Earth School, poems by David Sloan

also by david sloan

The Irresistible In-Between

A Rising & Other Poems

Earth School

Poems

David Sloan

published by

Deerbrook Editions

P.O. Box 542

Cumberland, ME

www.deerbrookeditions

Preview list: issuu.com/deerbrookeditions

first edition

© 2024 by David Sloan

All rights reservevd

ISBN: 979-8-9903529-0-2

Book design by Jeffrey Haste

Cover design by Clara Bossi

In loving memory of Bubbe and Zaide.  Their children and grandchildren are beneficiaries of their many gifts; I am most grateful for two—a deep and abiding love of language and an irrepressible love of life.

Part I

Apples to Apples

It’s 1942 and I’m seven years from being born. I can already feel the world convulsing. Part of me wants to wait for the worst to pass, to hunker down, as in a deep woods debris hut during a blizzard. I can hear the first hiss of gas piped in at Treblinka, trucks in Bataan crunching over bodies of prisoners too weak to march, Stalingrad’s orphaned children sneaking through cellars and sewers scrabbling for food. But I am also enticed by the tumult, muffled cries to be rescued, or at least for relief, a human universe in need of mending.

In Chicago they have split the atom with seeds too small to see, like cleaving an apple that smashes in an instant into two adjacent, then four, eight, an entire orchard caroming into countless neighboring orchards, apple shrapnel startling a murder of crows into stillness.

Across the ocean a bird becomes a hero.

Hit by enemy fire, a British bomber spirals down, but before crashing into North Sea’s freezing chop, the crew, unable to radio their position, releases into a flak-streaked night their only hope— a blue-flecked pigeon. Winkie wings its way 120 miles back to its loft at the base, exhausted, oil-smeared, message-less, but proof that the ditched aircraft might have jettisoned survivors. The RAF calculates flight path, wind direction, pigeon’s speed, then launches a rescue mission. Within an hour, they haul in four shivering men, bobbing in the dark waters like apples.

High Haven after Breehan James’ “Apple Tree”

Climbing down felt like my bike tire had gone flat, or like the closing clap of a book after a rollicking story. Up in the tree, I had shed my mortal self, grew galactic, surrounded by red planets, all orbiting my hungry sun.

I picked just one—unblemished. Had to be careful; lift and twist instead of yanking off the bud.

I didn’t bite it right away, felt its heft and held its smooth coolness against my lips, breathed in its sweet September scent. It didn’t disappoint; no earthly delight compares to the first crisp bite of a freshly-plucked planet. Then a shinny up, up to the bendiest branches. I stilled their shaking to remain invisible to my sisters calling out so far below.

I could see their crimson kerchiefs, the wagon with brimming baskets they strained to lug along the rutted track, but I wasn’t eager join their sad trudge back to the house, to the woman still sitting stunned in the kitchen, trying to comprehend one less place setting at the head of the table, an absence like a knocked-out tooth.

I waited to descend until they crested— then disappeared—over the orchard hill, until I’d had my fill of these cosmos. On the way down, I pocketed two more treasures, their hidden stars remembrances of the above, glowing safeguards against autumn nightfall looming.

Leaning In

after Tim Seibles’ “First Kiss”

Let’s just say the moment lacked. . .amplitude. I was 15, as graceless a bumbler as ever slouched onto a dance floor. That night Arrowhead pavilion the floor was frenzied, band shredding through the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love.” She verged on cute in that ditzy So Cal way: bangs, sleeveless blouse, pedal pushers, Converse sneakers. Best of all, she couldn’t really dance either. Probably nothing would have happened if she hadn’t sidled over and hopped into a lame version of the Pony. My only fallback was to lurch into a spasmodic Jerk.

When she suggested a stroll and slipped her hand into mine, I lost all ability to speak. We followed a pine needle-strewn path down to a bobbing dock. The lake was glassy and star-netted. “I’m a Man” thumped an insistent, hopeful refrain through the pines. When she leaned in, I flinched, hesitated about whether to confess it was my first ever, decided to bluff my way through. I’d seen enough movies to know I had to tilt, but which way, and when was I supposed to close my eyes? How could I aim blind? What if I lipped her nose?

