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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803285064 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2016 |
| Series: | Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 839 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Rival Gardens
New and Selected Poems
By Connie Wanek
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 the Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8506-4
CHAPTER 1
Selections from Bonfire
April
When the snowbank dissolved
I found a comb and a muddy quarter.
I found the corpse of that missing mitten
still clutching some snow.
Then came snow with lightning,
beauty with a temper.
And sleet, the compromise that pleases no one;
precipitation by committee.
Out on Lake Superior the worried ice
paces up and down the shoreline
wearing itself out.
Chimneys have given up smoking.
In the balcony of the woods,
a soprano with feathers.
And upon the creek
the wicked spell is broken.
You are free to be water now.
You are free to go.
Red Fox
He lived all summer on the great man's estate,
the red fox, like a concubine.
The sight of him taking the bait
made the old gentleman tremble —
his modest toilette at the fountain
observed through binoculars,
his unmolested naps near the gray rock
where sunlight streamed through a dying birch.
Over and over the fox saw the old man hobble out
and fill the meat bowl. His was a pungent,
almost medical smell, that clung
like a tendril to the complicated air of human places.
At first each nerve objected. The fox
saw two dogs at the bay window, watching,
their coarse, domesticated faces
full of eager malevolence, like ex-wives.
Then overnight the sumac turned red.
The creeper suddenly blushed at its own rapaciousness.
How hard the wind tried to pick the trees up
but leaves only came away.
That summer, like all the others,
fled while the old man still wanted it, and the fox, too,
vanished into the copper-colored undergrowth
as into the magician's sleeve.
Abstract
The story begins a hundred years ago,
notations in that fine antique hand,
the getting and losing of a piece of land
ending with us.
Two wives became widows in this house,
walked from window to window looking out,
shrinking in their dresses,
padding their shoes with Kleenex.
The lake was always there, the fog climbed the hill,
and the moon grew stout and thin
per the promissory note.
Teeth fell out, there was a divorce
(Solvieg got the house),
and at last the two children who fought so bitterly
had to "divide by equal shares, share and share alike"
the southerly 100 feet of lot 9 Endion Subdivision
together with all improvements.
It was the sister who stayed on.
It was she who saw the peonies through the dry year,
who took the broom to the wasp nest in the soffit,
who embraced those endless domestic economies,
and who penciled into the margins
padlock combinations, paint colors,
the Latin names of her perennials.
Her bones grew hollow like a bird's
so that when it was time to fly
she had only to spread her old wool shawl
and drop the ballast of this abstract.
Wild Apples
The tree is old, hidden behind
a veil of Virginia creeper,
the apples astringent, misshapen,
green with red tiger stripes,
misguided adornment or miracle
in the logged-over third or fourth or fifth growth
along the creek. I gather a few windfalls,
too hard to bruise,
as I pass from nowhere to nowhere.
If I had roots I would put them down here.
Living roots, roots with feeling.
The apples are placed on the windowsill
where they can see out —
morning windows, sun coming out of the woods, disentangled.
How freely it floats before the clouds,
then willingly enters them.
And my daughter, scowling all day,
how she smiles when her friends come for her.
The hard brown boys find the apple tree
on one of their patrols
and load up on ammo.
One apple penetrates the storm window
but not the sash, and so glass separates
the curiously reunited offspring of the tree —
the litter brought together as dogs —
while the boys have of course scattered,
careening downhill on their bent bicycles.
The unburdened tree stands straighter,
smoothing the wrinkled skirt.
After all these years, some time apparently remains,
another evening, another autumn,
a tender half-inch of growth on each arthritic branch.
Apples lie soft and brown in the underbrush,
waste and redundancy, windowsill apples
sitting on their weeping mold.
Once you took my picture under this very tree.
I was holding the child, who was holding wild apples.
Fourteen months, I wrote on the back.
She and I both looked pale after that first intense year,
milky, like the edge of the sky,
slightly translucent, slightly grave.
She was mine. She didn't belong to herself then.
It was September, just as it is now,
the sun listing to the south,
the hill's shadow crossing me at the knee.
The Girl and the Horses
I woke to find the gate open and the horses gone
and I thought, "What haven't I given you?"
Dawn was drying the gravel on the road;
the bridle I carried clinked against my knee.
They hadn't gone far. They stood at the corner
where the road turned toward infinite places
and raised their heads from their grazing to watch me.
