At Gloaming
Poems by Larry Schug
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Front cover photo: Larry Schug
Author photo: Juliann Rule
Copyright © 2014 Larry Schug
Print ISBN 978-0-87839-748-8
ebook ISBN: 978-0-87839-978-9
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews.
First Edition: March 2014
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, MN 56302
northstarpress.com
Dedicated to Juli
There is no poetry without you.
Other Books By Larry Schug
Published by North Star Press:
Scales Out of Balance: Poems by Lawrence Schug (1990)
Caution: Thin Ice: Poems by Lawrence Schug (1993)
The Turning of Wheels: Poems by Larry Schug (2001)
Arrogant Bones: Poems by Larry Schug (2008)
Nails: Poems by Larry Schug (2011)
Acknowledgements
The following poems or versions thereof were originally published in the following print or electronic journals or anthologies. Thank you to all the editors, patrons and readers of these publications.
“Nude Modeling” and “The Implications of Washing Dishes” in Studio 1.
“Etched in Granite” and “Sharon Springs, Kansas” in The Talking Stick.
“Thanks, Dude,” “The Lights Go off During the Super Bowl,” “In Light Of,” “A Place Called Ghost Ranch,” “Green Heron in Rain,” “You Wish,” “A Speculation on Spiders,” and “The Killdeer Response” in Wild Goose Poetry Review.
“Runaway Tractor” in Bareback Magazine.
“A Small Kindness, This” and “Apple Harvest” in Chantarelle’s Notebook.
“The Burden of Souls” and “Wood Ticks, That’s Different” in Cynic Café.
“An Accordion, I Think” and “At the Arboretum” in River Poet’s Journal.
“Between the Lines” in Matchbook.
“Mending Mittens,” and “Rhubarb” in Your Daily Poem.
“Everyone Forgot” in Misfits’ Miscellaneous.
“Dull Knife’s Blanket” and “Ghost Warriors” in Trajectory.
“Fish” in Imitation Fruit.
“Pretender,” “The Perfect Time,” “Apprentice Gods” and “Conjecture” in Circle Show.
“Homeless in Duluth,” “Toads,” and “Memorial” in Nota Bene.
“This Beautiful Air” in New Plains Review.
“Sailors Becalmed,” “A Dream of Roger Young,” “You Could Fool Yourself,” and “One Way to Bridge a Cultural Divide” in Main Channel Voices.
“At Gloaming” in Poetry Quarterly.
“A Lesson in Mindfulness” in A Year of Being Here.
Table of Contents
Other Books By Larry Schug
Acknowledgements
I: An Invisible Thread
Light, as a Feather
Watch Yourself around Crows
The Killdeer Response
Great Blue Heron
A Lesson in Mindfulness
Green Heron in Rain
Ripples
Sandhill Cranes
Clouds
Rain Delay
February Blue
Sharon Springs, Kansas
Moon Haiku
This Pale Moon Floating
Tango Luna
While Watching the Leonid Meteor Shower
Working Women
Cat as Zen Master
Hail Storm
Evanescence
The Same Beautiful Air
A Speculation on Spiders
Spider
Toads
A Serpent’s Lament
Wood Ticks
The Isle Royale Wolf Pack
Cascade Falls
Cascade River
Bottled Water
At Gloaming
Conjecture
A Small Kindness, This
Maple Syrup Time
No Help
Apprentice Gods
Mending Mittens
At the Arboretum
Grasses Rustling
Coneflowers
An Accordion, I Think
Juli and Blue Violets
Rhubarb
Thoughts in the Rhubarb Patch
You Could Fool Yourself
II: Just This Side of Invisible
Caucasian
Vinegar
Like Father, Like Son
Me and Jimmy
The Allman Brothers Singing
My Mother Crying
Angels
Kisses
Andy Williams Died Today
The Old Guys at Kay’s Kitchen
Diagnosis
Sailors Becalmed
Memorial
From All Appearances
A Dream of Roger Young
A Poem at Ann’s Passing
Blueberry Muffins
Pretender
Veteran
Etched in Granite
Lunch at Kay’s Kitchen
The Mourners at “Shiner’s” Funeral
Fixing
Don’t Forget
III: When the TV’s Turned Off
Between Melancholy and Nostalgia
Blame the Poem
Nude Modeling
Dental Insurance
Apple Harvest
Everyone Forgot
The Implications of Washing Dishes
When I Met You
Sister Bay, Wisconsin
Winter
Lost Key
Fishing
Fish
Farm Girl
It All
Between the Lines
Homeless in Duluth
The Burden of Souls
In Light Of
The Perfect Time
Runaway Tractor
Barn
Cowbell
One Way to Bridge a Cultural Divide
Perspective
Ghost Warriors
Kokopelli
Thousand-Year-Old Songs
Dull Knife’s Blanket
Reflection on a Starry Night
A Place Called Ghost Ranch
With a Nod to Georgia O’Keefe
You Wish
Mars and Venus Meet on Earth TV
Jane Goodall
The Lights Go Out During the Super Bowl
Nobody Told Us About the Blues
I: An Invisible Thread
Light, as a Feather
Amenable to spells, omens,
talismans, totems,
to simple beauty,
I pick up a black feather,
a tatter of night
fallen from a raven’s cape;
become mesmerized by the prism of colors
it casts, this ebony feather
of no more or less mystical property
than anythin
g else fallen from the sky,
yet intensely significant as the feather it is,
twirling between my fingertips,
catching and releasing light born of darkness.
