Waterways:

Poetry in the Mainstream

20th Anniversary
1999

July
Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream
July 1999

Answer motion with motion, be birds flying

be the enormous movements of the snows,
be rain, be love, remain equilibrated

The Structure of the Plane

THEORY OF FLIGHT (1935)
Muriel Rukeyser
 WATERWAYS: Poetry in the Mainstream
Volume 20 Number 7 July, 1999
Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara Fisher
Thomas Perry, Assistant
contents
Rich Spiegel 4 Marguerite Maria Rivas 18-21
Geoff Stevens 5 Joy Hewitt Mann 22-23
Lyn Lifshin 6-7 Herman Slotkin 24
Ida Fasel 8-9 R. Yurman 25
Joan Payne Kincaid 10-11 will inman 26
David Michael Nixon 12-15 Albert Huffstickler 27-28
Joanne Seltzer 16-17
Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (includes
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© 1999, Ten Penny Players Inc.
j
In Lieu of Hubris - Rich Spiegel

Mist clothes his waiting. The plane rages against

His tongue’s trapped in a riddle. An aggravation of sky;
The craft to Ifland taxis forward; And once his lament collides
This journey makes a separate With events, he drops
Motion over his absence from it all. A moment into memory.

The moon is bedded in

An anxious cup of coffee.
He looks to prepare his
Bargain with inexperience
For a conscious spark in the sea.

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 Geoff Stevens

Until its equilibrium is broken.

my head is a dovecote
with thoughts flying in and out.

I feed as ancients fed, on pigeons,

their messages eaten with humble pie,

to be unwrapped and read

like mottoes in Christmas crackers.

I pull both ways, until it all goes bang,

and then I wear a funny hat,
and sing “Good King Wensleslas”.

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The Mourning Doves - Lyn Lifshin
for a week they
shuffle twig after
stick, pulling a bit of
twine into the hanging
purple Fuchsia, cling to
the plastic edge
weaving pale branches.
There seems no
place to stand. The
birds beat their wings
balancing on the edge,
hovering like huge
humming birds while
frantically trying to
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place the twig in the
right spot, make some
thing simple as a
Shaker chair. Their
cool olive grey coats
punctuated by iridescent
guava, solid black
smoldering eyes. The
male dove watches
by day, on the roof of
the deck even at 2 AM,
neither leave the nest.
Pale white eggs,
the size of Milk Duds.
I could lie on the deck
and watch the mother
in the deep Fuchsia petals,
her eyes like a doe. Then,
she wasn’t there. The
purple petals, a
camouflage for the eggs.
It must have been a
crow, perching on the
fence, watching, swooping,
the black of shadows or
edges around somebody
dead. Even in the wild
rain the dove hadn’t moved,
was deep in the flowers. It
must have been those dark
wings, the dove pulling
into herself, closer over the
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eggs she might have
already felt the hearts beating,
the eggs already moving.
And then, nothing. In myth,
the crow is a bearer of bad
news, misfortune, a messenger
of death. It feeds on carrion,
the rotting corpses of what’s
gone wrong. A marauder,
pillager, flying black spike.
A dove carcass someone says
near the pines, half the pond
away. The crow, a splash
of cold water.
After Watching Nova on Public TV - Ida Fasel

Bones hunted, hacked, exploded from rock --

long bones, connecting bones, a jawbone perhaps,
gently gently scraped and brushed
desired objects laid out lovingly
on a scale of hundreds of millions of years
toward a name those creatures never knew they had --
next year or the next with luck fetal bones

the phantom in the fossil for me

the robin I time-share my backyard with.
We illustrate ourselves to each other
courteously distanced, I
in my weathered sailcloth chair
locked in Gobi desert mind for a line,

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he fast-frisking earth
jab jab jab
his beak a thunderclap
to the squirmer secured
on ancient muscles, upborne, dangling
a miniature banner floated
from a miniature blimp advertising
protein for supper

diminishing on hold

fieldwork, far as he goes, far as I.