I walked toward them, falsely confident,
like a teacher, unable to disguise
the nature of my duty.
The big roan played a vital part in my success,
turning his ears forward as he smelled sugar,
two white, pure, perfect cubes. And then,
because he had so often done so, he accepted the bit.
I drew him out of the ditch, two legs leading four,
seventy pounds leading seven hundred,
and the other horses, sighing and snorting, followed.
It looked as if we'd been on some field trip,
saw how money was made, or how trees
are stripped and turned into toilet paper.
That morning I thought myself lucky
and the beasts immeasurably foolish
as I led them back. All in, the gate locked,
I pulled the roan's head down to me
and slipped the bridle off, and he nipped me,
nipped me with his huge teeth, yellow as corn,
near my ear, and bolted into the pasture.
Daylilies
If these yellow daylilies
made the sound suggested by their anatomy
we couldn't have them in the garden —
great gold horns
on stems that would support them,
like some stage mother, on a world tour.
But they're rooted here in the red clay,
noisy only by virtue of their color
and posture, that desperate leaning away
from the leaves, that sun hunger.
Perhaps they know they have only one day.
One cool morning, a wind off the lake,
and one noon under a sun
that returns the most ardent affection.
One evening watching the shadows
of the porch spindles lengthen without tangling,
and the day is done. A day
that might have been worse or better,
that was never ours alone
though it seemed so.
The Wandering Sky
It's the wind that drives the sky to one side
and herds the stars along, and pulls
the thread out of the needle.
A lifetime frugally spent
but gone all the same, and the chair
that has become your tame little horse
tethered beneath the wandering sky.
The grandchildren dash through the room
like comets leaving a brilliant trail.
They have left the door wide open
but the wind will close it.
Wherever we go the clouds have preceded us.
Clouds of the vast transformation.
Thin clouds that thinly cross the bald dome.
Clouds like fish bones, like ribs
protecting the lung of the atmosphere.
Sometimes there are long words in the sky,
a sentence finished beyond the horizon.
Broom
A blossom on its long stem
the broom is a hag of a tulip.
It is a woman who ties back
her hair with wire,
who wears burlap,
who eats clay.
For its fidelity
the broom has been granted
the ability to carry the witch
to the clouds. Who was the first
to slip it between her legs
and vanish?
Skim Milk
The weary cow barely made the barn
and the farmer cleaned her withered udder
with little hope; but lo, a few drops,
a cupful, and at last a carton
of this Spartan beverage —
tempting, as self-flagellation is tempting.
Skim milk, reconstituted perhaps
from the dried granules, the little milk seeds
we distribute to developing nations
when what they need is pure butterfat
that lines the soul like a nest,
that recalls the sun, summer meadows ...
buttercups ... butterflies ...
Forget summer. The doctor hands you a stern menu
and the brilliant little lamps of pleasure
burn out one by one, irreplaceable.
Years stretch ahead, lean and dim,
like so many glasses of skim milk,
and the sad old cow looks up sympathetically,
her mouth full of thistles.
Radish
In this cold clay thrives a hot little vegetable,
the radish, the sensualist. When you wash it,
letting water trickle over its swollen root,
you make it very happy.
When you're dull, pull half a dozen.
They're crowded anyway,
gaining weight on all this rain.
Eat them red and plain.
Or eat them sliced and white.
Bite them and they bite you back —
you like that; resistance sharpens the appetite.
Attribute this blush to the effect of radishes.
Radiator
Mittens are drying on the radiator
boots nearby, one on its side.
Like some monstrous segmented insect
the radiator elongates under the window.
Or it is a beast with many shoulders
domesticated in the Ice Age.
How many years it takes
to move from room to room!
Some cage their radiators
but this is unnecessary
as they have little desire to escape.
Like turtles they are quite self-contained.
If they seem sad, it is only the same sadness
we all feel, unlovely, slowly growing cold.
Missed Bus
He sprinted around the corner to see it depart,
the flatulent yellow bus,
its windows inhabited by smug, successful faces.
A few noticed him,
his coat unzipped and only one mitten,
standing in a cloud of his own breath.
Failure is complete only when it is witnessed.
A little snow, so light it seemed not to fall
but to drift down, sideways, and up too,
pausing inquiringly before his eyes.
