarp without caulking (Erickson’s
             terrible mistake): the balloon seeped,
             the team's efforts to keep it aloft failed,
             their trek back prevented by an ice floe
             (they floated away overnight);

             their food ran out. Bjornsson raved for his wife.
             Frederickson, trying to fish, attacked by a bear,
             also trapped on the floe. When the last of the them,
             Erickson himself (taking poison), who wrote
             until death, expired, the bear came back.

She died an old woman who, as a young beauty,
was known for her betrothal to Haldor Erickson,
explorer, an historical footnote as compelling
as the victorious Norwegians, because stubbornly
he used uncaulked twine to secure his balloon's seams.

We know her name from a small
country churchyard: FOSS,
Anna. And we know what it means:
Swedish for waterfall,
Hebrew for grace.

***originally published in Puerto del Sol
and collected in The Never Wife (Mammoth P, 1999)

For Reasons That Are Dissolving Daily, You're
Surprised That Paradise Isn't Here Or Anywhere

High tide, waves propelled onto bone-chilled eden.
Come with reasons you thought you knew, here is not
where lovely, longed-for paradise is, or was
            or ever will be.

Aegean-besieged, stuck on this Greek island,
you find wind relentless and are surprised by
thoughts unearthed and unexplained, vision seeking
            you out unwilling,

as the mountain yesterday, Cynthus, a small
rise of one hundred steps, not much more, still, an-
other female power place overrun, ruined
          by the grasp for power.

As you climbed, knowing somehow where the temples
had been, you grew cold and then scared but still could
not say a word. Afterwards you asked why, what
            memories that came

back were of, why suddenly speechless, trying
this word, that? Your sister--of one mind with you,
spooking you more--said, Isn't that the reason
           we're here together,

what we're finding out as we walk these stone steps
past the crumbling vestiges (god's face fallen
sideways), this communion of sisters we have
           touched is what's left us.

There's no peace for long, you think, wishing you might
hold such times and, stitching together scraps of self,
ake one whole woman. Not, as you've felt, hyster-
            ical, or eccentric.

Surrounded, cocoon-like, all day by other
tourists, you emerge in the ascent yourself.
This evening we drink, toast the lost ones, flung and
            plunging but rising

too, exchanging witnesses, dead for living.
Now is not no, never, the past, as here
has never been there, but even the sad re-
            membering joins us . . .

for Elaine

***originally published in Feminist Studies
and collected in The Never Wife (Mammoth P, 1999)

The Dove

In the American take-off of the Swedish classic
the Knight plays badminton with Death
and the aged Scholar cannot take a shit.
History, he says, is just one damn thing
after another, but a voice-over, any voice,
intrudes: I have done whatever,
sacrificed whatnot, taken you down where

the iconography of politics is at least as old
as our amnesiac, once-but-not-future president,
whose rouged face again fills our screens,
the ultimate talking head. Going my way?
he chortles, marching to the beat, his heart
telling him one thing, his PR men another.

Who are we to say you don't get something
for nothing, that being nice is a zen caprice?
By juxtaposing two statements, I never settle down,
niceties erupt in my place, giving way
to insipid inspirational daily affirmations:
We aren't responsible for anything.

"Because I'm going, I vant to be alone,"
said the Swedish actress legendary for her beauty.
As a poor girl in Lund she gathered wild berries
from the field, ate them with new warm cream.
She was my grandmother, christened originally
Johanna Margreta Sigrita Knutson, who walked one summer

from Iowa to Minnesota and back, a thousand miles,
alone with her cow, moving their worldly goods.
After she left for Hollywood, the cow went dry
with sorrow, but my grandmother went on to play
her countrywoman, Queen Christina, who gave up
a kingdom to convert, her bust lodged at the Vatican

the spitting image of my other--my real, of course--
grandmother, replete with hawk's nose, double chin,
thin bun twisted at the nape, so plain as to seem
regal in her retreat, like her fabled cow, mourning
her lost love, facts not shown in our family tree,
but surely they offer an origin tale:

Death does not defeat the night
but returns again and again.
The dove of peace splatters
all bystanders (among them Death),
but not the Historian in the kammer
(as it's called in the old country).

We who saw her as Christ coughing in Camille
Rushed toward that beauty, magnified as if
By our suffering: love and surrender, opening,
                                                                   and opening.

***originally published in Rattlesnake Review
and collected in The Never Wife (Mammoth P, 1999)

© All Copyright, Cynthia Hogue.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.