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Recent Poems by E. Russell Smith
Selection last changed December 13, 2011
Recent Poems by E. Russell Smith
Selection last changed December 13, 2011
Today she told us she will go away. She fled the room to sidestep our objections and to hide her tears. In shock, we wonder whether we should look for someone else. Some think not, to save expense. Some think her role is past its usefulness. Much as we love her, we agree to say she simply cannot be replaced. At noon I buy her lunch -- a salmon salad sandwich, and a puréed pumpkin soup, with sour cream, and parsley. Parsley eases pain. © E. Russell Smith 2011
Second Horse of the Apocalypse
"And there came another horse, bright red, its rider empowered to take peace from the earth." from Revelation 6:1-8. I have climbed this summer field so often, to its sunny summit, reminded only rarely of its horror, while the meadow bloomed as always — buttercup and Queen Anne's lace, purple vetch and hawkweed. But now arrives November. At the bottom, dead leaves gather in sodden heaps, with rubbish left by after-season tourists. They have heard the battle rattling in the limbs of naked trees, and turned their backs. Three horses, white, black and palomino, join a wild bay mare, abetting conquest, war and murder, such pragmatic union useful to their diabolic purpose. Riders in Prussian helmets goggle back, repossessing former glory, mindless of artifacts broken under hammer-hooves and strewn in bloody pools. My eyes cast down, and now I see in the water darkly their reflections thundering into imminent oblivion. To walk in radiant fields of flowers again, must we forget? © E. Russell Smith 2011
Desmond Tutu disapproved, but in November a thick-skinned black-skinned Porgy and Bess set in Soweto entertained near Tel Aviv -- unconscious of a prick of paradox or cynical twinge -- entertained illegal West Bank settlers while their walled-out neighbours couldn't get there from apartheid villages © E. Russell Smith 2011
Corrections /Agriculture Canada
Six prison farms have recently been closed because the Government was not disposed to keep three hundred inmates of their ilk supplying flour and vegetables and milk to penitentiaries. They said the skills they learned in gardens, stables, fields and mills would not, as sentences served here will cease, prove very useful after their release. Besides, the savings didn't cover cost, and too much time and energy were lost on convicts meant to be in durance vile. But then, perhaps the mild bucolic style of life would heal an antisocial psyche -- and we'd discover one that we could like. © E. Russell Smith 2011
The View from Thirty Thousand Feet
The land lies freshly whitened
by the blizzard yesterday. We fly
above it through a constant dusk,
keeping pace with a setting sun.
Dark forest interrupts, then yields
to bare and crinkled hills, profiled
by weak light from the west, a sky
still bright and blood red at the rim.
A spot of yellow light betrays a town
tucked in the oxbow of a stream, or at
a junction of two right-angled roads,
leading to (or from) the landscape's
four extremities. There people sit
at dinner, each with a reason or
a motivation that they never question,
asking only for that light and warmth.
The yardlight of a solitary farmstead
by its quarter section punctuates
the crease of gridiron laid across
the arrant randomness of streams.
They wander aimlessly, it seems,
with neither purpose nor utility,
but have in fact inspired direction --
the inevitable way to distant seas.
Nebraska, 2 February 2011
© E. Russell Smith 2011
Let us give up golf
(fairways are toast)
and also water sports --
the reservoir too low
for boards and skis,
kayaks well-nigh useless
in the scanty trickle down.
The city pays the farmers
in the thirsty Valley, just
to leave their fields in fallow.
Let us sit in the confusion
of lawns and lotus garden,
wallow in the warm jacuzzi
and complain about the price
of salad greens in February.
