The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech
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POETRY BY STEPHEN DOBYNS
The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech (2016)
Winter’s Journey (2010)
Mystery, So Long (2005)
The Porcupine’s Kisses (2002)
Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (1999)
Common Carnage (1996)
Velocities: New and Selected Poems 1966–1992 (1994)
Body Traffic (1990)
Cemetery Nights (1987)
Black Dog, Red Dog (1984)
The Balthus Poems (1982)
Heat Death (1980)
Griffon (1976)
Concurring Beasts (1972)
Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Dobyns
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition
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Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 116 for special individual acknowledgments.
Cover Design: Sandy Knight
Cover Art: Copper Beech 62", copyright © by Benjamin Swett
Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster
Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dobyns, Stephen, 1941- author.
Title: The day’s last light reddens the leaves of the copper beech: poems / by Stephen Dobyns.
Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY: BOA Editions Ltd., 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019091 (print) | LCCN 2016024012 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683162 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781942683179 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / American / General.
Classification: LCC PS3554.O2 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PS3554.O2 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019091
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Stories
Stars
Wisdom
Parable: Horse
Mrs. Brewster’s Second Grade Class Picture
Furniture
Water-Ski
Leaf Blowers
Parable: Heaven
Good Days
Part Two
Sixteen Sonnets for Isabel
Monochrome
Song
Technology
Skyrocket
Lizard
Swap Shop
Alien Skin
Pain
Niagara Falls
The Wide Variety
Skin
Never
Casserole
Inexplicably
Prague
Gardens
Part Three
The Miracle of Birth
Fly
The Inquisitor
The Poet’s Disregard
Parable: Gratitude
Sincerity
Hero
Statistical Norm
Turd
Parable: Friendship
The Dark Uncertainty
No Simple Thing
Part Four
Reversals
Narrative
Determination
Jump
What Happened?
Philosophy
Melodrama
Exercise
Failure
Constantine XI
Literature
Jism
Valencia
Thanks
Part Five
Persephone, Etc.
Crazy Times
Parable: Fan/Paranoia
Winter Wind
So It Happens
Tinsel
Future
Parable: Poetry
Scale
Cut Loose
Recognitions
Laugh
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Colophon
PART ONE
Stories
All stories are sad when they reach their end.
The rain comes; the night falls; Malone dies alone.
With little bites, the pragmatic devours the idealistic.
A bit of ash, a grain of sand; dust blows down the avenues.
Only yesterday the world shook its pom-poms;
roads extended their promise under an azure sky:
here an oasis, there an oasis, fat dawdles in between.
Pulled down from their branches, the hours
were quickly tasted and tossed away. What’s this,
clouds on the horizon, or do we need glasses?
Between the countries of Arriving and Leaving,
no frontier, no change in the weather till later.
The murmuring, unruly mob lumbering behind;
the walls each morning yellowed by setting sun.
Stars
The man took the wrong fork in the road.
It was out in the country. They saw
no signs. It was getting dark. They began
to blame each other. Should they keep
going straight or should they turn around?
They drove past farms without lights.
The man said, If we reach a crossroad,
we can just turn right. His wife said,
I think you should turn around. The man
was driving. They kept going straight.
There’s got to be a road up here someplace,
he said. His wife didn’t answer. By now
it was pitch black. In their lights, the trees,
pressing close to the road, looked like people
wanting to speak, but thinking better of it.
The farther they drove, the farther they got
from one another, until it seemed they sat
in two separate cars. Who’s this person
next to me? This thought came to them both.
They weren’t newlyweds. They had children.
He’s trying to upset me, thought the woman.
She thinks she always knows best, thought
the man. They were on their way to dinner
at a friend’s farmhouse in the country. Now
they’d be late. It would take longer to go back
than to go straight, said the man. The woman
knew he hated it when she remained silent
so she said nothing. The woods were so thick
one could walk for miles and never get out.
The stars looked huge, as if they had come down
closer in the dark. The woman wanted to say
she could see no familiar constellations,
but she said nothing. The man wanted to say,
Get out of the car! Just to make her speak!
Where had they come to? They had driven
out of one world into another. They began
to recall remarks each had made in the past.
Only now did they realize their meanings,
hear their half-hidden barbs. They recalled
missing objects: a favorite vase, a picture
of his mother. How foolish to think they had
only been misplaced. They recalled remarks
made by friends before the wedding, remarks
that now seemed like warnings. Ice crystals
formed between them, a cold so deep that only
an ice ax could shatter it. Who is this monster
I married? They both thought this. Soon they’d
think of lawyers and who would get the kids.
Then, through the trees, they saw a brightly lit house.
They had come the long way around. The man
parked behind the other cars and opened the door
for his wife. She took his arm as they walked
to the steps. They heard laughter. Their friends
were just sitting down at the table. On the porch
the man told his wife how good she looked,
while she fixed his tie. Both had a memory
of ugliness: a story told to them by somebody
they had never liked. As he opened the door,
she glanced upward and held him for a second.
How beautiful the stars look tonight, she said.