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Lessons Learned from a Hawk - Joan Payne Kincaid

You should not be here

near too much need
and absent love
observing the harrier hawk’s old wild ways
sipping Lapsang Souchong
in a dead vocal teacher’s memory
of a life so bright you thought its murmuring
would never crash like a false PC...
the virus of discontent and manipulation
snuck in unobserved eroding warmth
and tender lips became bellowing mouthfuls
and men like Guston could maintain
as always sacred belief in being,
being male

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a sacred foolishness
(for which they put women
in sanitariums, rest homes
or marriages that last too long
in company of purveyors of cruelty);
rather click yourself into some quiz show
or holodeck that replicates delight
being careful not to be dragged and dropped
in cyberspace where your little PC (personal castle)
sinks beyond redemption;
scream like the hawk
with his mottled feathers and hooked lips
his glassy eyes searching vanished prey.

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Bagels and Burgundy for Breakfast - David Michael Nixon

This morning the lantern was still burning,

hung from the crossbeam in the kitchen,
when the sun first began to grey the world’s rim
beyond the pond outside the window.

I sat at the redwood table

and ate the last of the garlic bagels,
toasted and soaked with salted butter,
washing them down with a tankard of Burgundy.
The sun slowly altered the horizon,
staining it burgundy as my mug drained.

Dimly the lantern and the sunlight

shone on the painting on the side wall,

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beginning to bring out the
iridescent shapes which shifted
across that seascape: sails and water,
triangles, rectangles of sunlight
shining with sea and sailing colors,
Feininger floating in the kitchen.

The sun was beating on the water,

turning the pond to fine gold plate.
I switched the lantern off and stepped out
into the slowly aging morning,
Feininger dead and Donne long undone,
everything turning toward the evening.

first published in Blue Water Line Blues, Mott Calligraphy, 1988

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The Street of Constant Birdsong - David Michael Nixon

This is the street of constant birdsong,

a high chatter matched by the white and
fruit stains under the corner bird trees.
Only the desperate or oblivious
park their cars beneath those swarming branches.
This is the temperate, feathered jungle,
here in Kew Gardens, Queens, the New York City
where poets and air-line workers
huddle in white rooms, as the grey birds throng.

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 Love Before Breakfast 3
David Michael Nixon Flying to Canada at sunrise,
(Variations on a Theme from LaVilla-Havelin) her long neck passionate black in red air,
she called and called, a raptured honking
1 that woke us in our warm down bed.
Flying to Persia in the morning,
she passed my pillow, a soft breeze, 4
her wings sapphire, manganese, The sea was bright at early morning.
and emerald in new light. We heard the waves lap, felt the shimmer.
The shadow of a bird was passing
2 over the water far from land:
Flying to Mexico this morning, dark boat which sped her to Calcutta,
her grey wings filled the patch of sky as we rocked in our dry bed,
which had been beating on our window. hand in hand.
It softened to a blur of feathers, appeared in ‘Poetpourri’
brushing a light-remembered song. and in the David Michael Nixon’s book,
Season of the Totem, Linear Arts, 1997
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First Bird - Joanne Seltzer

Flying into the future

violates our concept
of reality
scoffed the other dinosaurs.

First Bird stretched, grew her soul,

trembled compulsively,
imagined rising toward the sun.

Summer scorch, winter frost,

sandstorm, hail, hurricane,
unforgiving hostile air
warned the other dinosaurs.

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 First Bird hopped, felt feathers pop,
renamed her arms wings, God gave us everything
tried to visualize God’s face. we need: food, water, love,
community nurseries
Where will you lay your eggs? whined the other dinosaurs.
In the clouds? And when they crash
you won’t unscramble yolks from shells First Bird knew velocity
taunted the other dinosaurs. depends on aerodynamics
and soared and glided home.
First Bird’s mouth, hardset,
trilled the song praising trees
that angels try to imitate.

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June Song at Allison Pond Park - Summer Solstice, 1998
Marguerite Maria Rivas

No more shall I splay myself,

the old equation -- self = sacrifice
or ride the wind like cinders
dissolving

Shall I fold myself into

what springs from the earth?

Garland of ivy
fairy ring of clover?

Study the dragonfly’s flight,

skimming and unpredictable?

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Crawl into the petals of spotted touch-me-nots,
rest on a bed of violets,
bare my breasts to dewy moss,
lean bareback against a beech tree in the woods
honeysuckle drenching the air,
mate in the moonlight
like some she-creature whose blood
ebbs at full moon --
a tide inside me
fold myself
into the wave
fold myself
into the moonlight
laughing
naked.