San Diego, CA
© E. Russell Smith 2011
I miss the daily skate downtown, and passionate skiing weekends. Christmas is so white, but so is a beach beside a green fairway, and I can play on either one in summer shorts, wander semi-naked in the semi-desert through red-rose blooming ocotillas. Here no sculptured ice on a frozen lake, the signature of temporary winterlude; sturdy bronze instead -- Cubist Lipschitz, perforated Hepworth, Rubenesque Maillol and malleable Moore, inverted in a pool with lacy locusts and old acacias. I walk at will, without my balaclava, boots, mitts, scarf or overcoat, to scent magnolias and flowering almonds, weathering a short pink flurry, confetti for an old affair that's now permissible. Petals lie where they fall on patio stones of havens and retirement homes, pink or white or brown side up, in random encounters, like dissidents in Tahrir or Tiananmen, Times or Trafalgar, fixed in a moment of waiting, waiting for a shriving, for a shriveling, for an acceptable number of deaths, for the morning when the sweeper comes. Los Angeles, February 2011 © E. Russell Smith 2011
Three time zones east of yesterday, still I rise early. A pale moon fails. I find a coffee, walk the vacant streets. The horizon of an ailing city rises out of ashes, dark against a glowing sky of blood and roses. A carrion crow relieves the owl of its night watch of my wakeful hours. High-spirited Sunday sparrows, starlings, larks and winter finches forage in the gutters; no other life. This cruel cold may cauterize two years of weeping lesions. I fly before the dirty weather strikes. Detroit, 20 February 2011 © E. Russell Smith 2011
I'm not useless yet -- been here before, but the virgin camouflage, white and cold in early morning light, has me mystified, and I'm the first bushwhacker to the site. There is a way. I search a stupid hour before I find the opening that never freezes, not a secret, but obscure for good or ill, through the knotty tangle to the mire. Later I take a mental memo, here recorded: once I pass the "No Trespassing" sign and reach the winter heartland, I must strike along that open freshet till the cattails part. © E. Russell Smith 2011
I wasn't shriven this last Tuesday. There was no extravagant parade; no Bourbon Street carouse, only an ecclesiastic pancake supper, eight dollars cheap for three small buttered flapjacks, maple syrup freshly boiled up in the bush, two tiny breakfast sausages, and a string of purple beads. After simple decorous festivity I came home for a top-up snack of beer, a baked potato and my own leftover chicken pie. A shriving now would be in order. © E. Russell Smith 2011
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin (from 'Love', George Herbert, d.1633.) The guilty sin is not in dust that rises from your wasteland in a scourge of sudden scruple, like a plague of god-sent locusts westbound on a tropic wind. Guilt seeks excuses for audacity in fireworks of chrysanthemum and reckless guarantees of love. Here is the acid test, if you pay heed to auguries of alchemy or creed: Love is neither gratified nor troubled by untimely consummation; Love yearns to offer welcome, once the urgent leg is over and the carnal appetite is surfeited. © E. Russell Smith 2011
He says they meditate each morning and evening, precisely twenty minutes, with a timer. She admits she would be delinquent if he didn't keep her at it. He has instructions and a silent mantra to anaesthetize the mind... ten minutes for a starter sit up, feet flat on the floor empty the turgid brain ignore distractions traffic in the street choir boys in the vestry laughter in the corridor breakfast bacon Sunday persistent scrotal itch Get a grip! this is religion... high altar, silver chalice stained glass and candles steeples, towers and transepts Jesus, Jacob, Jeremiah, original trespass (as in Adam) Jonah in the belly of the whale also much cattle, Apostle Paul bedazzled near Damascus -- This game leads nowhere. No exit to this labyrinth. I can't think of nothing... Beep! Ten minutes. Was I sleeping? © E. Russell Smith 2011
"God said to the serpent... you shall bruise his heel." Genesis 3:14-15 Before I call her, I walk in the park, a narrow glassy footpath, frigid wind, but a sun strong and warm, open beechwoods to penetrate, dreaming old wilderness. Before I call her, I limp that country mile of spring ice and frozen slush, spasmodic hiccup of a winter dying, east of Eden -- a hard mistake, on a heel bone bruised by a fall. When I do call, her time is not her own; she works the graveyard shift, nine-day rotation, like myself out of step with the world. And her father is ailing (my old friend.) © E. Russell Smith 2011
Alien coltsfoot waits beside the rugged foreshore road, a flicker quenched by shadow. Spruces die of beetle blight, and birches die of urgent age. And so the rocky prospect widens, just where stands a vacant church, a whited sepulchre with porch and gothic lancets, tiny tower and probing steeple, up for sale -- only seventy thousand dollars, antique oaken pews included... Unobstructed sunlight falls, and hardy coltsfoot gilds the harsh grit of the rustic shoulder. © E. Russell Smith 2011
the scent of lilacs, town parade, boy on a pony (someone's grandson), tortillas, rellenos, refried beans for lunch, knees touching under the table cloth, delights we might have shared when we were young together, as we are once more, fifty years onward... © E. Russell Smith 2011
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