Wisdom
With the door shut the child sat in the closet
with his fingers pressed in his ears. Tell me
the truth, wasn’t it wisdom? Hadn’t he had
a sudden insight into the nature of the world?
One time my stepson in third grade refused
to take any more tests. His reason? If you take one,
they’ll only give you another. Better call a halt
right now. He had caught on to the grownups’
stratagem to drag him into adulthood. What
was in it for him? he asked. Nothing nice.
Likewise the boy in the closet had become
temporarily resistant to the blandishments
of the world. Two hours later, his own body
turned against him and he crept downstairs
to dinner. But when his parents pointed out
the joys of growing up, he remained in doubt.
Who knew how the thought had come to him?
TV, a friend’s chatter? Perhaps he had seen
a picture of a conveyor belt. Click, click—
so he’d go through life until he was dumped
on a trash heap. Or perhaps he had deduced
what he was leaving behind, the shift from
innocence to consequence, from protection
to fragility. Fortunately, stories like the boy
shutting himself up in the closet are scarce,
and his parents joked about it to their friends.
By now, I don’t know, he’s on his second or
third marriage, has a job that’s made him rich,
but that time in the closet, five years old and
calculating what life was destined to deal out,
how different it must have seemed from what
he had ever imagined, so he made his decision
and crept into the closet, wasn’t it wisdom?
Parable: Horse
He peered into the bar mirror over the bottles
of gin and whiskey. Yes, he thought, he really
did have a long face. Why hadn’t he noticed it
before? But looking out of his moony eyes,
he rarely wondered how others saw him, since,
apart from mirrors, he rarely saw himself.
Sure he was tall, no surprise there. Walking
along city sidewalks, he felt that was why people
slid to a stop when they saw him. But perhaps
it was his face that upset them, its odd expanse,
tombstone teeth, satchel mouth, black rubber lips.
People gawked and, glancing back, he saw
they were gawking still. None of this was new.
Yet each occasion once more fueled his sense
of isolation, which had begun at birth and came
from being an only child. He had no memory
of his father. His mother ran off after a few weeks
and he’d been raised by strangers. Stubbornly,
he worked to be strong, get on with the business
of living, to focus his thoughts on the road ahead.
But then a cruel wisecrack or brutal snicker
would tumble him back to the beginning again,
the self-doubt and crushing solitude. Did it really
matter if he had a long face? But it wasn’t just that,
it was his whole cluster of body parts. Alone they
might have been fine, even the boxy feet. Then,
when all joined into the oneness that was him,
it changed. Not only did people stare, they looked
offended; as if his very presence upset their pride
and sense of self-worth; as if they were saying, How
can it be good fortune for us to walk here, if you
walk here as well; as if to see him and smell him
lessened them as human beings. Soon they’d brood
about their failings: broken marriages, runaway kids.
Was this his only power, to make others feel lesser?
How many of these downcast do we see on the street
whose insides are marked by scars, who show off
their apparent good cheer and lack of concern only
to conceal their fears? And even if we saw them
what could we do? The bartender coughed to get
his attention, half-grinning, half-appalled.
Why shouldn’t he stay? He had no one to visit,
no place to go; he had only these long afternoons
in anonymous bars with the televisions turned low.
Give me a Jack Daniels, he said, and put it in a bowl.
Mrs. Brewster’s Second Grade Class Picture
That’s me, standing in the third row
with a wiseacre grin, skinny and blond,
taller than the others. Of the rest, George
and Jane, Jacqueline and Tom, a class
of sixteen and I recall nearly all the names:
the boys in white shirts or plaid; the girls
in skirts and bobby socks. Mrs. Brewster
stands to the right, dark hair, a benign smile.
She, who I’d thought old, looks about forty:
Bailey School, East Lansing, Michigan.
By now roughly sixty years have passed,
while the lives that, in 1948, were scarcely
at the start of life have almost completed
their separate arcs, if they haven’t done so
already. Strange to think that some are dead.
A few of these children had great success,
a few had moderate triumphs, others
were dismal failures. Some were granted
happiness each day they spent on earth;
some felt regret with every step. I know
nothing of how their lives turned out.
Look at Margaret sitting cross-legged
in
the front row in a light-colored dress.
The black and white photograph can’t
do justice to her fine red hair. A smile
still uncorrupted by appetite or cunning,
no telling how long it retained its luster.
But all must have pursued life with various
degrees of passion, arrived at decisions
they felt the only ones possible to make.
How many would now think otherwise,
that the indispensable trip to Phoenix
might as easily have been to New York,
that the choice of a career in law might
just as well have been a job in a bank?
What is needed after all? Which choices
are the ones really necessary? Could I
have been as happy as a doctor or even
a cop? No burning passion lies hidden
in these faces, all that came later, if it
came at all. But how bright and eager
they appear, how ready to get started.
One morning Mrs. Brewster gave us a treat,
showing her slides of Yellowstone Park.
In the dim light of drawn shades we stared
at a buffalo calf crossing a brook, a bald eagle
perched on a dead branch, Fire Hole River,