allen frost library: Silent Machines In 9 Sizes

D’s Truck
I Throw Books At Birds
The Mourner
Without Feeling Something
A Ghost & His Dog
Clouded
Out Of Respect
The President Statue Park
Left Spinning

D’s Truck

D’s truck
is filled with junk
gallon jugs and linoleum rolls
styrofoam, tin cans, brooms
tarpaper scraps, a yellow afghan
anything he thinks
he can use again
piled in the back
is only part of
something bigger
forgotten on the street
red faded paint
pointed at mountains
a hundred jagged miles away

I Throw Books At Birds

I have my place
a fallen tree bedding
on the slight hill
above the sea.
With a box full
of munitions
and fern netting
I wait for the trill.
Sometimes I scatter
some bait
from the vines
and undercover
while I wait.

Sooner or later
a bird comes near
usually a jay
or little sparrow.
I take my time
I choose my fodder.
If the bird’s small
all I need
is a paperback.
If it’s a pigeon
or a gull
I use a hardcover.

My Translation of Jacques Prevert’s ‘The Morning’ from his ‘Histoires’ collection

The Mourner

I am the rooster’s cry
The night’s swan song
A weary call
I cry
I rise everyday
Day after day
I am alone
And cannot hear
Beyond the sound of me
Where there is life
And happiness begins
I am cut by the sun
And I dream in the dark

Without Feeling Something

For a while there
everywhere you went
the sight of it
shrieked at you
boiling tea pot colors.
It was on the attack
you couldn’t look at it
without feeling something.
But now it’s returned
to hanging in wind
on a thin white pole
or peeling off windows
whatever it was before.

I’ve seen the heart of it
I want that in me today
I’m tired from early waking
working all the time
without feeling something.
So I catch one
off my neighbor’s yard
and take it home.
I turn the gas stove on
toss it in a frying pan.
The blue flame heats
its edges crisp.
A smoke rises
I flip it
and while it cooks
I take a wide plate
from the cupboard.

A Ghost & His Dog

A word about Redwood
who gave up on this world
and lived in the blackberry thorns.
Every morning followed ritual
up the hill into the sun
holding two yards of gold rope
being pulled back and forth
to the store on the corner
for his bottle of green.
So what does remain
after all of these years?
Just the vision of him
his dog tugging him
like a dancing girl
while he drank at that
green fading light.

Clouded

Misty had clouded eyes
sitting in the circle of smoke
always some loud tragedy
in some rented room.
She licked the wound
on her unmended leg
the speckled fur
came undone whenever
she moved.

Out Of Respect

You would think
they would stop chopping
the trees to the sea
out of respect for the old man
who lay dying in his house.
But there was the deep keel
of green swirling water below
and only a crop of yellow maple
stood between the rocky shore
and whoever heard of
silent machines
standing watch
and feeling
for life?

The President Statue Park

They’re all there, on an asphalt acre,
the good ones and the bad ones and the ones
that whispered by. The President Statue Park
has its own billboard on the edge of the road;
I must have gone by a thousand times while
it weathered. It took all these years for me
to finally roll off the Interstate with enough
interest to actually want to see it. Maybe I
would even buy one? We have a garden in
back of our house and I could picture someone
famous standing there, holding a birdbath
perhaps, with a string of green beans or
morning glory growing up his leg.
Some other cars and trucks were
parked in the lot, they seemed to get a fair
draw from the highway that roared over
there. I noticed a semi filling its trailer
with rows of cement Lincolns. They looked
like spectators at the Civil War. Who knows
where they are going next?
It was a hot day and when I got out
I felt the wave of it hit, stirred by
the ratchet of crickets in the tall weeds.
Blue dragonflies kept watch overhead.
Someone’s hand-painted White House
made the gate from the parking lot.
A hushed family was rolling a clay
Kennedy out on a wagon.

Something I noticed right away
when I entered was the way they put
the ones we all know upfront. Pushed
together were the familiar figures, the
ten or so you remember from school.
From the cheapest paper-mache Reagan
to a marble Roosevelt and the crowds
seemed pleased picking them over.
But I was after something
different, so I followed the chain-link
fence away. The asphalt wore through
with little wild flowers and oily puddles.
I saw wooden and wire framed statues
of politicians I didn’t know. I guess
that’s why they were back here in
the crumble where you had to have
words to read who they were and
what they had done. Not so mean
or so clever or sad that they needed
to be remembered forever.
I laughed when I saw
the round one among them. Funny,
I only knew him by his shape. A huge
plastic Taft. His broken gray seams
were left unpainted and he was
rain-water worn.