It was better and worse than every fantasy. Amazingly, we were on target (I peeked). her lips invitingly open, soft as the pocket of my worn baseball mitt. But her tongue! An electric eel, darting, probing, mine a blind beggar tapping tentatively across a busy intersection, until it stumbled upon a gum wad lodged between her right cheek and her molars, like stepping on a sleeping cat in a pitch-black room. I recoiled, horrified that I had discovered some gross tumor in her otherwise minty mouth. The bass riff to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” throbbed

as she plucked the gum out and put it behind her ear. Worse, she said Sorry in a Betty Boop voice I could never unhear. We tried again, but the magic had vanished, couldn’t even hold hands back to the dance, but I was already rehearsing how to make the fiasco sound triumphant when I would later lie to my best friend about which base I stole.

Lake and Hollow

She grows up with a lake in her eyes, he with a hungry hollow. She knows the inlets and best blueberry islands, memorizes the way the wind

traces its moods on the water, wonders who waits on the far shore.

He plays in a meadow, wheels wind-lifted around any makeshift diamond, loves arriving home. He flits through dreams, wonders who will inhabit the hollow.

How do they find one another? Invisible hands must part the vapors, printlessly, careful not to level paths Or remove essential hindrances.

And when they finally meet, the veil only gradually goes, like mist wraiths

over a moor, or the way autumn takes time staining maples gold, until the leaves only linger to give each other light, until the wind

turns trees into crooked truths with nothing left to hide.

Making Maple Syrup

A Wedding Poem

I. The Long Wait

It takes patience to make sweet syrup from sap. You have to tap the right trees at the right time,

but it doesn’t start with tapping; you must wait out a deep winter freeze,

when maples are dormant, when the forest can feel as if it’s mourning all the losses piled up

in previous seasons, loved ones snatched away, relationships wrecked.

II. Seeing the Trees AND the Forest

That in-between time—when nights dip below freezing, when days creep above—can sneak up on you.

What starts as providing home-cooked meals, companionship, comfort against the chill,

stirs alchemy within trees. Crystallized sap and wounded hearts begin to thaw, then flow.

III. Filling the Buckets

First a just-friends trip conjures ice castles for the girls; another—child-free—you cozy up an Atlantic sunrise

from Cadillac’s granite ledges, then wave farewell to a sinking Western sun from a hot-red corvette

convertible cruising up Highway 1. Tourists mistake you for Hollywood idols. Horseback and hot springs

in Costa Rica, posing as flapper and a bow-tied dandy in front of a vintage, open cockpit biplane.

IV. Assembling the Parts

Building a home-made evaporator from scratch is a feat of ingenuity: So is blending families;

converting a steel drum into a stove for the boil, trick-or-treating as Winnie the Pooh and friends;

breaking up firewood for fuel, somehow breaking an ankle exiting your truck in a parking lot

at the start of a romantic weekend; stovepipe and tubing, sailboats and rafting.

All it takes to fit odd parts together is a little gumption.

V. Up in the Air

The sap bubbles away, sweetening the air. Earth, water, fire have given your love shape, life, and heat, but the sky’s become your binding element. Pilot lessons, kites soaring and crashing,

and one momentous ride in a hot-air balloon, burners fueling the liftoff, a brief touch down

in the river, a mile-high ascent to pop a question both of you knew was coming. Below, three thrilled balloon chasers, with Nana and Grampy, follow a shadow the shape of a joyful teardrop.

VI. After the Boil

You take care to filter the amber syrup. Catching impurities is crucial for future enjoyment;

then the pouring and storing. You’ve toiled together, boiled together, blended families, affections,

improvising each dicey step of the adventure. Now you know sap will always flow again,

buckets never really empty, and the sweetness lasts the more you pour into it, the more you share it.

