as it was scrawled on his mailbox,
seemed to be Stumplin Reilly McCarriston, Esquire.
Of the seven of us, one would die in Vietnam;
one, after medical school, would hang himself
from a beam in his parents’ basement; the others
merely gone, vanished in actuality if not in memory.
Leaving me, alone, to tell this story. How Stump
would spend his last twenty years in prison,
having shot Lucy—one slender, flattening .22 slug
through the forehead—as he stood fifty feet away,
balanced atop the tub of an ancient wringer washer,
arms extended, like Jesus Christ, said Stump,
whose trailer was bulldozed into the dump itself
even before the trial, and who, no doubt, by some
court-appointed lawyer if not the appalled sheriff himself,
was forced to bathe and shave, to step into the unknown country
of a scentless white shirt and black businessman’s trousers,
in order to offer his only yet most sincere defense:
that Lucifer—Mr. Doolin, as the court insisted—had told him to.
TO AUTUMN
Most beautiful aspen tree, I admire the way
a wound some buck grinding his horns
against your trunk has healed to a pale gray
that accentuates your beauty now, a decade later on.
And as today’s autumn storm undresses you leaf
by delicate gold leaf, I watch until you stand
utterly bare, as we say of your kind so unsheathed.
If I’d thought, as the storm began,
that you would be less lovely uncovered,
forgive me. What did I know, just a man
watching from a window, who, having observed
and studied a wet leaf plastered against the pane,
missed, among the hundred others whirling past
in the swirl and toss of the rain, the very last.
NOTES
The first four epigraphs are taken from Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
, New York: NYRB Classics, 2001. The fifth is from the poem “Smiles,” by Wislawa Szymborska, from
View with a Grain of Sand
, New York: Harcourt, 1993.
“Friendly Fire”: A V-Disc was a morale-boosting initiative involving the production of several series of recordings during World War II, by special arrangement between the United States government and various private U.S. record companies. The records were produced for use by U.S. military personnel overseas. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” was among the most popular songs of the era. No trace has ever been found of the small plane that Miller vanished in.
“First Person”: The poem referred to is “Pied Beauty.” Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Selected Poems
, New York: Macmillan, 1957.
“Earthquake Light”: Tohoku earthquake, Japan, March 11, 2011.
“Nightingale Capability”: The poem makes use of several verbatim passages from Keats’s odes, not all of which are in quotes.
“The History of Gods”: See Richard Preston’s article about the great trees and about research scientist Professor Stephen C. Sillet, in
The New Yorker
, February 14, 2005.
“American Archangel”: “Moose,” Anne Sexton,
The Complete Poems
, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
“Socialists”: KO is named for Kate Richards O’Hare, American Socialist Party activist, who was imprisoned during World War I. Eugene V. Debs: “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.”
“Ain’t No Use”: Sarah Vaughn,
The Divine One
, CFP Domestic, 2007.
“Iris Nevis”: “Eros Turannos,” Edwin Arlington Robinson,
Selected Poems
, New York: Penguin, 1997.
“Anna Karenina”: The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel is, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Brilliant Corners
: Ain’t No Use
Cerise Press
: Legend
Chattahoochee Review
: Rush
Cortland Review
: The History of Gods
Fogged Clarity
: Anna Karenina; Blackjack (under the title “Blackjack Imaginings”); Calendar; Catechism; The Scholar; To Autumn (under the title “Bare Tree”)
The Georgia Review
: Babel; Delicious
Glassworks
: Dada Doodads
Little Star
: Now Here
Memorious
: Stop and
seemed to be Stumplin Reilly McCarriston, Esquire.
Of the seven of us, one would die in Vietnam;
one, after medical school, would hang himself
from a beam in his parents’ basement; the others
merely gone, vanished in actuality if not in memory.
Leaving me, alone, to tell this story. How Stump
would spend his last twenty years in prison,
having shot Lucy—one slender, flattening .22 slug
through the forehead—as he stood fifty feet away,
balanced atop the tub of an ancient wringer washer,
arms extended, like Jesus Christ, said Stump,
whose trailer was bulldozed into the dump itself
even before the trial, and who, no doubt, by some
court-appointed lawyer if not the appalled sheriff himself,
was forced to bathe and shave, to step into the unknown country
of a scentless white shirt and black businessman’s trousers,
in order to offer his only yet most sincere defense:
that Lucifer—Mr. Doolin, as the court insisted—had told him to.
TO AUTUMN
Most beautiful aspen tree, I admire the way
a wound some buck grinding his horns
against your trunk has healed to a pale gray
that accentuates your beauty now, a decade later on.
And as today’s autumn storm undresses you leaf
by delicate gold leaf, I watch until you stand
utterly bare, as we say of your kind so unsheathed.
If I’d thought, as the storm began,
that you would be less lovely uncovered,
forgive me. What did I know, just a man
watching from a window, who, having observed
and studied a wet leaf plastered against the pane,
missed, among the hundred others whirling past
in the swirl and toss of the rain, the very last.
NOTES
The first four epigraphs are taken from Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
, New York: NYRB Classics, 2001. The fifth is from the poem “Smiles,” by Wislawa Szymborska, from
View with a Grain of Sand
, New York: Harcourt, 1993.
“Friendly Fire”: A V-Disc was a morale-boosting initiative involving the production of several series of recordings during World War II, by special arrangement between the United States government and various private U.S. record companies. The records were produced for use by U.S. military personnel overseas. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” was among the most popular songs of the era. No trace has ever been found of the small plane that Miller vanished in.
“First Person”: The poem referred to is “Pied Beauty.” Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Selected Poems
, New York: Macmillan, 1957.
“Earthquake Light”: Tohoku earthquake, Japan, March 11, 2011.
“Nightingale Capability”: The poem makes use of several verbatim passages from Keats’s odes, not all of which are in quotes.
“The History of Gods”: See Richard Preston’s article about the great trees and about research scientist Professor Stephen C. Sillet, in
The New Yorker
, February 14, 2005.
“American Archangel”: “Moose,” Anne Sexton,
The Complete Poems
, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
“Socialists”: KO is named for Kate Richards O’Hare, American Socialist Party activist, who was imprisoned during World War I. Eugene V. Debs: “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.”
“Ain’t No Use”: Sarah Vaughn,
The Divine One
, CFP Domestic, 2007.
“Iris Nevis”: “Eros Turannos,” Edwin Arlington Robinson,
Selected Poems
, New York: Penguin, 1997.
“Anna Karenina”: The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel is, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Brilliant Corners
: Ain’t No Use
Cerise Press
: Legend
Chattahoochee Review
: Rush
Cortland Review
: The History of Gods
Fogged Clarity
: Anna Karenina; Blackjack (under the title “Blackjack Imaginings”); Calendar; Catechism; The Scholar; To Autumn (under the title “Bare Tree”)
The Georgia Review
: Babel; Delicious
Glassworks
: Dada Doodads
Little Star
: Now Here
Memorious
: Stop and
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