July 2018
I was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona’s landscapes and wildlife have become increasingly important to me and a significant part of my poetry. Meanwhile, I retain an appetite for reading Eugenio Montale, W. S. Merwin, Tomas Tranströmer and many other, often less celebrated, poets.
A Day in Arizona Territory
On the wooden balcony
above the Chinese laundry
globes of satin light hang
and calligraphic secrets
frame the door to the room
where prayers burn to a taper.
The first man to wake up
from his opium sleep
comes out for fresh air
and as he paces up and down,
his pentatonic footsteps
make the day’s first sound.
Walking around, you might
hear next the straw broom
in a small boy’s hands
as he sweeps the part of Granite Street
where the apple and cigar stand
has opened for business, or
the bottles clinking
on the plaza as half a dozen
men set up their wares in hope
of earning the first cents
of a fortune. Above the soft
percussion of hooves on the road
when a horse pulls its owner
into Prescott on two wheels
come voices still hoarse from the mines
and sometimes the tongue
of the Irishman who can’t stop
reliving his part in the Civil War
rattles louder than the train
as it takes the final bend
before arriving. Just outside town
Yavapai women
are stripping agave to the root
preparing it to roast. They live
where they’re allowed to
now, remembering when all
the land they see was theirs.
On most days you listen
to what you most expect,
with bargaining and boasting
through the hours, except
when there’s a moment
so quiet you can hear
the platform give on Courthouse Square
and a bone crack
in a robber’s neck.
Hohokam Woman and Metate in Madera Canyon
In oak shade close
to the stream running shallow
a Hohokam woman presses
her knees into depressions
they left when she rose
from her yesterday’s work
and with a round stone
in the palm of her hand
grinds mesquite beans
into flour. She turns her wrist
a little to the left and back
while moving her arm
from the shoulder
and shifting her back
as she looks now and then
down to the bajada
and toward the huge rock head
that juts out of the earth
as if it had broken through time.
Leaning on her left arm
held stiff, she keeps pushing
with the right in a liquid
movement while the leaves
on the cottonwoods behind her
rustle and from a tangle
of twigs and dry grass she hears
quail passing through. Pressure
and release continue. The woman’s
easy motion never slows until
she takes hold of a branch
on the tree that gives her shade
and pulls herself upright when
in granite’s late glow the mountains
rise and the ridgeline
burns into the empty blue
turning slowly rose with clouds
drifting across the day moon
where it cools from ivory to ice.
A Day in Arizona Territory
On the wooden balcony
above the Chinese laundry
globes of satin light hang
and calligraphic secrets
frame the door to the room
where prayers burn to a taper.
The first man to wake up
from his opium sleep
comes out for fresh air
and as he paces up and down,
his pentatonic footsteps
make the day’s first sound.
Walking around, you might
hear next the straw broom
in a small boy’s hands
as he sweeps the part of Granite Street
where the apple and cigar stand
has opened for business, or
the bottles clinking
on the plaza as half a dozen
men set up their wares in hope
of earning the first cents
of a fortune. Above the soft
percussion of hooves on the road
when a horse pulls its owner
into Prescott on two wheels
come voices still hoarse from the mines
and sometimes the tongue
of the Irishman who can’t stop
reliving his part in the Civil War
rattles louder than the train
as it takes the final bend
before arriving. Just outside town
Yavapai women
are stripping agave to the root
preparing it to roast. They live
where they’re allowed to
now, remembering when all
the land they see was theirs.
On most days you listen
to what you most expect,
with bargaining and boasting
through the hours, except
when there’s a moment
so quiet you can hear
the platform give on Courthouse Square
and a bone crack
in a robber’s neck.
Hohokam Woman and Metate in Madera Canyon
In oak shade close
to the stream running shallow
a Hohokam woman presses
her knees into depressions
they left when she rose
from her yesterday’s work
and with a round stone
in the palm of her hand
grinds mesquite beans
into flour. She turns her wrist
a little to the left and back
while moving her arm
from the shoulder
and shifting her back
as she looks now and then
down to the bajada
and toward the huge rock head
that juts out of the earth
as if it had broken through time.
Leaning on her left arm
held stiff, she keeps pushing
with the right in a liquid
movement while the leaves
on the cottonwoods behind her
rustle and from a tangle
of twigs and dry grass she hears
quail passing through. Pressure
and release continue. The woman’s
easy motion never slows until
she takes hold of a branch
on the tree that gives her shade
and pulls herself upright when
in granite’s late glow the mountains
rise and the ridgeline
burns into the empty blue
turning slowly rose with clouds
drifting across the day moon
where it cools from ivory to ice.
© 2018 David Chorlton
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