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Speaking of Mating Ritual
Marguerite Maria Rivas
There are barn swallows singing
lustily on barge moorings
at the esplanade.
With blue-black heads and
rusty breasts, they summon
love from the depths
of abandoned buildings.
They sing sex;
it echoes through the courtyard,
bounces off red granite,
rose quartz hardened,
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mica schist dusted.
They dive-bomb
edgy and full of desire.
Their wings are boomerang;
they return in springtime
migration to cull sweetness
from oily tarred pylons.
Metallic blue lovers
sail on currents above NY harbor,
mouths open wide, consuming
unsuspecting insects
and an occasional lone dreamer.
Spiderweb at Silver Lake, July 1997 - Marguerite Maria Rivas

Shaken from the realms of possibility

to the reality of the spiderweb in the streetlamp,
love lives in a place of no surety,
unmappable yet not unnavigable.

Love spins like a spider

tossing filament from streetlamp
to tree

where it will remain

until the winds of autumn churn,
or a small child throws a rock,
or too many insect carcasses
litter the trap.

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The Barn - Joy Hewitt Mann

Above the broken wall of weathered pine

day escapes
as pigeons rise with the sound of clapping hands;
dust and feathers float down upon my upturned face
like a benediction.
We listen
to only ourselves, the birds say. Wings
like assuasive voices
can heal the smothered scream.

I fling off my work-hot hands,

breaking silence as they soar up
to the light.

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 The Print - Joy Hewitt Mann

She’d carefully fingered her coins and walked

six miles to the store filled
with women in silk dresses
women with red lipstick, sweet smelling women
whom she parted with her frail body
and dry, cracked lips.

Walking home
with the print hidden, folded, into her shoe
she thought of sheets
drying in the wind, muslin curtains floating
from half open windows
white cranes flying
like miracles
under her sole.
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Music - Herman Slotkin

Music talks to me.

I answer with
a tapping of my toes,
a trembling of my lips
a turning of my mind.

What is it saying?
What am I answering?
Why do I feel enriched?

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 Dawn - R. Yurman

before the sun

squalling cats climb the porch
challenge battle-scramble
overturn a chair

raven circles
in the icy air
and caws
calling the brightness down

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enter the steep organ - will inman rack rain roar run
shrink
not just to fly, not only to span to buds of flowers, fold into zinnias
distances drink down sky readying bloom
no. not merely reach. spin and burr with bees
to wake at live cores of mountains, be all in
to rise with their liftings, to swim little . . . immanent in all . . . throttle
great waves of rock and rocking. godsong, temper wingbeat, shake strut
to range and wing-flap, enter the steep organ
with weathers, spread wide arms of winds, sounding, surf wide shoulders, speak
grow feathers of storms, beat down, twist, into ears of furies, listen how they
swoop, surge, high ascending, circling curse you, bless you, damn you
sheaths of breath and breathing, laughter: who you are
rage
in the wild dance of ocean come inland,
swell pulsing, shrill through tree-limbs, 11 October 1998 Tucson

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 The Song - Albert Huffstickler

My brother and I sang and sang

growing up, sang love songs from
operettas, sang pop, sang country
western. We didn’t think about
it, we just sang because we liked
the way the sound came out of us,
didn’t think about the words, just
sang because it felt good to have
music come out of your body and
we tied our feelings to the music
and let it all go like a kite
sailing up, out of sight. No
use asking us why, we just did
it, just sang and sang. And

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sang our way then into another that there is no more wonderful
time where music was scarce and thing to do in this world than
it was harder to find the music to sing and that of all the things
to tie the feelings to. I don’t in the world a man can do, there
remember when I stopped singing. is no more honorable occupation.
Jack stopped when he died, not
forty yet, still a young man,.
Tonight I sit and think about time
and music and where people’s lives
go and it’s night and there’s a
small breeze and I think about
people like Pavarotti and Louis
Armstrong and Ray Charles, singers
who can put people’s joy and
sorrow into music and sing it first published in Heeltap, No. 5,
for them and I believe to my soul 1999, St. Paul MN

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ISSN 0197-4777

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