David Simpson
WHEN MY GUIDE DOG WILLOW PULLS LEFT TOWARD THE
TRAIN STATION I SAY TO HER HOP UP
which means "keep going straight,"
because this late fall day’s weather is too good to miss;
we walk over ground to another entrance
and she pulls hard again,
with recognition toward it.
But with recognition toward what?
Does she know it’s the same train station
or does she think it’s a look-alike? Suppose tow worlds
were to meet somewhere in a common dimension
surprising us? And yet, they do: the way, on a Sunday drive
with a friend, you learn that the road you’ve been taking
to the grocery store leads on to the mall you’ve always reached
from another direction, or the way you thought
this love would turn out different from all past loves.
* * *
POSTCARD TO EMILY DICKINSON
Winter. And because can see
just enough to know
that the light slants now
the way it did then,
I stand you next to me
to describe it
in terms of heft
something I can hold—
or cathedral tunes.
Most of the organs and the lights
in our cathedrals are electric.
(Surely, you heard of Edison
and his miracle in Brockton.)
But you’d still recognize
the swift filigree
of the common wren, nothing’s changed
in the twists and tight trills
of his song, except that we can slow them down,
even map them like a kind of art
on something we call an oscilloscope.
There’s no room here to explain
how we can outrace
the hummingbird from Tunis
or that our mail is lighting fast.
There are still eclipses-even God —
and folks still go out for rides
with Death in fancy carriages,
flies still buzz on window panes, waiting.
* * *
SHAMPOO
As I sit in the barber chair and she stands beside me,
my ear rests next to the beautician’s breast
and my hands cuddle naked beneath a large, white apron.
I trust her hands-one cradling my chin,
the other coming my shoulder-length hair—
as she leans me back toward the basin behind me.
I sink into daydreams of blurred voices, buzz
and warm-water swirl while her cleansing fingertips
extend to touch an ancient ache.
Thirteen, again, I am naked
beneath a simple baptismal gown,
waist-deep in water, knees shaking. The minister,
his hand on my mouth,
his robes fluttering against my cheek like angel wings,
makes promises of salvation
as he pulls me backward into silence.
David Simpson is a poet, playwright, actor and musician. His poetry has appeared
in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cortland Review, River Styx, and
Verse Daily. In 2007, he and his twin brother, Dan, released a CD of their poetry entitled
Audio Chapbook. The three poems above come from his recent book The Way Love
Comes to Me (MutualMuse Books, 2014).
|