—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA
A HALLOWEEN
It is dark, but not the dark that carries
Only night, but dark, the dark that moves
Itself to dreaming and we are too long
On the road as she comes around us
Bringing her own air, her own beasts,
Horses unlike horses that we’ve known
Who stand at the corner of the streets
Where we can see their large eyes. They
Seem to know us and make horse sounds
To one another, leaning toward the fog,
The coolness of the evening and blow
Steam that seems to glow from their great
Nostrils. They paw the ground as if in waiting.
Then bats, as if the night had tongues,
Course just above our heads with squeaks
And clicks and sudden flash of reddish eyes.
They too have a sense of purpose to detain
Us on this night and swirl in flocks and bunches
Keeping us to the sidewalks weaving light and shadow.
We have heard that it is Halloween. The
Jack-o-lanterns with their grimaced faces
Flicker from the porches of the neighborhood.
The cats of no color but the night move, too,
Around us in this night as if they wait for something.
Perhaps they think that we are creatures like themselves
Acquainted with the night and ready for its fierce
Devices, the howling of the wolves, the mocking
Face the moon makes to our wandering, looking
For a house we are not sure will be there, close
We hope, but hope is not a part of what we are.
Tonight is Halloween, a witches’ night. The roads,
The streets are for the ghosts and half-seen children
Of the night whose music has been foretold, who
Gather toward us as the spider weaves his web
And calls us in the only haven left in this damp cold.
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen)
HALLOWEEN
She filled her hands
With winter light and October's
Crows, a cacophony of wings
Against the blue of early evening.
Children used to come here.
There were hills and copses and woods
Challenging the imagination with shadows
Caught alive in stories of the Fall.
The road ended at her mouth,
Full of weeds and drifting terrors
Searching for a body to accompany
During the dark evenings of the waning year.
Shaken, she reaches for the twilight
As if it were a vessel of some kind,
Easy on any sea, unmoved and with sails
Painted in the colors of forgetting.
To dream was to vanish into memory,
The twinkle of an eye,
The brush of a hand across a shoulder,
No place for sharing stories, whispering.
This time of year is full of stuff
Like this, fine of hand and bathed
In a crystal construct made of wood,
Made of fire, made of singing.
She was not given to understand
More of this than her hands covered
With the cool and brilliant light.
She wishes us luck as we continue
Toward the shoreline, the same light
Glinting off the water, infecting
Our minds, making everything in life
A challenge and the turning of the days
Borne on the backs of black birds
Exploding time with cackling and shrieking.
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen)
THE MOON, ALARMED AT OUR DISCOURSE
Star poked me in the eye.
The coyotes heard it.
I could barely move.
Tiny lights reminded me
I was alone.
I think I am dead.
I died in a dream
With my mother
Talking to me.
And I laughed.
I laughed.
For I was alive.
I could feel myself cry out
And I knew my name
When they called.
And then we were
On the beach
Building sandcastles
And you remembered
My name.
And then they took
It all away from me.
The blank look
The waves have
As they touch my skin.
The lights in the town
Are charms.
They visit above the voices
Of the coyotes,
The questioning owls.
These are the voices
In my heart.
I trust you will tell no one.
A SONG THE DEAD SING:
A HALLOWEEN TALE.
Charlie Bennet, he’s dead now,
Lost both his hands about
Halfway to his elbow
In a farm accident.
Some kind of chopper got him,
At the the exact same spot,
Both arms.
He went to whispering
After that happened
And Darrell Miller was ‘bout the only one
Who Charlie talked to
At all after that.
Darrell told me Charlie
Said his dead hands
Used to come looking
For him. They never did
Find them. Chopper
Must have spit them out
Pretty far away.
Charlie said his hands
Could talk, a kind o
f
Scratching sound
That Charlie said he
Could understand.
“Charlie,” they’d say,
“Charlie, come here.”
And Charlie hated it
When they’d call out.
He would get far under
His blanket and make
A moaning sound.
Darrell told him
“Hands can’t talk, Charlie.”
“Like hell, they can’t.”
Said Charlie.
“They can sing songs.
Scratching songs.
They don’t like folks
To know they can sing,
But I’ll prove it to you.
”
So Darrell met Charlie
One the night at
Morgan’s barn, right
Near where his hands
Got chopped off,
And they waited.
They waited a long time.
But, finally Darrell Miller
Said he heard this
Scratching music start
Up from one of the horse
Stables below that wasn’t
Used any more.
“Listen,” Charlie said
And he began to move
His cut-off arm stumps
Around and the scratching
Sound seemed to move in
Rhythm with the way
Charlie moved them stumps.
“Stop it. Stop it,” said Darrell
“I can’t,” he said.
“Not when them hands are singing.
”
Darrell said that from then on
He could hear the scratching music
Every so often and noticed
His own arms began to move
Whenever he chanced to hear it.
Darrell died in a terrible car wreck
Out on old 95 and lost both of his
Own arms in the accident.
Cut off at the same place Charlie’s were.
Now, I’ve started to hear the scratching
Music and I can’t seem to turn it off.
“I didn’t want to tell you this story,
”
Darrell told me at the time.
I wish he had never said anything
About it to me. I wish he had never
Said anything at all. Last week Morgan’s
Barn burned to the ground. In the ashes
They found Charlie’s wedding ring
But there weren’t no hands there at all.
Today’s LittleNip:
A SPUTTERING
A sputtering that used
To be language but
Has been divorced from
The tongue for much
Too long to hold any
Arrangement. Water.
______________________
—Medusa, thanking D.R. Wagner for the Halloween fare this morning, and reminding you to set your clocks back an hour tonight!
