Another Sunday Morning (Audio Track)

 
     
The Poplars of August

I say this, but it’s not me saying it.
I’m a two-way mirror that looks in on a room
the width of a hand stretched temple-to-temple.

Inside the room houses and people wink
open and closed, trees wave
like trees, the ground moves in big circles.

And these things I tell you about myself –
all lies. I drink to remember
and all I remember is the past.

Meanwhile the present,
the present – if only I could
remember the present – if only

I had some kind of blueprint
or a glassblower’s rod to grapple
this light – then I could –

Then I could tell you something I mean.
Meanwhile – the poplars of August persist,
persist,

and the slippery glass I lean into,
and the imprint of my hand
and its valleys and signs.

 
 
That Was a Time

They began to build a house for me. I put in my hand,
but they continued to help, even when I didn’t want them to.

One of the bricks of the foundation was half-rotted,
and over on the east side they forgot one entirely.

They added buttresses, and a deus ex machina,
although it ruined the vistas,

and scraps of plywood over the gaps
to keep the cold out.

Newspapers talked, and poetry
in the most oblique, cryptic manner.

All the while my guitar had to polish its own neck.
That’s about the time that ink

and those funny glyphs disappeared;
even the futile scratches in the rock faces.

That was a time. You remember –
about when the corporation formed its perfect union.

It’s not that everybody stopped talking,
but listening lost some of its distinction.

Just breath and ink,
and the memory of this and that.

One of the smart ones noticed that it wasn’t talk at all.
People said, “This,” and “This,” and “This,” and “This.”

And then, for a long time, nobody talked. Or, if they did,
it was through a series of hand signals, or articulated grunts.

All the while we stayed inside, fiddling with the dictionary.
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. Holding down pages against the wind.
 
 

David Ruekberg lives in his maternal great-grandmother’s birthplace on the O-at-ka Creek near Rochester, NY, and teaches English in the International Baccalaureate program at Hilton High School. Publications include Yankee, Poet Lore, North American Review, Mudfish, 88, and others. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College in January, 2004. Website: http://poetry.restory.net.