Collecte Works (22 page)

on my little river.

Black as those beside Troy,

but sailless tar-preserve-black fish barges

and orange and Chinese-red rowboats

in which the three virtues

                    knowledge, humanity, energy

Sometimes ride.

All children begin with the life of the mind—

if there were no marsh or stream

imagine it

99 children go into business

                        selling angleworms,

the hundredth develops free fingers in John Sebastian Brook.

“Paul's playing ‘Handle.’

His eyes are clear in this air,

he sees what few others can,

the lawn is mown,

we're here till we go.”

Yes, comes a measure marked Autumn

the passing of the little summer people,

schools of leaves float downstream

past lonely piers

soft still-water twilight,

morning ice on the minnow bucket.

My father said “I remember

a warm Thanksgiving Day

we shipped seine

without coats

nudged 20,000 lbs. of barged buffalo fish

thru the mouth of the river

by balmy moonlight

other times

you laid out with your hands glazed

to the nets”

You know, he said, they used to make

mincemeat with meat,

it's raisins now and citron—like

a house without heat—

I'll roof my house and jump from there

to flooring costs. I'll have to buy

two doors to close two openings.

No, no more pie.

He built four houses

to keep his life.

Three got away

before he was old.

He wonders now

rocking his chair

should he have built

a boat

dipping, dipping

and sitting so.

In Europe they grow a new bean while here

               we tie bundles of grass

with strands of itself—as my grandfolks did grain—

                against the cold blast

                             around my house.

From my cousin in Maine: We've found a warm place

               (did she say in the hay?)

for the winter. Charlie sleeps late, I'm glad for his sake,

               it shortens the day

                            around my house.

Paul

       when the leaves

                fall

from their stems

       that lie thick

               on the walk

in the light

       of the full note

               the moon

playing

       to leaves

               when they leave

the little

       thin things

               Paul

I've been away from poetry

many months

and now I must rake leaves

with nothing blowing

between your house

and mine

I am sick with the Time's buying sickness.

The overdear oil drum now flanged to my house

serves a stove costing as much.

I need a piano.

Then I'd sing “When to the sessions

of sweet silent thought”

true value expands

it warms.

The death of my poor father

leaves debts

and two small houses.

To settle this estate

a thousand fees arise—

I enrich the law.

Before my own death is certified,

recorded, final judgement

judged

taxes taxed

I shall own a book

of old Chinese poems

and binoculars

to probe the river

trees.

To Aeneas who closed his piano

to dig a well thru hard clay

Chopin left notes like drops of water.

Aeneas could play

the Majorcan sickness, the boat on which pigs

were kept awake by whips

the woman Aurore

the narrow sand-strips.

“O Frederic, think of me digging below

the surface—we are of one pitch and flow.”

My friend the black and white collie