Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SKY, by JOSEPH ENZWEILER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SKY, by                    
First Line: The screen door closes at 2 a. M
Subject(s): Family Life; Memory; Relatives


The screen door closes at 2 A.M.,
houses on their sides asleep,
maple leaves frozen.
Not even the bread trucks are up this early.
I could take a step, fall upward
And give my life and never call in missing.

But here's the ground, the yard
I know, the gate. Across the fields
to the far edge, the trees
magnificent with wind, stinging
like a strap that never ends.

There's a trailer here the parish rents
to collect newspaper. Tonight it overflows
bundles spilling on the ground,
piled in the moonlight like ancient marble.
I climbed in and made a place, slipped
down deep and they warmed me.

It's December 8th in '65, full eclipse
of the moon. I sit back as it turns
the color of rust, an old blood color.
Traveler in a weary cold, I watch
this ship of ours, how its manners
and frantic streets, all its love affairs
are just a prow of shade across the sun,
sailing to the New World.

While all around me lies the world I know,
my fortress bound with string.
The wind glances through a magazine.
One headline may break loose,
make its way to freedom.
But in these captive pages, all the hairdos
ever dreamed have turned to dust.
Every land deal, all the dead, hats and dresses,
shoes that said we could be happy.
Dinner jackets look up to the stars.
All the buying and selling is done.

A torn page waves the news from Asia;
their cries are fresh in the faded ink.
A dial turns in the dark, tells of war
in a gust of static. Mercurys and Fords
under acres of flags, all of them honeys,
they'll take you there, are tied down
in the cold; their journeys stretch out
behind them and the grass has forgotten.

All the years it takes to be happy then,
half asleep, riding the great gear
that turns night forward. I walk home
as the day noise starts, the moon
adrift in maples and the lights of Kenwood.
The church bell rings. One figure moves
In a yellow window. It is early mass.
Past the pear tree my father planted,
His sleeping pigeons, a cigarette
Lit in the dining room window.

December 8th, my mother is alive.
On the stove a beef tongue cooks
with cinnamon gravy. Sunday leaves
and cold mud. In the living room
Jim Brown slashes through the rain.
I go and knock. I see her coming in the curtains.
But when the back door opens, there is
only sky before me. How far it goes,
no road in the brightness. That is a sorrow,
but the gravy is so sweet, silverware
gleams on the china, such things are true,
Jim Brown in the fierce cold mud,
the pear tree leafless at dusk

but the sky, the sky lies so unbroken
and is so blue.


Copyright © Joseph Enzweiler
http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm
Prarie Schooner is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which
publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the
prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the
campus-based literary journals.







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