The Nature of the Vortex

Richard Hartner placed his hand

on his father’s old gun broken to receive the shell

in its chamber, and thought of the life

that gun had known at his father’s side or pegged on the wall

by the kitchen door, obsessively cleaned, ready to whirl

into action each time the family needed meat in the house.

Richard longed to rerun his childhood trek to that house

the day he shot his first squirrel, its furred tail in his hand

as his mind spun with a mesmerizing whirl

of scampering fur stopped by the single shell

that penetrated the wall

separating life from life.

His father had taught him that to live

responsibly one must respect the house

of his birth, that this house was a  virtual wall

protecting all who lived within against the hand

of doubt and despair, a turtle shell

into which one could retreat when life began to whirl

out of control.  His father had plowed this land, leaving a whorl

of rich loam to incubate the seeds he sewed, the life

coaxed from its stubborn shell.

He’d felled the trees and designed the house

that he later built with his own hand.

In his mind, the land offered a protective wall

to keep his children safe from an alien world, a wall

that somehow connected him to a grand design, a whorl

akin to the print on God’s own hand.

An energetic man, he had treasured life,

but he hadn’t known that a house was only a house,

a shell

that could be crushed like the shell

of a terrapin crossing a busy street, its cartilage a poor wall

to fend off the metal monsters beyond its mind, its inadequate house

left fragmented in the road.  Richard’s mind filled with a whirl

of monsters of another kind.  His own life 

was reduced to the halting fingers of a useless hand.

That hand trembled as he slid the shell

into the gun’s breach.   His life had hit the wall,

and he could find no way to stop the whirlwind within his house.

Sestina for Suzanne

Suzanne has buried husband number three

and all her dearest friends have come to mourn

the pass.   The casseroles devoured, the plates

returned for future use. The widow plans

to be a model saint and stay away

from matrimony’s snare, to die to live.

For years, Suzanne has set her goal to live

within the rule of masculinity.  For three

and more have sought her hand and took away

her will to choose by her own lights.  To mourn

the passing loss of this one man, she plans

to move beyond her first  instruction--plates

and knives, crystal and linen cloths.  She plates

intent with golden hope, a wish to live

a life fulfilled where she takes charge of plans

and determines each move she'll make.   Her three

resolves are not to whine, nor cry, nor mourn

the passing loss of former self.   Away

she says to seal intentions plot, away!

In days to come, she drops her coins in plates

from church to  church while some devout still mourn,

and others celebrate the mass of live

and die hedonistically.  Of three

new aims--to go, to see, to do--her plans.

                                                    

Art galleries, plays, and symphonies, the plans

were carefully made to spirit self away.

To Asia, Africa, Australia--on  three

large continents, her photographic plates

record the camels, pandas, kangaroos—all live

evidence of cultural life for which to mourn

if lost to modern man.  She would not mourn

the loss of her own dignity.  New plans

she made to snorkel seas for fish that live

in freedom’s coves, to bungee jump away

from heights unknown, to carve her name in plates

of stone—to do, to see, to go—these three.

One day mid-mourn, she met a man.  Away

she threw the plans requiring license plates.

To live, number four was better than three.

The Flight of the Hawk

A sestina is a hawk, its distance

controlled by short wings

and long tail.  It’s the sprinter

among raptors. Flight beginning

close to the ground. Launching

from fence posts, it centers

its prey, spiraling downward, the center

a target distanced

only by the pivot of the launch,

the strength of the wings.

From the apogee of beginning

to the collapse of the sprint,

it frees the sprinter

for the growing definition centered

in startling beginnings,

distanced

understanding of the wings

of doubt and belief true to the launch.

The sestina launches

orbiting motion that sprints

to the core of unknown significance, wings

of character and dialogue centering

the delight of distanced

experience, a narrative’s beginning.

Each hawk repeats the rhythm begun

by hawk-fathers, time-launchers

whose wings have spanned the distance

of infinity, wings spread in sprints

that define and catalog the center

of conquest, the descent and ascent of wings.

Word wings

rise, their quintessence begins

to shape in relief the thought-centered

impressions that fly free from launching

emotions, sparks ignited to sprint

from the heart’s distance.

And so words are feathered wings,

their distance from time’s beginning

measured by the launch of their sprint.

Faulty Fences

“Your cows are in my corn,” Turner’s voice rasped             

over the party line, when my mother                                                

answered the three longs and two shorts, our call                 

to a community that bound us, wired                                    

us to the lives of neighboring farms                                       

as surely as fences that separated us.                                    

“Hey guys, the cows are out,” mother told us

as we came to table, our chairs rasping

against the linoleum on our farm

house floor, the tang of pancakes from mother’s

skillet more important than any message wired

across morning stillness, reluctant call

to work that could wait for the higher call

of pancakes, maple syrup set for us

as we pondered the gap in fencing wire.

