From a third floor window


               two girls
               making a snow man

               who will not be made

               arms quickly formed
               punched on his body

               fall off

               Maybe his eyes
               if they looked

               would tell them something

               but there isn't time
               and besides

               he must have arms

               Not that they
               want him

               to hug them

               but even a snow man
               fan-twig headdress & all

               ought to be whole

               So the chestnut girl
               prances again into drifts

               though he will not laugh

               and the grayish blonde
               stoops around him

               though he will not speak

               And finally
               after arms & arms

               they are satisfied

               and the window
               seems like a canvas

               happily painted on

               For my memory's sake
               I turn from it

               but within the hour

               am back
               to nothing but bumps of snow

               my headdress spread on the ground






                    Memorandum


                    The day I learned,
                    a 3-step approach
                    lefthander taught me.

                    Odd.  Having
                    watched, and 
                    heard, the pros,

                    I should have
                    started sooner,
                    & properly;

                    but I,
                    muddy romantic
                    (a kid

                    determined
                    to wait until
                    his 16th birthday,

                    more into when
                    than how or where
                    or why

                    no matter his
                    supposed desire
                    to be great,

                    holding the ball
                    comfortably
                    before him,

                    his left hand
                    underneath it
                    even though

                    it was just an
                    alley ball &
                    didn't fit right,

                    even though
                    the new walking
                    would shake him,

                    the smoothness
                    required
                    hard to master,

                    depending so much--
                    as it must--
                    on his knowledge

                    of both his
                    own body's
                    characteristics

                    and those of the
                    objects of his
                    serious play,

                    eyes concentrating
                    on the third arrow,
                    the 1-3 pocket,

                    his distance
                    to the foul line
                    carefully measured,

                    his position,
                    posture, balance
                    checked & set, yet

                    his crucial first step
                    and pushaway
                    entered

                    too hurriedly
                    to create
                    that flow

                    and establish
                    that direction
                    needed to

                    carry his
                    ball
                    driving into its

                    target
                    at the height of its
                    power

                    and at its
                    optimum angle
                    & speed & roll

                    to topple from its
                    forward apex
                    to its 4-pin base

                    the proud triangle
                    of precisely arranged
                    10 ring-necked pins),

                    foul, gutter; spin naught
                    but the pins of pride
                    to the floor.






               Epiphanies

                   for a high school hunter, for his story


               Dreaming the blood of deer
               as the sun dies redder & redder,
               I kneel with the wind in the corn,
               set my bow, listen.
               The leaves barely whisper,
               my spine knots from the cold;
               the spaces before me grow small.
               Crackles!  A doe!  Her fawn.
               Fingers, eyes/ tighten;
               the deer sink in the stalks.
               What sun I inhaled turns shadow.
               Then, just to my side, a buck!
               in this Indian day's last light;
               & I see him gutted & hanging,
               his wildness beguiling my tongue,
               but can only look/ wonder,
               caught where I can't let go.






       Words from the Rune


       I have it yet upon the stinking marigold,
           The glory of an angered eye;
       And where the flesh-path brushes past a naked thorn,
           The straightened will of Zion cold;
       And in my spear-infested waters
         Which tear at trunks of towered sky,
           The power of a thousand slaughters;
           The pleasure of eternal scorn.

       I send this still among man's dying villages,
           The chalice filled with Living Blood;
       And through his fields of darkened wheat,
           The Bread that harries pillages;
       And under concrete mountains formed with rods
         Where shadows stab each other in the flood,
           The words which massacre his brazen gods;
           The collared-man to wash his feet.

       I take them yet/ from the human slime,
           Those worthy figs I had no need to curse;
       And, oh, those star-surpassing objects devils burn,
           Holied tools to cross the spread of time;
       And all above their dry and chaffy earth
         Which are the hopes both good and bad disperse,
           I crush on streets the thistle's mirth;
           I build a chapel for the fern.






                 September


                 Nothing stays
                 not even a hurricane's 

                 madness
                 maddening us

                 Even this universe
                 billions of years hence

                 may collapse into a
                 black hole unimaginable

                 For now  though
                 here in Wisconsin

                 the rains
                 wrinkling on the windows

                 encourage dreams
                 & memories

                 it seems will
                 stay






                               "September"
                               was first published in
                               Wisconsin Poets' Calendar: 1982
                               under the pen name of Alden St. Cloud
                               © 1981 Midwestern Writers' Publishing House              





 © 11-19-00 Brian Salchert



"C2": home: Ib IV


 © 2000-2006
 Brian Arthur Salchert
 Thinking Lizard
 All rights reserved.

 Note: generalized title of 10/03/04 version of 3rd poem,
      the original version of which was written in 1973,
      and which version's title included the name of the
      high school student who told me of the event--his
      experience--which moved me to try to vicariously
      experience it.

 09.13.06 Note: The first three/ of the poems on this page
                    were originally in my 1980 Thinking Lizard
                    Alden St. Cloud cassette publication of
                    Postures, a work which is online here as
                    Postures 2006, and currently contains 56
                    poems.                    
                    -                                        
                    "Words from the Rune" is a pre-Iowa poem
                    which I have here minorly revised.  I am
                    not at this time able to say when it was
                    first written, but from the investigating
                    I did today my guess is it is from 1963
                    or 1964 or 1965.  Due to my uncertainty
                    regarding it, my guess may be blank wrong.
                    I do suspect its present title is not its
                    origin title.  I say this because "rune"
                    is a word I associate more with Alden St.
                    Cloud than with Brian Arthur Salchert/
                    even though there is a sonnet--perhaps
                    more than one sonnet--in 1976 which
                    uses "rune" in referring to God.

   






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