Grandmother’s Suitcase
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When grandmother came to live with us,
mother told me once, she brought
but one small suitcase, all her adult life
having inhabited one guest room at the hotel
she had owned, that granny liked to add
how confined space allowed for certain
freedoms to emerge, not to own or be
submerged in many accessories, shoes,
and clothes.
>
I recall still her elegance
of dress, how always her face and hands
sparkled with cleanliness.
>
Her husband,
a most contrary man, fitted his possessions
into twin containers: a worn brown valise
and shiny shaving bag to join our rowdy band:
visitors all traversing then a green and fertile land.
>
Just To Say
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At work in the 1980s under Reagan just as
the laws began to change, my boss at John
Jay College, where I adjuncted for a wage,
aired a long preamble of apology before
seeking for review my squat blue Green card.
>
Today, I hear it reported on the morning news
that America is full, that soon the dancing feet
of Inwood and Central Park will be squeezed
like Grey Poupon through narrow gaps carved
into our President’s magnificent border wall.
>
Zazen: 1934-2017
>
In Memoriam
I was born under the astral sign of Scorpio,
Tall, and simply complicated, some dish
A man has unkindly said of me.
>
My home
Is hollow now, blue walls bruised,
Men with wire in train hang packs
And hatchets high above the tree line,
>
I note
Their outlines, their tracks are whisks of bone.
In my tote I ferry raspberries and oranges,
Tofu, and a bottle of champagne.
>
I ask:
Will you join me down at the beach?
We do not have to discourse or pretend:
Let’s watch and laugh a little while.
>
Babe, there’s nothing to prove, nothing to gain.
>
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Hawk, Kyger, Bolinas
>
<
It is true that there is power with us. But I am so improperly trained.
Joanne Kyger
>
>
A hawk descends to my shoulder blade
Furthermore, it’s Friday.
>
First, I pledge to set my kitchen to order
For glory be
>
From a copse deer converge at evensong
I boil water for tea.
>
My books are to their subjects ordered
On the gray sofa
>
The throw is loosely held and flown like
Light falling westward
>
Like rainwater from a laden pail Kyoto
Like my lover’s kisses
>
Like loose chatter cull at the commissary.
Hawk, I seek a line
>
Or honeycomb to nail fine stitches down
But unbidden as
>
Mad felines lyrics push through brambles,
Gathering with fauns
>
Rippling the flat surface that I seek to carve
Reggae, I am scattered
>
And employed. First, set kitchen to order.
All frivolous tasks avoid.
>
A hawk descended to my shoulder blade:
Wise. Eager to advise.
>
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Light Vermeer
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Light falls
On the lady’s arm
Falls on the wall
Of her living room
As water dropping down a weir
Falls on the woman’s silken dress
And to her neck
Falls and falls again
As if light and time
And space were shapes unchecked
Falling as we fail
And fall again
Falls on the maid’s face
In light of life and revelation
Falls on mirrors
And falls
On letters drawn
Like blue lobelia sunward
>
A woman performing
On a lute
Falls
To the window
For a chord.
Astronomers
And geographers
Toward fired globes
Falling
Planets, stars
& captured territories
All into alignment
Falling.
>
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Rowan Oak Glosses: Oxford, Mississippi
>
It is late morning in Oxford
cedar and oak as August casts a fiery glaze
across this spooned-out parking lot.
>
Here,
we absorb fragrances inhaled and sold:
I grew-up drab decades following
our own Civil War.
>
Parched familiarities
suffocate and spin as late morning we stroll
arm-in-arm the Rowan Oak of Wm. Faulkner.
>
Long bereft
of ladies’ airs, today’s Rowan Oak’s
a dusty death trap.
>
Colonel Robert Sheegog
a Scotch-Irish planter from Tennessee,
an immigrant like me, raised this home
from Princess Hoka’s Chickasaw trail of tears.
>
A tourist
visiting from Missouri, I inscribe my mark
in the visitors’ book though my heart leans
toward the interstate ahead, and lunch.
Eamonn Wall’s recent publications include From Oven Lane to Sun Prairie: In Search of Irish America (Arlen House, 2019) and Junction City: New and Selected Poems 1990-2015 (Salmon Poetry, 2015). A native of Co. Wexford, he has lived in the USA since 1982—currently in St. Louis, Missouri.