December 2015
From 2011 until this month I was Poet Laureate of Vermont, during which time I visited 116 Vermont community libraries, not so much to read but to talk about what poetry can do that other modes of discourse can't. I loved the Q&A the most, because those within the academy often ask things that show how much they think they know, whereas library patrons are inclined to ask the important things: Who's talking here? To whom? Why? Where? I hope my poems can answer those questions, that no one needs some special knowledge or language to penetrate them.
Hum and Click
The puppy softly whined in dream
— as if she heard that subtle clicking
mixed with a hum, which seemed to come
from some electric device — then she quieted.
Inertia of summer’s night had settled
on him as well, soft as bed linen.
How often he’d stood at a window, shining
a flashlight outdoors, but never determined
the source of that sound, so odd and confounding.
After so many failures, he barely pulled
himself again from mattress to floor
and down the bowed-in upstairs hall
to see what little he would. The song,
to call it that, rose out of the rough,
abandoned field uphill from the house.
I need to know what it is for certain,
he thought. He might: the moon gleamed full,
and he was only 27.
In the shine, at last, miraculous:
a hen whippoorwill who picked at gravel
while the cock, in full strut with tail upthrust,
hummed and clicked a small bird’s version
of immemorial courtship rites
common to all us earthly creatures.
How pretty she was, his sleeping wife....
And tomorrow, he reckoned, I’ll know forever
something I didn’t know tonight.
Succeeding owners all renovate
parts of the house, on which that evening
moon dropped softly, however bright.
He’s years along in more lasting marriage.
Some of his children now have children.
He’s owned just under a dozen dogs
since he heard the whine from that puppy pointer
at whippoorwills, which hereabouts
have grown so rare he’d almost surrender
years of his life just to hear one now.
The puppy softly whined in dream
— as if she heard that subtle clicking
mixed with a hum, which seemed to come
from some electric device — then she quieted.
Inertia of summer’s night had settled
on him as well, soft as bed linen.
How often he’d stood at a window, shining
a flashlight outdoors, but never determined
the source of that sound, so odd and confounding.
After so many failures, he barely pulled
himself again from mattress to floor
and down the bowed-in upstairs hall
to see what little he would. The song,
to call it that, rose out of the rough,
abandoned field uphill from the house.
I need to know what it is for certain,
he thought. He might: the moon gleamed full,
and he was only 27.
In the shine, at last, miraculous:
a hen whippoorwill who picked at gravel
while the cock, in full strut with tail upthrust,
hummed and clicked a small bird’s version
of immemorial courtship rites
common to all us earthly creatures.
How pretty she was, his sleeping wife....
And tomorrow, he reckoned, I’ll know forever
something I didn’t know tonight.
Succeeding owners all renovate
parts of the house, on which that evening
moon dropped softly, however bright.
He’s years along in more lasting marriage.
Some of his children now have children.
He’s owned just under a dozen dogs
since he heard the whine from that puppy pointer
at whippoorwills, which hereabouts
have grown so rare he’d almost surrender
years of his life just to hear one now.
©2015 Sydney Lea