the road to Houston
firewheels and sunflowers sway
along the shoulder
by James Brush
the road to Houston
firewheels and sunflowers sway
along the shoulder
the chickadee
rattles like a snake
in her nest
when I look inside
to check the nestlings
Wilderness is a circus ride; I jump
silver turnstiles and dodge my fare tonight.
Somewhere on the withered plains, coyotes
howl and cry as they leave their lairs tonight.
Lonely weather satellites trek all through
the salted skies like robot prayers tonight.
You claim constellations for forgotten
nations on dusty roads we share tonight.
Your voice, mellifluous, you whisper and
name the hurricane wind-stirred air tonight.
Come thunder and southern lightning storms you
rejoice, “Let rainfall be our heir tonight.”
—
I’ve had my students experimenting with ghazal writing. It’s been interesting, and some of them have really gotten into it. A few had trouble grasping the radif (that repeating word at the end of each couplet) and wrote some decent poems sans radif. Trying to help them figure out how to get a radif in there, I turned to Johnny Cash and suggested they try his example from “I’ve Been Everywhere”:
I’ve been everywhere, man.
I’ve crossed the deserts bare, man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air, man.
Of travel I’ve had my share, man.
I’ve been everywhere, man.
Not a ghazal really, but a ghazalish chorus at least. And so I got a few ghazals that use homie and dawg as the radif. Several of them worked quite well and would even make decent raps, which is why I think the kids who are serious about rapping really latched onto this.
Oh, and mellifluous was the word of the day. Bonus points are added to any assignment in which students use their SAT words of the day.
butterflies weave
windblown
Indian blanket
wildflower fields
surround the jail
a chickadee clings
to the birdhouse entrance hole
nestling chorus
river of electric firelight
illuminated tracks
each tie a droning beat
glimpse of moth pulled
into light, flash of wings
a windshield smear
night moves as
any night made slow
by tons of steel in motion
a woman in white flutters
from the embankment
onto the tracks a door
closing on the night
flash of her lost eyes
and then the thump
half a mile gone
before he could react
or reach to pull the brake
a million moths
flit in spaces between
the shadowed trees
—
The other day a butterfly smashed into my windshield. Just a moment to see its beauty before impact and nothing I could do. That reminded me of a some stories I’d read a few years back about the effects on engineers of people who commit suicide by jumping in front of trains. There is nothing they can do but watch, turn away and in some cases spend years trying to forget.
leaves whisper
a cumulus plume
turns the hour
just east of Houston
laughing gulls replace vultures
in the raucous sky
Great Treaty Oak, a poisoned husk,
bent boughs beneath this ashen dusk.
The deals we reached beneath this tree
portended its pale and broken dusk.
I always dreamed I’d shoot your scenes
beneath theses branches at golden dusk.
Long years and days withered away
and swallowed you in barren dusk.
Odd limbs still live and mingle with
new high rise lines in token dusk.
Somehow you found the way back home
all through the long moth-eaten dusk.
And the songs of city birds suggest
the dawn of some new-woven dusk.
—
This is for Joseph Harker’s Reverie 14: Ghazal Boot Camp using some of the words from Wordle 51 at The Sunday Whirl.
Note for non-Austinites: Treaty Oak is a 500-year-old southern live oak in downtown Austin. In 1989 some jackass poisoned it. After a major recovery effort, it survived and said jackass went to jail for a good long time. It’s still a big tree but only a fraction of its former self, yet ten years later it started releasing acorns again.
I step
toward a cluster
of white flowers
grasshoppers
ripple outwards