These sonnets were written during a trip I took from the Yorkshire Dales to Edinburgh with my friend Pat Maples in June of 2009. These sonnets are for Pat Maples. Enjoy.
181
As the Labradors black as night splash in
the morning light and swim in the current
up to their necks going for the mallards
that fly away before they get to them
it is about to rain and a chilly
cold rain it will be, clouds in clouds coming
over the hill and stone fence darkening
the baaing of the sheep, the many sheep
who stop and look at me curiously
waiting for what? For me? A nettle stings
and midges fly around my feet. England
must be many things but it is surely
this. To find my pen I had to retrace
my steps. Burnsall is the name of this place.
Burnsall, June 17, 2009
182
I am walking between two narrow walls
a place I’d get stuck if I were fatter.
On the way you can’t meander. If not
in retreat you can only go forward
no other choice but to walk directly straight
ahead as monarchs must have walked condemned
to put their heads on the chopping block though
this passage leads to life, grows wide into
a field and other fields divided by
the winding stone fences that have been piled
carefully for centuries keeping
in the sheep grazing there above. Here one
sheep is baaing by itself. It wants out.
I’d like to help but only see the rocks.
Burnsall, June 18
183
I do not know the flowers in the moor.
Some are blue, and some are yellow, and those
long and bending purple—Foxtails? Foxgloves?
There is so much I do not know. I know
the sky is huge. In it the clouds don’t seem
to move although the wind around me moves
everything including me or moves
my hair at least, the grass, the limbs of trees
the rolling hills going up and down the
dale where the stone houses are moving too
mixed in the clouds that now begin to move
the day sunny and blue but cold. From the
grass paws click claws on the path, Spaniels
come running fast before their master calls.
Ilkley, June 19
184
“If precious stones weren’t hidden, would we think
very much of them?” I think about words
before I say them stuttering afterwards
never witty like the English. English
is what I speak, but I’m not English. “This
egg is not cooked.” “The egg isn’t cooked?” “No,
it hasn’t been cooked.” “It looks cooked enough.”
“Well, it won’t come apart.” “Shall you send it
back then or pretend that it’s poached?” “Young man
young man, yes you, young man, you took my bags
up the stairs yesterday. Would you be as
kind as then and bring them back down again
today? Oh yes, it is a bit of luck.
Down I should think is easier than up.”
Ilkley, June 19
185
I sit among the buttercups and sheep
shit—How beautiful the world is even
if you’re sick—O wonderful sun come down
come all the way down and make me strong. Sleep
or the lack of it, dreams where the demons
grapple—perhaps they’re taunting angels—
have exhausted me and left me mangled
but the stone is warm that I sit on
and in the boughs above the doves have filled
their coos with waking roses opening up
for the new day, all ready to go but
me. The omens are good sit where I will
full of woe. On dandelions dark bees
hover in my mind and cover poor me.
Ilkley Moor, June 19
186
So here I am another place again.
Yesterday was full of trials and errors
beautiful sights and accidents. Terrors
gave way to a serene lake and looming
clouds impossible for the sun to come
through. Here we are about to. You’re almost
the moon beyond those clouds, Cyclops
of Ullswater. I see you, you me. One
moment changes things. Sheep we wear and eat
eat up the mountain baaing as they go
up the slopes between the creek and the stone
walls ages old hands formed and let go. We
must let the stones go, let go of them all
or there will be nothing not even a wall.
Ullswater, June 21
187
The little sparrows on the rocky wall
are taller than I am or the castle
is—In fact, they’re the tallest of the tall.
Then off they go with little care at all
I write about them—They have better things
to do while I am left without a wing
full of feathers to help me soar and sing
like the sparrows. Poetry must have wings!
There they are again on the highest cliff
with light and the wind preening their amber
limbs perched I know with ready mates after
a night of gathered sleep. What would I give
to see what they see? Almost anything.
What would they give for a thought for a wing?
Stirling, June 22
188
I lost my pen that I had lost and found
again in the grass by the River Wharfe.
Not any pen will do. Pat understood
and gave me one of hers, a choice of two.
I chose the better one—At least to my
mind it was—It’s with what I’m writing now
a fine black line—I had had blue—But it
isn’t so much the color as the weight
in the comfortable flow of the ink
easing the words that it creates going
on to the next. What would they be without
an understanding friend who had a pen?
They’d be unsaid, and I’d be going on too
not the way I wanted to, but had to.
Stirling, June 22
189
Open the window and let in the air.
This room is close and dark and dim and bare.
The curtain drawn shows there’s a world out there—
Scottish morning—The sky cloudy and clear
and like a clock three ravens on a peak
say that it’s nine, and twelve, and three if peaks
were clocks and ravens on them time. Even
from bed there is a lot to see. Moss and
grass like it up here living off the tiles
and gutters. How many hours of miles
until the Isle of Skye? Morning like me
cloudy and clear and hurrying slowly
only the nine o’clock raven remains
reminding me it’s time to start the day.
Stirling, June 22
190
Behind is a sky of blue, in front of
that a cloud comes softly apart. A patch
of blue appears through that. At
the very top of the roof it forms a
peak on whose left edge a raven sits
abandoned by its mates. Why does it wait
letting me sketch it, no Dorian Gray
but immortal in its way doing what it’s
always done perched above a city where
many battles have been fought? It’s looking
for the end to fly down and start pecking
out the eyes of unfortunate men. Where
you will be eating, Raven of Stirling
is Iran if you fly there this morning.
Stirling, June 22
191
Flowers have feelings. Top-heavy foxgloves
are proud—although they’re not—their bottom was
once their top—growing highest in the bunch
petal after petal full of itself
white, purple in dotted circles inside
and out inviting bees to come in them
and buzz. Quivering like lovers they hum.
You do not have to move to move the bee.