Shapeshifter

After Sal Taylor Kydd’s photograph “Offered”

Seems that you’ve rediscovered the secret buried since the Greeks, the communion that comes with transmuting. Back then, gods were cads and defilers, turned earth into their own beastly brothel, violated women at will as bulls, swans, golden rain. Mortals suffered their own transfigurations: shriveled into spiders, reduced to swine, self-obsessed flowers, ships of stone. Only rarely was a tree a desirable fate; a nymph, a lunge away from rape, rescued by branching into a laurel; a generous old couple, wishing only not to outlive one another, rewarded at the end by twining into oak and linden. But you—part shapeshifter, part sprite—have learned trees’ language of transformation; how they trap light, lift and liquefy earth’s bones, breathe in and out our breathings. They envy you your freedom, but whisper their enduring legacy. You honor the reciprocity; hide a trunk, stick out a limb. Trees’ unwritten law? Conceal a mystery, reveal a clue.

18 Ways of Looking at a Golf Ball (with apologies to Wallace Stevens and Basho)

I. Unblemished dimples perch motionlessly on tee. So what is trembling?

II. Gravelly hardpack; miles from short grass, ball looks like an abandoned egg.

III. Sliver opening between peeling cedar trunks. The air blares peril.

IV. Picture the (danger!) target, the white blur (hazard!) soaring toward the (splash!).

V. A picturesque pond should be home to frogs and fish, not my Titleist.

VI. Robin Williams said it best. They’re called strokes because you feel like dying.

VII. I used to love sand sifting through tiny fingers. Now? Desert, not beach.

VIII. From here I can see a (duffer’s) world (suffering) in a grain of sand.

IX. Five gashes later, my ball is still in the trap. Not much sand left, though.

X. Back nine—hope surges— until my drive dribbles down to the ladies’ tee

XI. Should have worn low cuts. These plaid shorts and knee-high socks affect my swing path.

XII. More math—hit the green in six; two-putt saves snowman on a summer’s day!

XIII. Red flag means closer, blue farther, yellow mid-green. Where’s the white to wave?

XIV. Undulating greens; golf’s cruelest trick. Three-footer ends up in the rough.

XV. A successful day? Finding more balls than I lose. Found two, lost thirteen.

XVI. Learn from my mistakes. If they chem spray the fairways, don’t clean teeth with tees.

XVII. Whiffed with my seven iron approach. Chunked my chip; I hate this f***** sport

XVIII. Bogey counts as par for hand-eye-challenged duffers. Play again next week?

To

I.

Always our hearts. Before, yours so steadfast, like blue-sky stars, invisible, unassuming, patient; mine more startled, dinning in my left ear, rata tat ratata ta too-ing. Maybe I was luckier. At least I knew who was knocking, and—vaguely—when, even if it was some drunken drummer. You were whittled down by the internal fray, trapped between tormentors— doomsayer and comforter.

2.

The god who gave us pan-ic used to hide in a thicket, waiting for some jumpy traveler; snorting like a boar, Pan would shake branches, snicker, then dash ahead and rattle-roar again, until the passerby, unnerved, bolted blindly out of the woods. The upshot? Ever after, a mere rustle would leave the victim jackhammer-hearted and desperate to dislodge the anaconda coiled around his chest.

3.

When the turbulence blindsided you, you sat paralyzed in 16C; your mind’s needle skipped, then stuck in a groove pre-playing a crash that never came. This is what death feels like. The tingling, tightness, underwater flailing, ribs battered by a heart gone berserk—all felt real, more than the gurney

you needed when the plane landed, or their findings: functions normal.

4.

For weeks you skewered yourself, mental needles.

If I thought shaking you would help— but you were trembling already, confessed I’m so weary of this. My brain makes my body pay. I wanted to fix you, exorcise this demon, catch the thief who stole your soul’s stuffing and swaths of time, but the more I talked, the more suffocated by words we both felt.

5.

It was no miracle. You kept calling out the fear, steadied your breathing, plunged into ice baths, found tiny footholds, inched up a rockface that dared you to look down. You didn’t stop at the summit; next stop, the sky. I was relieved you didn’t share in advance your plan to jump out of a Cessna. I watched the video, half terrified, half awed as you—spreadeagled—turned freefall into flying.

