Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
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Joseph Donahue

WIND MAP VII
 
 
 
 
~
 
                minor lives
 
 
Only by
imagining this
beach can she sleep
 
be again small
in tall grass where
 
the Wright brothers first flew . . .
 

~
 

The defeats of day
arrive in ranks at dawn
 
High in the sky, imperceptible
Recompense awaits as well
 
It will drift down
 
It will find her
though she may
 
not see it for what it is
 
 
 
          *
 
 
 
Seraphic flutter
slightly faster than
 
—suddenly—her heart
 
Imagined stroll         Glowing
 
yellow forest
 
white dust path
 
dropping to water’s
 
edge where
 
the bow of a boat
curves up out of the sand
 
 
                              *
 
 
Half-buried boat
 
now her brothers are there
 
boys again they climb on it
 
She can feel their mother watching
from the crest of a dune
 
hidden by the grasses
 
The mother is alone and full of delight
 
watching her children play
 
(Suspicion, however, is not
misplaced as to the
 
ontological status
of the figures
 
in this vision)
 
 
                              *
 
 
She’s lying in bed, lonely and alone
as a thought begins to form
 
in her         that will not
be complete for years,
 
the thought of a voice
that can say:
 
 
                              *
 
 
“You are not lost
 
a light has found you
 
Jesus, who sent the light
hears how you suffer
 
he reaches to you across
an immense distance.
 
This light is also
 
within you
 
Its warmth tells of
 
a tenderness,
 
of a sign, a promise
in the ever-deepening
 
abyss of what may still
 
appear to you as
 
your
 
abandonment”


~
 
 
These pages fly free
 
                 bright and blank
toward mountains of metallic flakes
 
residue of a universal fire
 
Snow patches
 
              here and there
 
 
Every year, incredulity
 
Where have the birds been?
 
 
The guard has not yet opened up the clinic
 
Cold cloud of fog
 
 
A mile from the iceberg
the ship drops anchor
 
the artist sets his easel on the floe
 
paint treated not to freeze
 
 
You were enlisted long ago in what
                                   could be said to be
 
a prototype of
 
a policy the government
now calls
 
                    Maximum Disruption
 
 
They send you as far from home
as possible and give you
 
a job you hate
 
 
The last of the leaves are so pale
from a distance they could be
 
blossoms on an island
 
in the polar north
 
 
Were a kiss to resemble them
it could never be forgotten
in just one lifetime
 
                                  Warmth of
 
that girl’s mouth in the tumbling snow along a trail
 
 
Later, she wiped the extra jam
onto her bare knee
 
                                  apricot glister
 
 
 
Next door an argument
welfare mothers in Switzerland
(It seemed to have a personal subtext)
 
 
Rum radiates through the cake
 
So, in earlier times, the soul 
 
broke in waves
 
                   through the body
 
 
A greater life never known till now
 
this nibble, this bite,
 
this slice of an old recipe
 
(in the minds of the settlers this was heaven)
 
this gift baked, covered, and carried
through a cold night still warm
 
into our time and place
 
 
The trees are all bare
 
High in a dry tangle          a crow
 
 
 
Grey, overcast morning
Falling flakes dissolve midair
meant only, it would seem,
 
                                to revive surprise
 
 
This after a night on a cot in a barn
                   by the stall of a failing horse
 
 
A cry for a mode of being that had never existed
had gone up from
              holes and trenches and pits
 
                              soon to be hidden in mist rolling down a hill
 
 
A thief in the night took away my words
 
Did I fall asleep and leave the door unlocked?
 
Some words I have no doubt already spoken again
certainly those with which I curse the thief
 
Others will never come back
I feel like weeping for this loss
 
I am too old to appear this foolish
yet here I indisputably am
 
 
 
Considering how a century from now
 
what we celebrate as enlightened and liberating
will appear as oppressive . . .
 
We will achieve in the esteem of our descendants
 
the moral heights of slave traders
 
or sadistically minded asylum attendants
burying a body after a mishap
 
 
But yesterday at the home of the home-birth advocates
it was like the rural Texas of my childhood
 
Baby goats sprang up onto the kitchen counter
The government provided basic services
 
It was a level of perfection
 
I wish I could fold it
 
in a card and send it to you
wherever in nonexistence you are
 
 
(Things do end badly for some
 
Others are rewarded beyond measure
 
All of life is under a spell)
 
 
A ball of fire is crossing the sky
Who can say what else might not be occurring?
 
 
Our bodies felt vulgar, our speech, disgraceful
 
A girl flared        all else stopped
 
 
“A great force maintains
 
the tyranny of the apparent,”
 
she explained, “but this is because
 
what is kept hidden
so powerfully contradicts
 
what now seems to be
 
 
Hopelessness
 
makes no sense
 
 
For the really real to come to be
our thought must move
 
like a brushstroke 
 
through waves of color
 
 
When the trees sway
it’s true, the wind could be
 
coming from
 
anywhere
 
but that will be less
catastrophic
 
 
when Athens and Jerusalem live
again in our hearts”
 
 
~
 
 
Of ways to arrange
 
the intelligible order
 
one is in regard to dolphins
 
 
                              *
 
 
The sound they send out
 
through the water brings to the minds of
 
dolphins not present
 
the image of what the
 
one sounding,
 
far off, has seen
 
 
 
                               *
 
 
 