“I’ll bet it’s down by the pond,” rasped

my brother’s changing voice, causing mother

to foresee blame in his view of the farm’s

fence, the sections repaired,  She knew the farm

better than we, knew its persistent call

to blame and shame, the ruth of mothering

our need to lay guilt.  She knew each of us

carried burdens beyond the fence that rasped

our minds, a metaphor of our lives wired

to haunt us for past action. Our  mother

was there when everything on the farm

went sour, when a gate we left open rasped

our father from the scene, beyond the call

of warning, target of the bull that robbed us

of father and younger sister.  Our mother

learned to cope with loss, to father/mother

us through those difficult times as we wired

our lives back together.  She provided us

the strength we needed to hold on to the farm,

but she could not lessen the guilt, the call

to blame that rose in denial and rasped

at our hearts.  Our mother knew that the farm’s

faulty wire was yet another dark call

for us to confront what rasped our souls.

Sestina of Betrayal

Miranda had known that Jason’s best friend

in college was the girl who lived next door    

to his parents in the small town where he     

had grown up, but the two had never met,    

and Miranda had long dismissed the threat.  

“Susan will be in New Orleans next week.”  

Miranda smiled sweetly, knees growing weak,

and waited for Jason to suggest his friend

stay with them.  Unaware the threatening

storm, he opened windows, unlatched doors.

“She wants us to know a man she’s just met,”

Susan eyed the receding hairline he

tried to disguise and thought how funny he

would look with his hair completely gone, weeks

and years of careful combing, eyes meeting

mirror, images bending like old friends.

An invitation was given, the door

flung open with no thought of  winter threat.

The couple arrived, and nothing threatening

could be seen in the warm welcome when he

stood with his wife at the wide open door.

But Jason would learn something new that week

about Miranda, her history of  friends,

and find that not only had she met

Susan’s Mike before, she vowed not to meet

him again, so serious was his threat

to her sense of who she was. Jason’s friend,

on the other hand, had been used when she

allowed Mike to come with her that week

to enter her innocent friend’s open door.

  

“Beware of the past!” warned the door

while the whistle of the wind rose to meet

the epiphany latent in that week.

Neither Susan nor Jason sensed the threat

that Mike posed for Miranda, a threat he

intended to fulfill with his former friend.

Mike walked through the open door and the threat

of Miranda’s past met the present.  He

became the weak betrayer of friend by friend.

Sestina for Fishers of Men

The village watched as Jonathan Siler            

cared for his mother, nursed her day and night.         

They saw him drop out of school, stop seeing         

May Johnson, the girl of his teenage dreams.            

While the village loved Mamie Siler, they                 

began to wish that Jonathan be freed                         

from responsibility, a fish freed

from the hook in its tender mouth. Siler

neither knew nor cared what others thought, they

were as remote from him as the stars at night.

For the first time, he could see his dreams

fleshed out in meaningful tasks, he could see

what others couldn’t, and in truth he saw

a life of ministry where he was freed

to give of himself.  Meanwhile, the town dreamed

of other goals for their young man Siler.

They looked for the stars and saw a dark night

when the fish wouldn’t bite the bated hooks they

dangled.  He couldn’t avoid his fate, they

reasoned, and there was no way he could see

what they could see.  They determined that night

that they would take matters in their hands, free

him from the curse of the only Siler

child.  They thought and thought and finally dreamed

up a scheme.  While the stars blinked, the fish dreamt

of bigger seas, Oprah was contacted. They

convinced her of the sacrifice Siler

was making, and she immediately saw

ratings rise as she provided relief, freed

this young man giving him several nights

to see Chicago, be on her show. Night

fell over this city but starlit dreams

masked the truth.  Well-meaning villagers freed

him from responsibility, but they

couldn’t prevent his mother’s death or see

what effect that death would have on Siler.

The stars in the night watched the fish as they

swam in and out his tortured dreams.  They saw 

that freedom for Siler would never be.

Sestina for Shelby with Apologies to Days of Our Lives

When Shelby left home for college that fall,

she couldn’t have known she’d never return

to that house, that town, that set of parents

or her old high school crowd.  Her romantic

sense of the ideal would forever change.

In university her mind would alter.

No questions asked when her alternator

went out causing her old car to falter

before she reached Atlanta. Nothing changed

her mood, caused her to think of returning

to the idyllic town where romantic

notions had been formed,  She called her parents

and waited for her father, the one parent

she had always trusted to come to alter

every problem she ever faced, romantic

or otherwise.  She never dreamed he’d fall

from grace before he could make the return

trip to Anniston to the wife he’d exchange

for a younger model who gave him change

for coffee on I-20.  Her parents

split the cloth when her father returned

but it wasn’t the father who altered

the state of her parents marriage that fall

day.  Her mother had her own romantic

adventure going long before romance

in that happy home had begun to change.

Shelby, too had some adventures that fall,

exploits that stood those of her parents

on their ear, despoiled the church’s altar

and left the town quaking at her return,

But there was no need for her to return, 

to live again within the romantic

bubble of high school life, haltered

and bridled by limits unchanging

or fresh rules hammered out by the parent

teacher association for kids each fall.

To have returned, would have virtually changed

the romantic direction of her  parents,

alter a college prexy’s breach that fall.