D. R. James Verse-Virtual 2017 July

July 2017

I live in the woods outside of Saugatuck, Michigan, with my wife, psychotherapist Susan Doyle, and have been teaching writing, literature, and peace-making at Hope College for 32 years. I divide my time between staring at the woods from a recliner and staring at the woods from a deck chair. My poetry collections are Since Everything Is All I’ve Got (March Street Press) and five chapbooks, most recently Why War and Split-Level (both Finishing Line Press). Poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford (Woodley) and Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry (New Issues). ( amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage )

Love
-for Suzy
What we take in by contemplation,
that we pour out in love.
     —Meister Eckhart

I have contemplated stealing the Mars bar, pulling wheelies
on a candy-apple Stingray, contemplated
being bullied for my fat lip.  Contemplated

making fifteen tackles, zero interceptions, getting
a girlfriend, contemplated the girlfriend, the scent
of her shampooed hair.  Contemplated the teenaged life
of Christ, the Buddha’s three delusions, the heart attack
as an opening, chickadees at the feeder,
the student who lay down on the tracks,
bombardment by eight-foot waves.  Contemplated

the gray-skinned vet hawking red carnations,
storm clouds forming and breaking up over Mont Blanc,
bleached white sheets from the dryer, a day
of driving the upper Midwest, when the divorce was finally
in play, when I realized I would have played it
differently, Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes, my second son’s
devastation from eating them.  Contemplated

the dark purple veins of crocus petals, my
youngest son’s shins skinned on skateboards, the rotting
fence, the stone wall, a hundred hornets
up my third son’s camo pant legs, fifty cents
for my very own jug of root-beer-on-tap,
my mother and father dying within
three years, their dying at all, how I felt
before I can remember, the sliced finger
from the slipped pocket knife, the sick thump
of my boyhood head on an Ohio sidewalk, applause,
a stabbing down one street, a drive-by down
another, when the next text will come in
about the grandkids in L.A.  Contemplated

the confounding of the first son’s birth,
the revelation of it, how Thoreau was right:
I am a slave to the farm, how Thoreau was wrong,
overwhelm by the books in a bookstore,
by all those people in a county park,
weeping from a violin, feedback
from a wall of amplifiers, the soft breeze
off warm sand, poems sent back, the comparisons,
the sleekness of swimming under water, the word-play
in a madrigal, the near touch-down of tornados,
the mower-torn rabbit nest, the first time
ever, what we didn’t know could be
the last, Crazy 8’s, a dime for allowance, her cancer,
fearing most the fear, whether we’d come
through it, whether we were wired to, dancing
after the wedding, never getting it
until I get it.  Contemplated

well-worn deer paths atop the crests of
wooded dunes, a hawk’s imperfect circles
describing the heated air, the school-lunchroom table,
the friendly knife in the back, its friendlier twisting,
safety in solitude.  Contemplated

the leaning in of the cats for scratching,
how it’s taken this long to relax into
the calm that comes gently when it all adds up,
how you can touch my neck and release the tears
as if you were a diviner and knew
where the best water’s pooled.

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