The size and shape, say,
 
of an approaching predator
 
 
                              *
 
 
The sound does not
 
encode information
 
Our mistake is to think of
 
syntax and symbols
 
 
These are embellishments
 
upon what our ears and throats do
 
 
                              *
 

Language will
 
never reveal itself as
 
a trans-species occurrence
 
 
until the brain of the
 
dolphin has been wired
 
 
                              *
 
 
Until we see the consequence
 
of their hearing
 
 
see what the dolphins see
 
within themselves
 
 
                              *
 
 
The first volume of my autobiography
 
will be called    Didn’t        The second:   Not This Either
 
In both, dreams will be a truer life no
 
image has ever rendered
 
 
                              *
 
 
Hexagram 24 comes close
 
 
after the terror of hexagram 23
 
—the roof falling in
 
—no one can be trusted
 
 
Outliving another shuffle of the sticks
 
seems impossible
 
 
—your house will be destroyed
 
—you will not be
 
remembered
 
 
                              *
 
 
                          Who once
 
 
started a company
 
charmed investors
 
kept lawyers on standby
 
in advance of patent infringement
 
 
A small room, eight
 
or ten screens ringing the walls
 
 
nothing yet invented
 
 
                              *
 
The world cries out for so much
 
 
                              *
 
 
An app, for example,
 
      that tells corporations
 
 
                                 it’s time to die
 
 
that finds a way to whisper
 
 
“You are holding on
 
entirely though litigation
 
through stopping others
 
through dread
of the innovation
 
that will end you”
 
 
                              *
 
 
This is the hell of hexagram 23
 
—the flow of disquiet this time of year
 
—such troubles as you have had
 
are continuing to have
 
 
                              *
 
 
(You asked me
to check out, at night,
 
an armload of books for you
 
and I did, they were all
 
books of philosophy
 
 
among them Bishop Berkeley
 
 
Our love deepened even more
 
as I carried out into the night
into the depth of our secret bond
 
armloads of philosophy
 
contemplating
your beauty anew
just as you contemplate
 
philosophy
 
your love of wisdom
so great you risked
 
contacting me
 
deep in the
dreariness of day
 
knowing not until night
 
could I slip free in a dream)
 
 
                              *
 
 
(Now may the delight of your own thought take its place
                     in the history of the world!)
 
 
                              *
 
 
Hexagram 24 can be felt
 
 
—the roof of the house has fallen in
 
—who persevere are destroyed
 
—the best is: do nothing
 
—the season will support no action,
 
not until the turning of the
sky’s tide of light and warmth
 

                              *
 
 
As if the return of the light
had never before been considered
could not until now be held to be possible
 
Excitement in the heights of the sky
 
 
                              *
 
 
Is there, in the ocean, an exact
 
point where the turning of the tide begins?
 
Waves tipping one way
 
                                          tip another
 
one direction becomes
 
an impossibility
 
a reversal stirs
 
 
This exact point
must be known by now
 
Surely a dolphin can sense it
 
Its cry alerts the others
Far away they hear
the exact modulation
 
They feel the turning just
 
before it happens
in the most isolate places
as amid the distractions of
the most populous seas
 
Even in Atlantis
 
the dolphins sense
a distant turning 
 
 
                              *
 
 
Prepare for the rule of hexagram 24
 
 
wrecked roof
 
=
 
foundation
 
 
                              *
 
 
The mind is a flash of
 
                                 pertinent data
 
arriving over a distance
 
The mind receives what in only
a loose sense could be called      word
 
scenes filling my head
stuff others seem to know
 
Perhaps information comes through the skin
 
Perhaps right now a wave,
a message, a message
 
in the shape of a wave
 
pulses over and through me
 
 
                              *
 
 
Someday results from
a supercollider will confirm this
 
 
                              *
 
 
After all, there is no evidence
until there is a theory
and no theory can develop
until death and dreams
and inconsolable weeping
have brought you to the point where
friends are concerned about your “state of mind”
 
 
                              *
 
 
Feeling as you do a great joy
 
this could happen again
 
 
                              *
 
 
It’s cool and bright on the sidewalks
 
Some shops are open, some are not
 
 
                              *
 
 
Waking, you thought you had dreamed of
 
the weekend  on a weekday
but the dream is correct
 
this is still the weekend
 
close now to the moment of
light’s greatest purity
 
past the gnarl of a distant tree
 
 
                              *
 
 
It is well known that dreams during solstice
 
are particularly limpid
 
open as they are to light from
 
beyond the sun
 
 
                              *
 
 
(But for those in a forest what other
religion is there save one
 
derived from shadows
 
where the sun is stopped
from doing what it is good at?)
 
 
                              *
 
 
A way of thinking was
established long ago
 
You feel you can almost remember when
 
thought arrived in a certain way
 
 
Certain thoughts came
 
others, not
 
 
The flutter of thoughts not
 
meant for you
passing through you
on the way to other minds
 
minds where there are or might be
words to bring
 
the thought into being
 
 
a certain kind
of being
 
 
 
And of thoughts that are
 
                               done with minds
 
passing through    almost entirely   unthought
save for the flutter   sudden alertness
 
Within a current
 
 
a presence has come close
 
 
that in this lifetime
given the limits of your
intelligence, of your discernment, of
your character, of your heart
 
will not be
disclosed to you
 
 
only the flutter of its passing
 
 
only the feelings of
a vibration slipping through you
that will make sense to others
 
better suited, elsewhere
 
 
Yet you have felt it
the presence of thoughts
not destined for you
 
at the edge of what thoughts are yours
 
those, that is, which will stop
 
 
occurring when you die
 
 
You feel a bit bad
that you are excluded
 
exiled, unworthy
 
a knight not shone the Grail
 
 
But it is also so joyful
 
 
the experience of
 
the limit of thought,
 
the intimation of what is
 
not thought
 
and not yet thought is
 
 
in fact, ecstatic