DIASPORA
And in Turner’s Sun Rising
through Vapour:
Fishermen Cleaning
and Selling Fish,
the eye moves
without fail
from the clutter
of the human—
this compact labor—
to the sprawling
whorls and smudges
and smears
of primitive sky.
Once as a child
in Wisconsin, I handed
grape soda to a bear
on a chain, and the smell
of the animal body
was as familiar as the grass
I mowed each summer
up and down our yard’s hill,
watching, as I did,
an older girl two houses over
who sunbathed daily
on a towel, and died—
I later learned—
when a train struck
a car at a railroad crossing
in distant Colorado.
And although
we’d never spoken,
I grieved for weeks,
believing I’d known
her once the way a bear
lifts a soda bottle
in its paws, and sunlight
can’t quite tell itself
from morning clouds.
—from Rattle #44, Summer 2014
__________
Doug Ramspeck: “If we count reading and writing fiction and poetry, watching films, attending plays, listening to music lyrics, fantasizing, dreaming while asleep, and lying, we spend a surprisingly significant portion of our lives engaged with stories. I write poetry, I think, to join that human, storytelling chorus.”