NINE POEMS Laurie Byro
Photography by Ivan Waters
Laurie Byro lives in New Jersey, USA.
Ivan Waters lives in England
The Good Thief While you slept and stars ticked forward, a hound begged in snow-melt for a lost dream of rabbit, I stole from you. I was the poet in blue shadows, an owl circling for a soft nape of neck. I drove past roadside stands filled with coffee-cans of garden flowers. How their colors rubbed against one another, luring me to stop. In moonlight, I took two brown eggs speckled with dirt. I watched your eyelids flutter and went through the pockets of your trousers. I found two ticket stubs, a linty cough drop, silver coins, a few of copper. I crept the hallway, slouched past too-loud clocks. I hid, slid open a drawer in your kitchen, found a knife. I ate a tomato over your sink, juice running off my chin like a greedy god. I coveted the hand made quilt, thumbed the book of poems left as you’d read them on the couch. I crouched thick as shadow through your skylight. Against a backdrop of breathing, I strained to hear a shriek off a bough that held a beetle trapped in resin. I knew when I walked home, I’d be followed by smug gold eyes. Before it was time for me to leave, I fingered all the buttons on your coat.
Summer Garden after Anna Akhmatova I want to see the roses in the park of my childhood where I played as young as the newly formed statues there. Rain drops tiptoe in puddles that grow as we splash. We wade through pools of uncertain dreams. We swim in lonely desire. I see their chiseled bodies with unblinking eyes regard me a pink, imperfect bud. I imagine them now moss laurelled halos mother-of-pearl and shell, and I wonder if they still tend the roses, whether they are too old now, whether I am too old. And what of their loneliness? And what of mine?
Stars Falling The day before, I forage in the woods to make a wreath. The time of year to gather and pray. I am putting my life into a circle. I twist wire and cut boughs, baby’s breath and pink ribbons—I put away my old grief, my tired complaints. I have put you there too, old loves— acorns for your eyes, blue jay feathers for your hair—I am putting my best black Spanish hat there, my fastest bicycle from a favorite Christmas. I am putting my worn shoes there-cobblestones from Prague alleys, street lamps from Paris. I am pouring a glass of autumn cider and cutting up shrimp toast to add to the wreath. I am picking daffodils and catching lake turtles— the sun in my face. I am putting it all there, around the edges. When stars fall— I catch one, I run out of wishes before stars— but the one that falls into my hands, like the baseball that never did in school, I put that on the wreath, too. It shines brightest, lets me work through the night, illuminates your faces while each of you sleep and I sing your names into the fragrant morning.
Samhain Eve Snow-white birches bend low to the ground, begging to be stripped of yellow leaves. In my head, I am reading a poem to Geordie. You spread your black pea-coat on damp earth, invite me near the bonfire you have made. You cup your hands as if around a match, enter me as easily as breathing in—releasing oxygen, dispelling strength. Smoke snakes around our ankles. A sooty leaf rises, a black-ghost smudges a cross on my forehead. I carry my shoes across a stream, stepping barefoot on stones warmed by the sun. Hemlock boughs are flattened soft from rain. In England, a woman washes nappies, rinses out piss while composing a poem in her head. There are scars where electricity scorched her temples. If you call me by her name, I won’t answer. I’ll trudge through fiery leaves that late autumn trees have shed. I say it looks as if someone has been bleeding. You say it’s the time of year to be lonely. We forage branches of gold on our way home. We place them in clay jars to lure love to a table glittering with beads of honey.
Bill’s Constellations For Billy Collins Whatever actually happened at Yang-Ping’s house during that winter, there were seasons before and after in which nothing happened. Rowboat’s skiffled along rain-washed river bottoms, rocky but not impassable. There wasn’t always a drunken moon or salty stars in a black bowl of sky. A swan followed the boat seeking clues about the lady in the wide-brimmed hat, blue ribbon trailing the wind like her mate’s feathers. The tail of Scorpio slashed the wild sky. The woman blinded by icy stars, could have been mistaken for a wizened Chinaman, a thousand years old. The silent river spilled no secrets about temptation or regret. The woman navigating these waters held a compass that could turn her boat around, change to any direction. She planted her stilted legs solidly on its wooden floor, the book open and face down beside her written by a man who’d traveled similar waters. Many winters before, too many to record in a painted chart, a Chinaman paddled a river, his long oars dripping stars.
The Blind Fisherman of Gibeon Before I had language, when the earth held me in her clutches I was a row of jonquils entertaining bees all buzzing around my eyes, their empty sockets, the roar of lightning, when the hairs on my wrists rose. It was easy to speak in visions. The burst of little suns in my final moments. I became as dark as the soil where I buried bulbs. Now I am left with fingers to feel for petals that echo of color. My wife has a face made perfect by fingertips and longing. I live beneath the planks where light filters through. I hold my line slack, unsure of life in brackish waters. I throw out my hook again and again, wait for a tug, a battle: a fish to reel in, to bloody.
Planchette Caliban licks the last moon-wish I leave on your kitchen table. Brown paper wrapping and cord unravel in the direction of Lourdes. I sip you through a straw; the froth of milk thickens as the house melts into morning. I’ve locked your windows tight, put an extra blanket on the end of your couch. Men go into town, do a slow dance, drink gin while I spill talc on the inside of your shoes. I ask the planchette questions, stoke deep kisses with the bittersweet root you planned to carve into a cane. My arms ache. I fold up the final shadows I throw and later release you from your nail in the sky. Tonight, I will visit your skin as a raven, stir rainfall and sugar into the glass you have left beside your bed.
The Birds that Lay Down for Icarus Cormorants conspire to peck one another to death to furnish him with wings. Owls call in the sleep of trees. Huddled together after a night of sex, their wings ripple patterns in sand. Larks rise earlier than usual, throw themselves against weathered wood. The old man walking out in the blue morning finds a hundred still birds, a trail of blood outside windows and doors. He gives thanks for the ease of his prophecy. The old man settles to pluck at faith— to tell his son of their good fortune. In days fields are no longer littered with bodies. The air ripples with a silence like bird song. The envelope is sealed with wax hardened by cold tears.
Geordie’s Kitchen In Inverness this morning it is ten degrees. Somewhere, a baker is laying out dough to fold into scones for early commuters. The woodstove snaps hard oak, dried for a year and stored beneath a tarpaulin. We sit at a table talking: the rough edges of a voice I pour over ice to understand. We hold hands because we like the closeness. His work-roughened fingers make mine close up like snow-drops. He knows they are cold and blows on them. We could live here forever in this forgotten farmhouse where I cannot comprehend the language. The old dog snores in a corner behind a pile of favorite books that someday Geordie will teach me to read. I ask if it’s all right if I open a jar from last summer’s cellar. The tartness of late apples will taste good on a crumbly leftover scone. We reheat coffee, sip the last dregs of conversation until, thick and woolly, his voice nudges us to bed.
Copyright: Laurie Byro &Ivan Waters 2006