Category Archives: poetry

Releasing You into the World

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Bringing you into the world
was a half-cocked plan,
born of accident and bravado.
Of one thing I was certain:
I would do better than my parents.
My smart resolve soon fell away
into the ruts of their well-worn path.

From the Box Store of Beliefs,
I bought a large suitcase.
Around scratchy clothes and 
tight shoes, I arranged for you 
all the useless nothings 
Of Propriety and how.it.is.supposed.to.be.

I watched that unwieldy valise 
bounce against your new knees.
I knew this was best for you   
because Important Things are Heavy 
and keeping a grip on Big Truths 
takes tenacity and brute strength.

As the years went by,
The pillars of what I thought 
I knew, what I thought was true,
Toppled.  
 
I remembered
The dream of another way,
Of the path that says:
It is never too late to let go 
of the Warping Weight.

It is not too late 
For us
to slide that clunker 
out the rear car door 
into a backwash ditch. 

Now, I’m buying you a big bandana
and a stick.

I’m packing you a bundle
Of deodorant and daring 
and creativity and chapstick
and sriracha and compassion
and fuzzy socks and
the salve of let.it.go and 
the balm of how.it.could.be. 

I will watch you set off, 
A bright bandana ball bobbing behind you.

Yes, that will be a happy way to release you into the world.

Squam Lake

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Art by Jim Oskineegish

The nights of heat lightening
and mornings of languid water have passed.

The sun has shifted and the
yodels and tremolos of the loons
have subsided into hoots that simply ask:
“Where are you?”

Under the slackened gaze of a clear sky,
the mountains shake green velvet robes 
from their shoulders, robes that fall 
like golden halos at their feet. 

From this unadorned landscape, 
chasms and cracks, crevasses and caves emerge.

In this new season, in this new naked light,
I touch your stony skeleton
and rest my head against the scarred hollow
that holds your heart.

I discover the shadow of your smile,
the subtle slant that tempers pain with joy.

I seek the places where you hide,
the truth you shield with lies.

I trace my hand along the ridges where rocks
break into slides, where the avalanche awaits.

Here. It is here that I find you.

On the Sidelines in the Spring

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In the bay, people are walking their dogs
on water and pretending it’s ice.

I’m new here, but I’m not blind.
 
Eager dog paws and bright boots kick up water
as they slosh further from shore.

Their excursions unnerve me.  I wonder
what ancient heat, what fanning winds
have driven them to this mad adventure.

I will admit,
the sun has drawn close,
intense and bright, 
and I feel 
slightly intoxicated, 
and even, a bit ornery.  Still.

I haven’t forgotten the definition of foolhardy, or just plain dumb. 

Maybe I’m just a cautious old dog, 
puppy love once, but long ago.

I lean forward to watch the show. 

I wonder how they know, these tethered companions,
When it’s time to stop walking?

When is the day they walk to the edge, and turn back?

Or maybe they don’t. Maybe here 
they keep venturing out 
onto melting ice, hoping for the best.
 
Maybe here they ignore
thin ice warnings
from the news and their 
friends. Maybe they even 
ignore the snapping 
under their own feet.
 
Maybe, one more walk
on a brilliant day is
worth the plunge, 
worth the flailing 
through icy water to emerge, 
half-dead, onto the shore.

I lean my body back
into the smooth curve
of the bench, and zip my coat 
up over my chest,  and
settle on the verge
of maybe Spring.

March 21

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Photo Art by Elisabeth Messina

Don’t be a wallflower,
Spring.
Don’t slip in silently 
and stand in the shadows.
Don’t be afraid of Winter,
that bully.
We’ve had enough of his
biting remarks and
cold retorts.
I’ll punch him
in the nose for you
and take the Saturday
just to watch him 
sputterandspit.
Just step forward 
and dance with me.
I’ll dance with you 
as long as you like, 
long after that 
wildly popular sweaty
Summer shows up.

How the West was Lost

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He remembers how, when the last guests left, 
the house settled in to stillness, and how his

Mother sat on the porch swing, quiet hands folded, 
pushing back and forth into the silent night.

The pendulum of time always moved, forward,
forward, but his father was snared

In the backward drag, and for that he was
serving the life sentence of a single moment.

His boyhood memories were cubed in ice,
frozen with his father in time;

They drifted behind him, an azure iceberg 
heavy with the treachery of love.

He was brave on sunny days, letting the
ice thaw only until his tears flowed;

Then he ran for coldness, knowing the danger
of losing any solid ground he’d found.

The memories of his father were death and life, 
joy and pain, the terrible weight of knowing  

The man was gone who strummed a guitar 
in the moonlight to sing him to sleep.

The man was gone who played bathtub boats
and soaped his hair into trollish peaks. 