Perhaps the snow would eventually
end up on the ground. Or perhaps
it would be called back at the last moment
by a mother who insists
on a kiss in the middle of chaos.
The bus moves through the blue morning
lit up like a traveling theater,
a shadow puppet in every window.
It always seems they are all against you,
shouting to the driver
"Leave! Leave! He's almost here!"
Duluth, Minnesota
A moose has lost his way
amidst the human element downtown,
the old-timers waiting out January
at the bar, the realtors and bureaucrats
with their identical plumage
(so that you must consult your Roger Tory Peterson)
hopping up the steps of City Hall
eating Hansel's bread crumbs —
poor moose, a big male who left
his antlers somewhere in the woods.
He keeps checking his empty holster ...
People suffer the winters
for this kind of comedy.
Spectators climb the snowbanks,
dogs bark, the moose lowers
his shaggy head, his grave eyes
reminiscent somehow of Abe Lincoln.
Firemen, police, reporters, DNR,
two cents' worth from every quarter,
till the moose lopes down Fourth Street
toward St. Mary's Hospital Emergency Entrance
and slips into an alley.
Later, the same moose — it must be —
is spotted farther up the hillside.
It's a mixed neighborhood; a moose
isn't terribly out of place.
And when he walks calmly up behind
one old man shoveling his driveway,
the Duluthian turns without surprise.
"Two blocks east," he says,
"Then you'll hit a small creek that will take you
to Chester Park, and right into the woods."
He adds, "Good luck, now."
Blue Moon
for the sisters Jacobson
This August a complete restoration, a blue moon.
It hesitates when it sees all of us
gathered here, watching. What can I do,
it says, but simply rise —
The day was so fair, so blond,
and the great lake becalmed, inviting
a hardy swimmer and his dog.
Inside the body the heart throbbed
like an engine of Swedish manufacture,
strong enough for a second lifetime.
A single cloud made the sky seem bluer,
one cloud against such odds.
True, we seldom see a day so unblemished,
so childish, so soon over.
Let us meet on the rocky shore
to ask this rare, self-conscious moon
to intercede on our behalf.
The lake lifts and sinks
like a sleeping father's chest, so gently
that small craft venture forth.
The stars, too, sense no danger in the heavens.
Our small fire burns only the sticks we give it;
we have that much control.
The moon returns with no assurances
but spreads a little light on the footpath.
The Gelding
As I recall, the black horse just appeared,
undelivered, unrequested,
dusty and skinny, like a tramp
with his hat in his good hand.
He was used to pity. He could work with it.
His dull eyes were rimmed with red,
and his habits were all bad:
he bit, suddenly and cruelly,
with his ears back flat.
He kicked the yearling squarely
in the ribs, so thoroughly
did he despise innocence.
The sweet filly he tried to mount
there, in the pasture, knowing we watched.
And we added to his scars
as everyone who owned him did.
Only once I forced him to take the bit
and slipped onto his bony back.
He seemed to acquiesce, then
threw himself into the fence.
If an animal can't be used one way
it will be used another.
So they came for him,
four strong men, armed with cigarettes,
leather, rope, a blindfold,
in a truck barred like a jail.
The black horse fought as if
he smelled a place they'd been.
Trussed in, he was at last becalmed.
Almost bored. The truck rumbled away,
blue exhaust drifting into the cornfield.
Dragonfly
A dragonfly visits me as I take down the laundry.
He clings to a sleeve like a mighty cuff link,
gold and purple, with four sluggish wings
the shape of willow leaves, and will not fly.
No, he has found the last sun
that stains the garment and the day, and will not fly.
Night stands with its goods at the door,
impatient to inhabit summer's mansion,
like the unsentimental purchaser on closing day.
You lead him through the empty rooms a last time
and give him the key. Somewhere a window left open —
and the cold rushes in.
The moon seems always in the sky, night or day.
All life ends under such a fierce moon,
sharp tipped as an Abyssinian sword.
What are your thoughts, dragonfly,
as my finger comes so near?
Do you feel the furnace of my red blood?
Can you trust me? I could put you in a jar
decorated with clematis, a pleasant room,
a windowsill, a button to push for the nurse.
But no, you seem to say no,
as you throw yourself into the grass.
I see worn places on your wings
just as every leaf in the woods
has its caterpillar hole.
After our talk, we let each other go.
