The Story of the End of the Story

 

Andrew Ferez

 

 The Story of the End of the Story

 

To keep from ending

The story does everything it can,

Careful not to overvalue

Perfection or undervalue

Perfect chance,

As I am careful not to do in telling.

By now a lot has happened:

Bridges under the water,

No time outs,

Sinewy voices from under the earth

Braiding and going straight up

In a faint line.

I modify to simplify,

Complicate to clarify.

If you want to know your faults, marry.

If you want to know your virtues, die.

Then the heroine,

Who resembles you in certain particulars,

Precipitates the suicide

Of the author, wretchedly obscure,

Of that slim but turgid volume,

By letting slip:

Real events don't have endings,

Only the stories about them do.

 

James Galvin

 

 

"By now a lot has happened..." 

What could I possibly add to that?

 

                         

Chorus

Chia-Chi Yu

Chorus

That rain-strewn night in the woods, the chorus, chorus

Of the green tree frogs called us

And let us by flashlight far from our firelight

Over and down a logging road to the marsh,

And they kept singing as green as the half-frozen

Hemlock branches we brushed slowly among,

As high and thin as the air we tried to hold

As breath among mountains, as thin

And clear as the ice our boots were breaking

Gently, each step a pale-green croaking

Of its own, as we came nearer and nearer where

They had risen out of cold graves to the cold

At the brittle edge of winter broken toward spring

To make their music over a cold spawning,

To choir all night after night, telling each other

We lived at the edge of summer, we live

Here again and again. As we came closer,

The singing ended, suddenly went silent

At a single pulsing throatbeat. Nothing but wind

And sleet made any sound over the marsh.

We turned our light away. We waited longer

And longer in darkness, shivering like the reeds

Beyond us, chilled as the film of ice at our feet,

Forgetting all words, and the first voice began

Again, far off, and slowly the green others

Nearby began their hesitant answers, their answers

Louder and clearer chorused around us

As if we belonged there, as if we belonged to them.

David Wagoner

 

 

 Growing up, spring evenings were full of frog noise from the pond. 

I wish I could hear it now.

 

 

The Ear

 

J. G. M. von Bremen

The Ear

 

There are many sounds which are neither music nor voice,

There are many visitors in masks or in black glasses

Climbing the spiral staircase of the ear. The choice

Of callers is not ours. Behind the hedge

Of night they wait to pounce. A train passes,

The thin and audible end of a dark wedge.

We should like to lie alone in a deaf hollow

Cocoon of self where no person or thing would speak:

In fact we lie and listen as a man would follow

A willo' the wisp in an eyeless bog,

Follow the terrible drone of a cock-chafer, or the bleak

Oracle of a barking dog.

Louis MacNeice

 

"Many visitors in masks or black glasses..."

Does any one of those callers bring a message of hope? 

 

 

When It's All Over

 

 

Nicholas Hely Hutchinson

 

When It's All Over

 

I'm going to throw open my windows and yell: 'hallelujah',

dial up friends in the middle of the night to give them

the glad tidings, e-mail New South Wales and Pacific Palisades,

glorify the kitchen by making sixteen summer puddings,

watch blackberry purple soak slowly into 

the bread and triumph over the curved glass of the bowls.

 

When it's all over I'll feed my cracked skin

with lavender and aloe vera, lower my exhausted body into

foaming cream, clear honey and let it wallow,

reward it with a medal, beautify it with garlands of thornless roses

wrap it in sleep,Then from the tents of blurred dreams

I'll leap like a kangaroo, spout like a whale.

Once it's over I'm going to command my computer to bellow

'Land of Hope and Glory', loudspeaker my news

down these miles of orderly streets where the houses wear

mock Tudor beams and plastic Greek columns, dance

the Highland Fling in front of controlled tubs of cockerel geraniums

sigh with enormous satisfaction when I make the evening headlines.

When it's finally over I'm going to gather these fantasies,

fling them into my dented and long-lost college trunk,

dump it in the unused cellar

            climb back to strength

                        up my rope of words.

Myra Schneider

 

Gabriele Munter

Yes, when it's all over. That's my effort against cynicism right there. It's easier to be cynical. Hope is harder. And optimism feels downright ridiculous considering what has happened in this country these last years. 

But in order to stand, the people need a vision, a goal. Like Martin Luther King Jr., we need a dream. 

