Ars Poetica 2, and: Blessed with Work, and: Dark Woods, and: For Annie 2

Abstract

Ars Poetica 2, and: Blessed with Work, and: Dark Woods, and: For Annie 2 Joseph Millar (bio) Ars Poetica 2 I take out the trash in the rainwhich glimmers there, a watery blur and murmurs aloud on the hoods of the carsand rattles the garbage cans for I provide room service on the first floor,just leave the leftovers outside the door, orange peels, half a scrambled egg,a smudge of salsa that lands on my shoe. I have nothing to worry about, though I still do—nor does my old neighbor, sprawled in his bunk listening to rain in the cave of his room.He's lame from arthritis but he's not drunk though he misses the days when he workedat his plasterer's trade with its trowels and knives still tucked away under the eaves.For breakfast I bring him a strawberry Ensure until he can make it down the stairsand roll the walker across to his chair [End Page 7] for coffee and toast with three or four prunes,and a program about fishing in the Tasman sea smoking his long pipe of Turkish tobacco,or he might call his daughter in Indiana, though inside of me and inside of himthere's a great white shark that never rests— it swims all night through the stomach and heartlike the ceaseless, predatory mind of art. Blessed with Work It went okay, trimming the bushesgrowing over the back porch and stairsof the house where my brother's widowresides, the mimosa and ivyhe left behind, thin rainon the windows nearby.It can feel hopeless, being somebody's fatherbut not so bad being somebody's brotherfor brothers are born and they rise up in timeand sometimes they never learn how to singthough on a day like this in the early springwe were blessed with work, which we lovedtogether, like the roots in the backyard dirt.They keep pushing deeper and farther belowwhere the sun doesn't reach and the light doesn't showbut the roots never minded leaving Eden,they think of work as a second heaven.Their eye is single,they think without words,they don't need a gun and they don'tneed a sword. [End Page 8] Dark Woods There's no one in the forest to help youwith the task of remembering your name no secret ceremony in the leavesthis far away from home with a sound in your ears like tinnitus,a distant ringing from outer space or it could be water running over the stonesof a woman's backbone, away from her face. Oh bride of science called down from the stars,oh glass jar placed on a hill to calm the mind in its ranging flightover the vacant fields of nightand the ocean that looks like wrecked steel. This time of life can make its own weatherand sometimes bring its own fear like the dry wind blowing west from Nevadathreatening the land with fire. But you know you want to give something backto the woods which have held you where you lay down to sleepbelow the ledges of rock and the oaks their limbs stretched out through November,their roots sunk vast and deep. [End Page 9] For Annie 2 All afternoon the west windhas been blowing its heavy gusts bending the elm and alder branchesover the clover and fescue grass where we watched the two snakesentwine and mate like the strandsof a high-voltage cable. If you left mewhere could I go in this world and not feel like a stranger?World of mourning things left behind, of turning aroundand not going back. I waited two hours in Emoryvillekeeping watch over the tracks till you finally stepped fromthe southbound Coast Starlight carrying the same small notebookall the way down from Oregon, wishing you had a cigaretteand holding the damp green skin of night darkly against your body. [End Page 10] Joseph Millar Joseph Millar's poems have won him fellowships from the Guggenheim...