Taking Flight

 

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain

PACIFISM
 
I’m reading Antony Beevor’s D-Day book.
Enthralling, how with carefully selected
Capsule histories, vignettes he has shook
(Magnificent Seven’s Vin: “Were you elected?”
Chris: “No, but I got nominated real good,”
Snippets of talk just like that), Normandy
In flames, much gore in Operation Goodwood,
French sufferings which rate a C’est la vie
From some chroniclers: the atrocity’s too much
By page 260; I turn to Early Morning,
Kim Stafford’s book in tribute to William Stafford.
Quiet filial insight after so much scorning
Of reason, Patton to Bradley having chaffered
Over what cost in gasoline per tank
Per mile of penetration into German-
Held French territory, egos with ribbons of rank,
Infighting for scraps of war caressed like ermine.
Soft is the voice but resolute the peace
That emanates from poets. The less certain
The tone, the less that of Romans sacking Greece:
Poetry’s no iron wall, more beaded curtain;
Not hostile stone for archetype: far star,
Aurora borealis ropes of sand,
Benignly sugared transparencies that bar
Or stripe north nights in slow-dissolving bands.
Sometimes the only note of war I need,
An unknown soldier’s jest fetched up from Sword,
The D-Day beach. As bullet streaks make bleed
Tommies gulping surf, some anonymous lord
Of nonchalance splutters this thought: “I say,
Perhaps we’re intruding. This must be a private beach.”
How vital under threat of death, to have scored
A rhetorical hit, deflected the blood-red screech
Of mortars, machine-gun bullets. Back to the fray,
The urge so briefly and lightly set aside
Resumed, the ethos Kill-or-be-killed for guide.

 

 

 

 

 RUSTY
 
Today must be the day we euthanize
Our good cat Rusty; he has been so ill,
He wolfs, or is that lynxes, down his fill
And more of soft cat food, then on a rise
Of kibbles crunches away. He cannot keep
Down all this food, yet onward, meal-obsessed,
Consumes his sister cat’s share. He won’t rest
Until he feels the needle-jab that reaps
More quickly than the skeleton with scythe.
Skeletal as he is, for all his eating,
He keeps that soft orange fur with hints of rose.
Used to be sociable, curious exceeding,
Delved in each Christmas bag; by writhing lithe
Poked in, popped out. Now probes where, no one knows.
 
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight,
Says Jeffers, mercy-killing a hurt hawk.
More tame, the civilized way to bring on night
For cats. A catheter will never balk
At easing open the blood-flow, artery gate
Where serums through plastic locks must softly enter.
One tube is for sedation, one for Fate.
Clear liquid cleanses the cat mind, and with tender
Insistence prepares for the pink fluid to come.
Rusty in all his weakness gave two little
Head-butts of friendship to my hand; went numb,
Then all his illness-thinned frame had to settle.
The doctor’s loving calm, three candles lit.
Both gold cat’s-eyes remained open, had not quit. 

 

 

 

 

 MOCKINGBIRD
 
Those who named you had no notion
But scurrility. What beak-borne strung
Necklace or torque of notes
Could be more sincere?
 
You sculpt, no, erect
Your pavilion or tone-pagoda
From your sleek gray
Body with the white wing-chevrons
 
Atop the telephone pole
Adjacent to my late mother-in-law’s
Pomegranate tree, bamboo thicket. You atop
The pole, you are a landline wire and
            the voice along it.
 
Of your song you, plus the house
With its wooden mass—the fences completing its
Quadrilateral—contrive a thespian’s ancient
Megaphone, mouthpiece in the mask, echoing
 
In the amphitheatre. Montserrat Caballé
Of ventriloquists, your song’s
Inside-my-ear-projected, though it issued
With you above. Depending on angle,
 
You are either of two red-starred
Soviet trumpeters in the touring orchestra:
This I remember, at Palacio de Bellas Artes;
One trumpet finesses the passagework
As if for commissars in the dress circle,
 
Tongue-articulations timed to the swift
Valve-movements. The other trumpet,
Swivel-pointing the brass bell this way and that,
Doles out rations of blare to the masses
 
Like power ballads, parcels fortissimos
To each according to his need; thus
You ripple out note-rings, angles and Engels,
You, resonant tiny fanatic, singer to mere me, prole. 

 

 

 

Today’s LittleNip:

Love has turned many into poets; pain has turned many into artists; charity has turned many into pacifists, and anger has turned many into activists.
 
―Matshona Dhliwayo

___________________
 
—Medusa, with many thanks to Tom Goff for today’s fine poetry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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