POTSHERDS OF MEMORY

Dominique Bouhours
(died 5/27/1702, French grammarian)

Language requires
precision.
Grammar exactness.
To do otherwise
is to excite a culture
to diminishment,
to obscure meaning
and purposed dialogue,
to allow ambiguity
and death.
With that
clearly stated,
Either expression
is correct:
“I am not about to –
or I am going to – die.”

Towel Day, May 25th
for the Original Galactic Hitchhiker - DNA

There’s no need to cast your drift nets towards
the full moon. Starfish, spotted crakes, parrotfish,
nightjars and asteroid fish are unlikely to attraversiamo.
But, alas, the 6’ 5” (1.96 m) Douglas Nelson Adams
has crossed over and left your universe. Taken his towel
elsewhere and turned his back on the gym treadmill
after hearing the whoosh of a final deadline, the one
no one can ignore. Rest assured we dolphins echo click
our thanks for all the fish.

On your blue-green planet we enjoyed the ever watering,
incontinent clouds that made our visit their purpose in life.
Sometimes we forgot we were mammals as we savored
the vast supermarket of fish your planet offered. Such variety.
Such an array of textures and tastes. Almost reason enough
to remain. Like your native birds, who you believe to be
our cousins or feathered fathers, we are travelers who seek
an elsewhere where there are clouds and winds deep
in conversation. Where the belly rub of soft sand is never
too distant and the moon’s pull and reflective presence
are gifts to all who breathe air or water.

The universe of life is rich in galaxies. We were honored to
share an all-too-short time with our tall friend. Be comforted.
He is a masterful traveler, one who has been to the very edge
and fearlessly peered over. We’re grateful in the extreme you
shared him with us on our journey and wish you well on yours.

Potsherds of memory

Beneath a raised cottage
on the Mississippi gulf coast,
I dig with my hands in mounded ashes
beneath the fireplace you once used

as a failed kiln. Fragments and pieces.
Flat. Curved. Large. Small. Glazed.
Barely buried beneath
a gray mound of powdered ash.

A perfect pyramid of the past.
On one shard the body of a bird,
its dark ribs raised, its eyes fixed
on the dying sun, and just enough left

of its wings to know their muscular sweep.
Earth tones. Five edges slightly rounded.
A vase? I dig deeper, thinking I might
discover something complete or whole enough

to piece together, but each new fragment
offers new faces, new shades of space:
a fish surprised at the water’s surface,
a turtle basking in the sun’s center.

The perfect geometry of a butterfly wing.
I take them all from their unmarked grave
and you with them, and am saddened
to meet you in this stolen way.

∞ ∞ ∞

In the 19th century the hidden edges of books,
the fore edge, were sometimes painted
and ghosted beneath a gold gilding.
Most often with a landscape

but sometimes with a portrait. More rarely
with two scenes; revealed when the pages
were fanned upwards, the other down.
What if you wrote a poem to be discovered

and read this way? Not between the lines
but between the page edges? A life beyond
the flat obvious. A new world
someone might uncover years later.

∞ ∞ ∞

It is not loss that fills me. It is
this moment when homage mixes
in my blood and the fragments I hold
reveal themselves. I want that life

to be like the black skimmer’s,
soaring to heights, before plunging
back to earth, back to water,
and soaring aloft again.

Around me are these objects:
a sand dollar; broken pottery pieces,
the last poems of James Wright.
The dollar is imperfect, like life,

larger than average, not round to the eye
but a comfort to the hand. A presence.
I want to go inside, to break open
even though it is dead and its secrets

gone. The simple patterns intrigue me:
the small star at its center,
each point dotted, the larger design
etched on the bottom - petals as delicate

as a butterfly’s wing. And underneath
the sea’s blood; rivers branching. Alive.
I reread Wright’s poems
after the hard fact of his death,

and now his son, Franz, as well
a natural death at least
if tobacco is considered natural.
I read them again with an eye and ear

unwilling to see or admit
a fictive death. I read them
with his voice commanding
each pause, each syllabic break

required to align the reluctant
heart. This Journey I took
as a guidebook for loss, seeking out
each magazine for the first

published version to compare critically
against this last book in hand.
Like a copy editor with OCD
I question every punctuation mark,

doubt each line break with raw suspicion,
unable to trust the finality of print,
but knowing there were no undiscovered
manuscripts hidden in boxes under a daybed.

The Space after Silence
after Chagall

The red-bricked street below waits,
swollen like a fattened heart.
Dance on your good leg, confident
of the pain. Dance away what wine
hasn’t numbed. Wine only maddens,
and leaves you walking a tightrope
above this city you imagine as a crowd of lepers
and saints shouting encouragement to you,
all with faces like your own, who could be real
or could be nothing more than smoke.
The smoke from your pipe disappears
like memory in an absinthe wind. The past echoes.
Three shots remind you of the long silences.
It doesn't seem so long ago you waited at his door,
fifteen, not caring about lice or fleas, the black and white
moons eating the sky. After dinner you sat at his desk.
If you spoke, if you laughed it was only to outrage.
Now, tired of the hashish moons and wearied
months when absinthe gnawed at your heart,
made it grow harder, tired of the green wave
throbbing ashore, rhythmic as cancer, you long
for nothing to keep lightning traveling your skin.

Richard Weaver - Post-Covid, the author has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, & New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.