The man was gone who gave him a wild
kitten that pounced on his feet as he slept.

The man was gone who laughed when he set 
their worms free to wriggle into the forest floor.

The man was gone who held his hand as they walked
back to the camp with an empty fishing pail.

The man was gone who crashed with him against the 
waves and chased crabs with seaweed brooms.

The boots, bandannas, and handcuffs were gone, 
along with shrieks of ambush and retreat. 

In the last round of hide and seek, he slipped a silver                                                     pistol from the man’s nightstand, and lay in wait.

His hands still feel the tight trigger and the
startling recoil; his eyes see again the falling bandit;

His whoops of victory echo in his ears, 
as his body tumbles anew into the rush forward  

To arrest and bring the outlaw to justice, 
in the moment the West was lost.  

The days that followed passed like shuffled cards before him.
He dressed slowly for the funeral, taking from the peg

The tie his father gifted him, tied in a careful knot 
by the man’s hands.  He laced the shoes that 

Shone from the quick sure strokes of his father’s
lesson; the ink yet fading from his hands.

He remembers the start of that day and the ending, 
and nothing else, save the tie clutched against his throat, 

And when he slipped it off, the pressure remained.
He undressed before his mirror, loathing the reflection.

Ten years had passed, and the tie still hung from a peg, 
his small shoes laid to rest against the baseboard.

He couldn’t find his way out, remembering and 
forgetting, equally matched, fighting for ground.  

His citadel of ice loomed always in the background,  
sounding off in deep groans and hissing whispers.

If he were to set it adrift, he’d lose his twist of happiness 
and anguish, the only thing he had left of his father.

There he sat, on his small patch of land, a young man with his
iceberg, getting accustomed to frost, slowly merging into blue.

-Chali Davis

I Tried: A Father’s Lament

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I’m trying to set up this tent in
the dark.  
          Not city dark, 
          Not country dark,  
          Wilderness Dark.

I’m trying 
          to line these wiggling 
          poles up with the tent seams.
I’m trying 
          to hold this flashlight between
          my cheek and shoulder.
I’m trying 
          to get this impossible 
          rain tarp in place.

I’m trying to be happy and patient.

I’ve     tied     my children     to     trees.
          They’re calling me 
          to untie them
          so they can help.  

I’m trying to do this myself, and I will.

It’s a good thing I tied them 
          Up Tight 
so if they fall asleep they
          Won’t 
                    Fall 
   			  Over.  

I’m trying to 
           drive these anchors into rocks,
           or some close stony relatives
           and ignore the name Rex just called Syd.

I’m trying to fling our food
          over this branch, fifteen feet
          above our heads so the bears
          don’t eat Kate for breakfast.

I’m trying to set up this camp 
          so I can untie my children 
          and lead them straight  
          to the tent and zip them in. 

I’m trying to
          put the sleeping bags on places without roots or rocks
          and I’ve done so for everyone but me.

We sleep.  They sleep.  I try.

I awake.  
My children are outside, unroped, in the light.  
Something big is going on.  
I try to listen.  I cannot hear words. 
     Hushed tones of astonishment,
     admiration.  A large splash.
     Whoops and hollers.

I try to figure out 
why the ranger didn’t tell me 
there was a drop


                              off, 60 feet, 
                              into the lake 
                              on the border 
                              of my campsite.  

I try to figure out 
           how I set up the tent
          five feet from the edge 
          and didn’t fall in.  

I try not to think of how
I     tied     my three children     to     trees
On 
the 
edge
      

       of a cliff.

Releasing You Into The World

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Bringing you into the world
was a half-cocked plan,
born of accident and bravado.
Of one thing I was certain:
I would do better than my parents.
My smart resolve soon fell away
into the ruts of their well-worn path.

From the Box Store of Beliefs,
I bought a large suitcase.
Around scratchy clothes and
tight shoes, I arranged for you
all the useless nothings
Of Propriety and how.it.is.supposed.to.be.

I watched that unwieldy valise
bounce against your new knees.
I knew this was best for you
because Important Things are Heavy
and keeping a grip on Big Truths
takes tenacity and brute strength.

As the years went by,
The pillars of what I thought
I knew, what I thought was true,
Toppled.

I remembered
The dream of another way,
Of the path that says:
It is never too late to let go
of the Warping Weight.

It is not too late
For us
to slide that clunker
out the rear car door
into a backwash ditch.

Now I’m buying you a big bandana
and a stick.

I’m packing you a bundle
Of deodorant and daring
and creativity and chapstick
and sriracha and compassion
and fuzzy socks and
the salve of let.it.go and
the balm of how.it.could.be.

I will watch you set off,
A bright bandana ball bobbing behind you.

Yes, that will be a happy way to release you into the world.