The Charts Of The Sea

The Charts Of The Sea
Robert Gordon’s House
Caged Magpies
Back To Memory
The Ravel
Rolling Apples
The Wallendas
Blackmailed By A Ghost
A Man Seen Melting
The Miniature Cow
Airport Music
The Moonlite Drive-In

The Charts Of The Sea

The charts of the sea
show much closer now
no Murmansk, no Arctic
no Gulf of Aden here

The waters marked blue
in their various depths
the shoals and passages
the way you roam
mark the safe way
from there to home




Robert Gordon’s House

In the basement
at Robert Gordon’s house
looking for a pen
so I can write this down

A stage, a drum set
a wedding dress
plastic plants in disarray
I must have conjured one
above the electric piano
on the tool bench

The story goes
he grew up here
lived with his mother
after voyages floating
above the Earth
another man
in outer space

From this basement
he took to rockets
hard to believe

With lace curtains
windows and rain
Seattle outside
near the reservoir
on Thanksgiving Day

Caged Magpies

Eyes for shiny things
out of reach
their flight stops
the mesh holds
the coppery sun
beyond catching
Back To Memory

That takes me
back to memory
night flowers and birds
nesting in the eaves
rain and blankets
when the city
was our dream




The Ravel

Now I see the ravel
why the weather
took me this way

Travel through branches
held low with snow
making tunnels to go under
the trees transformed
by the white of it

I finally realize
why I missed the bus
had to walk to work

The reason is woven
up in the sky
the sound comes in
old fashioned horns
a v of birds
the pattern
sewn by swans
necks like arms
their elbowed flight
carries me with them
on migration
Rolling Apples

Rolling apples
down the hill
watching each
spectacle




The Wallendas

The Wallendas
fell from wires
getting smaller
in our eyes

Tripped up
on television
mobiles
coming down

I couldn’t look
and still I can’t
I’d rather see
the way out

No Chicago Tower
no Golden Gate
no chance of dropping
ten hundred feet

The family
balancing act
works without
a net




Blackmailed By A Ghost

“I saw what you did and
I can’t keep it under the lid
I’ll tell the newspaper and
the whole town will be talking.
A body made a splash last night.
The East River takes a bride.
If you want what happened
to stay quiet, well you better
listen to me, get it right.
Get a briefcase filled with
50 Gs and put it between
the painting and the wall
in the fifth floor office
at City Hall.
Midnight’s the best time
and nobody will ever
hear of your crime.”




A Man Seen Melting

The story of a man
seen melting in the snow.
We already know
what will happen.
It’s like a fairy tale
waiting for the end.
The gradual slow motion
way he goes with the sun.

The Miniature Cow

He will be three in 8 days and what he really wants is
a cow. A cow his size. I’m not sure how that will happen.
I’ve been watching for one. Finding one isn’t easy,
but I have an idea. On Guide Meridian, alongside
the road before the parking lot starts, there’s cattails
and blackberry and on the corner an old fencepost
from the days when this was farmland. That’s where
I expect to find a miniature cow. Anyone watching
from passing traffic would think it was only a dog
looking out.




Airport Music

At the end of summer we were in Maine and
I found a brick on the beach. I took it back
to the house and wrapped it in shirts to return
on the plane to our garden in Washington.
I guess I should have known there would be
a problem. Suddenly it was a scene
from a 1950s espionage movie.
The brick was run through the x-ray,
frozen and reexamined, somewhere
bells went off and airport security took
the suitcase apart. All that for a brick.
It’s hard to imagine that seven years ago
in Ohio I brought a victrola to the airport.
The guards didn’t even know what it was,
it was a portable one with a detachable
silver handle that could be cranked and it was.
As soon as we had passed through those gates
we found a spot near the windows where we sat
down. I found the record my grandparents
danced to on their honeymoon in Cuba.
I opened the lid, put the needle on and
the scratchiest sound began. I could have
got that sound from the brick, but the music
that began afterwards has not been heard
in airports for years.

The Moonlite Drive-In

Everytime you passed it at night, there was a second’s
moonglow of the big movie going on, then it was gone
and you were left wondering what you saw. As America
grew over dreams, the mall took The Moonlite Drive-In
but that used to be the place to go. Across the road was
the strawberry farm. It was the thing to do on Friday nights,
when the summer monster appeared on the screen.
They were all packed into a blue car watching the terror
up there, the door opening and a head falling down stairs,
one step at a time, to plop in for a close-up when a dog
outside their window hit the side of their car barking.
In a split second the shout for the film had turned
into a louder scream at reality.

illustrations: rustle frost
writing: allen frost
written: november 22—december 2, 2006