Imagine what feasts we're going to lay out. What gatherings of unlikely souls we're going to join. What numbers of strangers we will laugh with and embrace. What spontaneity of gestures and stories we will tell. What singing there will be in the streets. What upwellings of thankfulness and generosity will be shown. What praise will be given to God. What reunions will be enacted among us.

It's not easy to envision when the opposite plays out before our eyes. 

But as Good Denys says,"Courage, mon ami! La diable est mort!"

Let's prepare.

Let's dream against the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

Bell

  
   

Unknown

Bell

This newness of snow. This boot-ringing

as the snow warms in the sun to crush. These holes

we wind around the witnessing pines. This

violation of white. This slowness of moose.

This counting of steps. This counting of scars

in the bark: the wary burl bulging low

on the trunk, the black scratchings left

by a bear learning to climb. This counting

of sleeps between this country and the next country

we call home. These branches shucking off

the statuesque in avalanches of needles and ice.

This progress, as in the wind-scalloped snow meadow

pretending to be moon. This love that sets us scrambling

over the map's last ridge, our red hoods bright

in shrunken sky. This metallic weather in which we

are the ore. This alder. These crimson-tipped willows

reverberating next to a river of turquoise ice. This

following the deep tracks of one coyote stepping

where another has stepped. This wilderness

that we trespass, burning like berries in the juniper

and becoming the air in the belfry.

Cecily Parks 

 

It's as if we are walking with the speaker, as if she is pointing out each thing to us, "This, this..." as if in proof of something spoken of before the poem began. Almost as if she is taking us on the trail of something, the signs, as it were - clues. 

And what do they lead to or from?

 

 

 

Sledding in Wichita

Claudette Castonguay

Sledding in Wichita

 

As cars pass, laboring through the slush,

a boy, bundled against the stiff wind

in his snow suit, gloves, and scarf,

leans on his upright toboggan,

waiting his turn atop

the snow-packed overpass—

the highest point in town.

First one car exits, and then another,

each creeping down the icy ramp.

The brown grass pokes through

the two grooves carved in the short hill.

As the second car fishtails to a stop at the bottom,

brake lights glowing on the dirty snow,

the boy’s turn comes.

His trip to the bottom is swift—

only a second or two—

and he bails out just before the curb.

It’s not much, but it’s sledding in Wichita.

Casey Pycior

 

 

The unusually beneficent state of Snow we have been living in has brought back memories of hill-hunting and the joy of even the very briefest speed-gathering velocities of sledding in urban settings where every bump and lump of landscape becomes a possibility for fun and danger - especially in an otherwise flat environment.

 

 It's not much, but it's also everything.

 

Building the Fire

Tatyana Sergeevna

Building the Fire

from "Snowbound"

 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 

Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 

From sight beneath the smothering bank, 

We piled, with care, our nightly stack 

Of wood against the chimney-back,— 

The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 

And on its top the stout back-stick; 

The knotty forestick laid apart, 

And filled between with curious art 

The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 

We watched the first red blaze appear, 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became, 

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 

The crane and pendent trammels showed, 

The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed; 

While childish fancy, prompt to tell 

The meaning of the miracle, 

Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree, 

When fire outdoors burns merrily, 

There the witches are making tea.” 

The moon above the eastern wood 

Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 

Transfigured in the silver flood, 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 

Took shadow, or the sombre green 

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

Against the whiteness at their back. 

For such a world and such a night 

Most fitting that unwarming light, 

Which only seemed where’er it fell 

To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 

We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 

Content to let the north-wind roar 

In baffled rage at pane and door, 

While the red logs before us beat 

The frost-line back with tropic heat; 

And ever, when a louder blast 

Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 

The merrier up its roaring draught 

The great throat of the chimney laughed; 

The house-dog on his paws outspread 

Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 

The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall 

A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall; 

And, for the winter fireside meet, 

Between the andirons’ straddling feet, 

The mug of cider simmered slow, 

The apples sputtered in a row, 

And, close at hand, the basket stood 

With nuts from brown October’s wood. 

John Greenleaf Whittier

"100 Plus American Poems" - Paul Malloy

 

"The sun, a snow-blown traveller."

 

"The old, rude-furnished room/ Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."

 

 "Most fitting that unwarming light/Which only seemed where'ere it fell/to make the coldness visible.""The cat's dark silhouette on the wall/A couchant tiger's seemed to fall."

 

 

O to be snowbound.