The highest bud above opens and sees
that it has come from those below and bends
humbly to bow to the blossoms at home
with birds and an old tree still bearing nuts
like me who has to go wake his friend up
more like the bee I suppose than the foxglove.
Isle of Skye, June 24
192
Foxglove, how did you get here among the
rocks? Tell me as best as you can. Speak the
language of flowers. I want to know why you
are here alone next to the sea, why you
aren’t in a garden with your family
somewhere near the dock. On this slippery
hill of rocks that can’t hurt you like it can
me, I have scaled them all unharmed drawn
to your beautiful bowing to the dawn.
I was worried you weren’t happy but see
here comes the bee and in she goes. Mmmm
that must feel good. It does. Our destinies
change minute to minute. Today, let’s see:
the sky, the land is clear and so’s the sea.
Isle of Skye, June 24
193
It’s the end of the day. Play, fiddler, play!
The sun has gone behind the clouds and I
can see the mountains and the sea. The boats
come in. The girl by the wall is pretty
after all and the boys are fine and fair.
Chinese and Bengali lasses snap their
fingers and shake their asses. Bengali
girl’s earring flashes a last ray of sun
that catches and illuminates her fun
stretching like an elongated hourglass
in flames across the bay. He smiles. Shall I?
The music stops and silence fills the place
with voices where they have already been—
It’s when the music stops you notice them.
Isle of Skye, June 24
194
In fact like all of human kind the rocks
along the narrow beach are all somewhat
alike yet each entirely different.
We pick them up, Pat and I, searching
for the ones that really touch us, the ones
we want: perhaps they are somewhat like us
love at first sight, bending our bodies down
examining delight or finally
not delighted letting them drop but oh
the ones we want, spots or lines throughout
touching them them touching us. Does the cloud
want to touch the mountain or the mountain
the cloud? Does the stream go down the rocks
or the rocks up? Do rocks pick friends, friends rocks?
Isle of Skye, June 24
195
Some sounds you can stand and some sounds you can’t.
That clanging of something metal hitting
the iron mast I could go to sleep with
—But not now of course. Right now I want
to write having woken up, not a soul
around but me before the dawn. Time for
thought before a thought becomes a doubt
—Just write it. The sea becomes so bright
it’s hard to see the castle collapsed in
to a grassy mound gape wide in ruin
dark hole a hollow eye inside the light.
No bloody Vikings now, only the Scots.
The world is so beautiful—A silly
thought I think—Why can’t we live in peace?
Isle of Skye, June 25
196
Although I want to sleep I must get up
to write this. The past is many places
bringing us to the present. On the Isle
of Skye the fishermen come in from sea
drank their tall ales listening to John Lee
Hooker still standing in their Wellingtons.
“Aye, he’s wailin’!” Here I am: a window
open to a garden: flowers and trees
each with a bird singing perfectly in
Inverness. Am I here? Here I am!
The same three words are slightly different
depending where you place them. Lochness is
just down the road. I don’t believe in dragons
but I’d believe my eyes if I saw one.
Inverness, June 25
197
I haven’t an idea in my head
except the morning sun behind the roof
has risen high enough to come and soothe
my aching neck. Michael Jackson is dead.
Life is one surprise after another
One could never say shock—We know
something is always coming down the road
eggs and salmon then a flat tire later
on—Whatever might happen on the moor
soon’s yesterday. Dark clouds chill the garden
and wind stirring the pine overwhelms and
blows Americans back to their room.
Farrah Fawcett’s dead too no longer now
on her way out stopping to smell the flowers.
Inverness, June 25
198
At Clava Cairns the hands have come and gone
arranged the stones to their rhyme and reason.
We can only guess the song, the text, the poem
where the calendar sun comes pouring down
on us, what’s next, a walk into a mound.
What are seconds to a stone? O moments
big as years! There is wind, a bird that sings
silence but for our footsteps making sound.
Culloden’s down the road. There on a day
two hundred sixty three years ago six
hundred Scots were slaughtered by the British
in a matter of minutes. Someday
the Scots will rule, someday the stones will talk
someday we’ll know it all and if not not.
Clava Cairns, June 25
199
Packed again and about to go over
the river and through the moor a wee bit
more—Just Edinburgh. They say that it
is beautiful. We’ll see, discover.
I’m ready and not dreary like today
reflecting yellow trees in a dull door
where curtains with branches have made it more
like a room with a view of yesterday.
The mighty hills of Skye come back to me
unpacked by memory—Castles, foxgloves
—A gull passes through the reflection now.
Foot on knee, my writing desk has gone to sleep.
Foot on floor, I have to start to move it so
slowly a raven caws, “Come on, let’s go!”
Inverness, June 25
200
It seems the fog is rising from the stones
like very chilly smoke without a flame.
Edinburgh’s been waiting centuries
to catch fire. Every chimney is the same
standing in a row, gull on one master
of all, the cries from its throat louder than
the men below who’ve made a mob and shout
about a game they’ve lost, but what is worse
somebody else has won. The sky is a
wide dank overwhelming sheet some goddess
has hung and might grab at any moment
to wring out. What’s behind or happens next?
Who knows? There is a gull above us all
on the cobblestones of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, June 29
201
Out of the drizzle and the fog boys dressed
up like soldiers come although they’re more the
hands that wind around a clock changing the
guards. In the cry of gulls and a Scotch mist
outside the castle’s walls they stop and
click their heels turning as if they’re on
a wheel as they take off and put back on
bayonets. I feel no more protected than
when I hadn’t seen them, yesterday’s children
becoming men with a wife at home or
a girlfriend or a boyfriend—Who knows? Love
brings us all together and makes us want
to kiss. And then a bullet stops the rest.
The tomb of the unknown is up ahead.
Edinburgh, June 30