the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 501, May 26, 2004
Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844–1889)
“(The poet) alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have
this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So
has it happen’d to me; I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge; yet
with better success than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog kennel,
never liv’d to finish the palace he had contriv’d.”
—John
Dryden, Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern
Trout
kill
Williams
the Australian was like a kid. He was a skinny man, playful and young in
appearance. From where O'Kelley and I stood, he looked small and fragile against
granite. He was happy, intrigued by the height and the shards he watched rain
on the sagebrush below. It felt good to see him have fun.
But
I feared for him. He stood close to the edge. I thought he might succumb to the
magnetism of yawning void and step off the cliff to float over the sagebrush
hills on the far side of North Platte. Just like I wanted to do.
Williams
disappeared into the jaws of the trail to climb up to us. O'Kelley began to
throw rocks, then to roll boulders, off the rock wall. They bounced off the
ledge where the Australian had been. After hitting the ledge, O'Kelley's
boulders turned a moment, suspended above aspens and pines studding the
riverbank, then turned into the rocks and sagebrush below.
While
O'Kelley grunted with his stones, I watched clouds thick as quilts roll in and
turn the North Platte oil black. The foam on the stones was good for home-bound
trout who needed a little time in open water. Lightening struck the hill behind
the campground and left the taste of fright in my mouth.
The
storm boiled, Williams climbed, O'Kelley sweated, and I stared. O'Kelley tore
apart a pile of stones an earnest Christian had built on the pinnacle to secure
a huge cross made of crooked pine and cedar branches. It wasn't much of a cross,
leaning as a cowboy would against a fence post.
I
joined O'Kelley and worked like a Roman throwing Christians to the bears. The
rock pile wound up in the valley below, some stones rolling down the slope into
brushy ravines joining the river. O'Kelley dripped sweat as the storm blew rain
and sleet. Lightening spidered over the hills all around us as O'Kelley broke
and flung the cross over the brink. I wondered what happened to the Australian.
"Give
me a hand with this one," O'Kelley yelled from behind me. The boulder was
at least a solid ton of granite. I pushed veins from my temples, feeling the
boulder begin to fall as the edge of the rock broke.
The
boulder struck the ledge below and took a spike of rock te fly fishermen high
and fifty trout wide with it. Sliding away from the bluff face, the stone sheet
rolled over on itself and crumpled on the rocks below.
"You
bastards!" Williams shouted when he popped out of the rocks and juniper a
little below us. "What the hell doya think you’re doin’?"
We stood
slackjawed. Williams turned to go back to the campground. Still silent when
Williams appeared below, we watched the Australian march over the wildflower
and sagebrush to the campground. Even in the green dimness of the thunderstorm,
I could see him fuming. O'Kelley looked blank. I felt I would disappear.
Numb,
we climbed down and made our way back to the campsite, a picnic table and Fiji
ring set between some boulders. The Bureau of Land Management kept the place
clean. The only running water was in the river, and primitive pit toilets kept
the tourists with recreational vehicle and house-sized tents away.
We
dripped under a plastic canvas we had stretched between the boulders. The wind
whipped the cover, turning rain to spray. Nobody said anything for a long
while—the three of us just stared out over the river. When the Australian
looked me in the eye, it felt like sewing needles.
"What
do you say after this storm lets up, we pull a few trout outta that
river?" I said lamely.
"What
didya do that for?" Williams spat. I felt my knees shaking in his voice.
"What makes you guys so angry?"
O'Kelley
tried to make up something about keeping the place natural, keeping man's marks
out of the wilderness.
"Don't
you think nature will take care of that all by itself?" Williams said.
"Someone could have been buried under there, and maybe there is. For god's
sake, you two just took apart the damn hill."
It
was true. The cliff wore a huge triangle of white—whipped cream run over pie
crust. Below, a heap of stones and boulders lay like skeletons.
"The
BLM won't like this much," O'Kelley said.
After
the wind and rain died down, I walked to the river. Williams gathered sagebrush
and pine for a fire. O'Kelley moped under the drooping canvas.
At
evening, I pulled a strong brown trout about a foot long out of riffle about
mid-river. My fly, a Royal Coachman on a #6 hook, skewered the fish in the roof
of his mouth. I pulled the hook free easily, but the trout's eyes crossed. It
bled through its mouth and down its gills. I tried to wash the blood off in the
water. But it only flowed faster when I picked the trout up again, running over
my hand and off its tail. I cradled the trout in the water again and held it
while the stream flowed over its gills. The little pool around the fish turned
opaque as the fish's life spilled out of it.
When I looked up, the triangle of bare rock was blood red in the setting sun.
By
Larry Racunas
She's now with someone else.
Without her I feel dull as sediment.
The party I think is dull.
Many stay, sipping externals, nibbling on
life's crust, though some leave through
the same narrow doorway they had entered.
I choose to pass through a basement.
In the blackness, I almost trip down the stair!
Outside, though the night is dry, stones are wet.
The moon is full, but moot, one of those moons
which proposes everything and nothing;
gazing, breathless, I sink to my thighs
in sluggish manhood, in tugging nothing.
A large cloud, wonderfully back-lighted,
I think is shaped like South America.
In Argentina, men dance the tango,
their faces somber, these men
hold their women sensuously, dancing through
all hours, coupled, knowing how to respire.
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