In a few steps I enter the shadow of the house
that rises on me like a watermark.
All over the sky the nighthawks
are crossing through the visible spectrum.
And the day, like a last penny
pulled from deep in the pocket, is spent.
Rain
When the rain comes
you don't try to stop it.
You don't give it a final warning.
It comes, and the plants look up
and hold up their leaves.
It is the age of parents failing,
asleep in the afternoon, awake in the night.
The first light enters the east window
trying to make the nerves come alive
like leaves growing from a stump.
When the grandchildren visit
each must suffer an inspection, a silly joke
and the reverent touch of the old hands —
how hard it is to love and be loved!
Rain, come out of the milky sky
and wash the dust from the bird wings!
There is no reason for anything
yet we live.
Toward Dusk
My hand on the gate
I look back into the garden.
My shadow lingers between the rows
and pulls the shadow of a weed.
The seedlings are thick stemmed,
well begun. Should I not return
they would still grow, these delphiniums,
blue eyed, my height and a little beyond.
It wasn't my fate after all
to do more than plant
at the proper phase of the moon,
and love what grows.
Peonies
It is winter before we think clearly
of the peonies. Wind rearranges
a light snow over their roots,
filling the faint tracks of the neighbor's cat.
The wind has forgotten why it feels so unhappy.
I remember that mild June night
we sat out waiting for the moon,
and fireflies appeared, like broken pieces of it
drifting over the peonies.
The flowers had a light of their own
and regarded the world as infants do,
full of great, unknown capacity.
The white peony was cooler than the air.
When I took it in my hand
and held it near your face
I saw your unguarded, nocturnal features,
simple and irrational.
I believed then in what cannot be touched.
The sun rose on peonies
throwing away their petals
as nuns conceal their hair and bodies.
They had served their short time
in the physical world.
Now it is the snow that falls
in great soft petals, spent blossoms
on the year's darkest day.
Amaryllis
A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.
Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,
closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now
as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rival Gardens by Connie Wanek. Copyright © 2016 the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction by Ted Kooser Selections from Bonfire April Red Fox Abstract Wild Apples The Girl and the Horses Daylilies The Wandering Sky Broom Skim Milk Radish Radiator Missed Bus Duluth, Minnesota Blue Moon The Gelding Dragonfly Rain Toward Dusk Peonies Amaryllis Christmas Tree January Bonfire Ski Tracks Selections from Hartley Field The Coin behind Your Ear The Ventriloquist Butter Peaches Red Rover Jump Rope Horses in Spring Summer Night Lemon Long Nights Postcard: Busy Clarence Town Harbor on a Mail Boat Day Honesty Black and White Photograph Memorial Day at the Lake The Midwife The Exchange Children near the Water A Field of Barley Checkers So like Her Father The Hammer Tag Late September New Snow Grown Children Heart Surgery All Saints’ Day Christmas Fable After Us Hartley Field Selections from On Speaking Terms First Snow Monopoly Nothing Tracks in the Snow The Accordion Scrabble Directions Lipstick Everything Free Fishing on Isabella Lake Garlic Rags Lady Confessional Poem Walking Distance The Splits Buttercups Closest to the Sky Comb Umbrella Picture Yourself The Death of My Father A Sighting Green Tent Pumpkin A Random Gust from the North Musical Chairs A Parting Pecans Old Snow Pickles Coloring Book Blue Ink Six Months after My Father’s Death Honey Leftovers Ice Out New Poems Part One Garter Snake Pollen Rival Gardens The Summerhouse Polygamy The Neighbor’s Pond An Ordinary Crisis Mysterious Neighbors Catbird Root Words Rain Collection Blue Flags “Golden Glow” Blackbirds at Dusk First House Last Star Part Two Used Book Ghost Town When I Was a Boy Audience John Q. Public A Collection of Near Misses Adaptation Plein Air The Death of the Battery Girdle Parts per Million Mrs. God Genesis, Cont. Day of Rest Business First Love Part Three Artificial Tears I Heard You Come In Pavement Ends The Shoes of the Dead A Last Time for Everything Practice Phoebe They Live with Us Recalled to Life Walleye Wild Asters Brave Rabbits Brave Rabbits, a Second Look A Marsh at Twilight The Second Half of the Night Cabbage Moth Garden Gloves Also by This Gardener