I’m not sure how to resist gravity anymore. Four decades back, I’d skim surfward over sand, time my leopard leap to snag that hanging frisbee just as a monster breaker hit. I’d free solo Boulder’s Flatirons, spider up pitch to pitch, like scaling a dinosaur’s serrated spine, or paraglide on front range thermals, chase my own shadowed sky-brow. Now I’d give whatever’s left in the glass to turn alchemist, transmute earth-bones into liquid, cloud, luminosity, so Bruno and I could glint and sashay arm in arm uptown, then just keep rising.

You think that blaming someone will restore what’s been lost? Grow up. This phoenix isn’t fireproof. Rise again? It’s charred flesh and feathers. And what did you lose? A box of mementos, a scrapbook stuffed with clippings? A few snapshots of a ghost family— a sometimes father, brothers, me? Look. Things burn, people disappear. Let the past remain unredeemable.

I didn’t need to watch the news that night. The air was announcement enough. A cinnabar sky flickered to the west. If not for the ash salting the car, the yard, my hair, like a Biblical plague, the light could have been some beckoning city’s benign glow. Your father was delayed at the clinic, healing the maimed, the helpless—ironic?— so once again I was on my own to deal with a world in flames.

By the time I heard the helicopter’s chuffing, the blaze fed by the runaway Santa Anas had leapt Laguna Canyon Road, raced up the ravine, crowned the hill, and still I moved as if fire-rapt. The neighbor next door was hosing down his roof. Overkill, I thought. Ceramic tiles can’t burn. I stopped to check the mailbox. I can’t explain. What would you have saved? Easy to imagine how level-headed you’d be, until you start to choke on fumes and feel that pyre panic, the press of heat like demon mouths devouring your air, the houses at street’s end bursting into flames like marshmallows.

I grabbed your father’s Guarneri, but not his sax, the coffeemaker, a table lamp, bowl for matches

you or Gary glazed in school, a bottle of wine, some fucking coasters, an armful of coats from the closet. I never thought of the Tamayo, my jewelry box, house files, forty years of home movies. And when I dropped my mother’s china tureen, I stared at the shatter and said aloud, I hope the broom doesn’t burn.

She is nearly unrecognizable now, docile, residue-sweet; honey left at the bottom of the teacup. Not yet rubble; neighborhood lights blinking out, then entire districts, boarded up windows in a vacant building.

Yet she abides, smiling, vapid observer as sons gab about politics and old girlfriends. She holds a diapered lapdog, carpet-colored, her best friend despite scabs still seeping from the last time that yipping fluffball clawed her shin. Strange—her sons yearn for her former ferocity, missing those hooks lodged deep in their mouths.

She kept lines taut, reeled and tugged, her boat always gaining, grapnel poised above the gunwale, to skewer just below the ribcage. She’s napping

now, breathing quick and shallow, a missing smile the only difference between sleep and wakefulness. The book binding has flaked away; impossible to paste page to page, affix past to present or make sense of any moment except—for a son visiting at last—this final one.

David Sloan’s debut poetry collection—The Irresistible In-Between was published by Deerbrook Editions in 2013.  A Rising and Other Poems, (Deerbrook), launched in the spring of 2020. His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals. He is a two-time recipient of Maine Literary Awards, the Betsy Sholl Award, the inaugural Maine Poets Society Prize and the New Millennium Award for Poetry. After teaching for nearly 50 years, most recently at Maine Coast Waldorf High School in Freeport, he is now semi-retired, content to focus on the joys of more regular writing, grandparenting, gardening, cycling and pickle ball!

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is due the editors for the poems in this collection that have appeared in the following journals:

“Recipe for Grammy’s Musical Stew,” “Arson,” “Prostrate,” and “Making Maple Syrup,” Sixfold, Summer 2022

“Black and White Snapshots,” Passager 2021 Poetry Contest, #71

“Flames,” Third Wednesday Magazine, March 2, 2022

“Earth School,” Crosswinds, Spring, 2023

“Solo,” Joy of the Pen Journal, 2022

“Pleasant Street,” The Poet’s Corner, November 2021

“Lake and Hollow,” The Maine Sunday Telegram, September 24, 2023