Watch Yourself around Crows
Everybody knows crows talk
Crawk Crawk
don’t need no subpoena
to start a raucous squawkin’
Don’t be fooled by a crow’s
drunken sailor walk
watch yourself
crows ain’t tattlers or tale tellers
witnesses what they be
sayin’ it like they see it
keepin’ an ebony eye on the world
The Killdeer Response
Feigning a broken wing,
a killdeer tries to lure me away
from her nest of stones,
spotted eggs hidden within.
She recognizes me for what I am—
a predator,
and though I have no intention of harm,
my presence alarms her,
ignites a primordial response,
the same response your mother would have
to a stranger lurking near your house
when you were a nestling.
Great Blue Heron
A great blue heron
stands stick-still in green muck,
one leg tucked into its breast,
crested head poised like an arrow
notched in a drawn bowstring.
I see that silence and intensity
do not guarantee the heron a meal;
patience is not always rewarded.
Sometimes it becomes necessary
to fly to another pond,
hungry.
A Lesson in Mindfulness
A Buddhist monk
is trying to teach me
mindfulness
from a book
but my stomach
is too full of ice cream
for me to breathe properly.
Outside my window,
a hungry green heron,
perched perfectly still,
fully in his moment,
surveys the pond
for frogs and fish.
The teacher
has grown green wings,
the book having folded up
its feathers for the night.
Green Heron in Rain
The light’s not right, too much glare
for a photo through the rain-streaked window,
and not being a painter or sketcher
I turn to words to capture and convey
the image of a solitary green heron,
its rusty breast, pointed crest, stiletto beak,
preening gray-green feathers worn like a cape;
gripping a branch of a fallen aspen
with long feet, orange as a prairie sunset.
The steel-gray pond bubbles and ripples in the rain,
backdrop of shimmering quicksilver,
a scene that could move an agnostic soul
to believe in the hand of some god
with no religion to muddy the image,
within or without.
Ripples
Each ripple created as geese take flight
reflects its own sunset,
ripple follows ripple, sunset follows sunset
like days follow days, adding up to a life,
your life.
You may see your life in this bruised sky
of royal purple and tangerine, citrean yellow.
When the water calms, slips into sleep,
that’s your life, too,
reflected in dreams of starshine.
Sandhill Cranes
From the periphery of vision
on a moving bicycle,
the three sandhill cranes look like deer,
feathers, the same cinnamon color
deer don in early summer, catching sun;
their postures, long necks bent
to the ground like grazing deer,
before I notice the rose-colored berets
they wear, as they lift their heads
from a low spot in an alfalfa field,
looking down long beaks, warily watching me.
I slow, pedal past them quietly as I can,
out of respect, perhaps reverence
for their magnificence of essence,
fear for how perilous is their existence,
thankful for proof of being, cranes and mine,
as we each acknowledge the other, eyes meeting.
Clouds
A bushy-browed old man
chases a white poodle
across a blue meadow
though he knows
white clouds won’t return
any more than his youth
or bad dogs will,
no matter how loud he rumbles.
Fluffy!
Damn you, Fluffy;
you get your ass back here.
Come on, Fluffy, dang you.
Fluffy! Fluffy!
Rain Delay
rain
rain
rain
rain
rain
delay
rain delay
rain delay
rain delay
rain delay
rain delay rain delay rain delay
raindelayraindelayraindelayraindelay
delay delay delay
rain rain rain
delay rain delay rain
delay
rain
rain
rain
de lay
rain
de lay
Play Ball!
February Blue
It’s February 23rd, a Saturday,
in Avon, Minnesota;
the snow is “up to my ass” deep,
but the sky is blue, February blue,
a shade paler than June blue,
but full with promise of Spring.
If I position myself just so
at my writing table, all I see is sky.
With the first spring training game
playing on the radio,
I imagine a towering fly ball
climbing into my field of blue vision,
I imagine a centerfielder in Florida,
palm trees waving in a warm wind
beyond the outfield fence,
pulling his sunglasses over his eyes,
pounding his glove three times
before gathering in that fly ball
like people believe god gathers in souls,
never making an error.
Sharon Springs, Kansas
The sky blows like a blue blanket
hanging on a clothesline
on the outskirts of Sharon Springs,
a horizon you’ll never reach
even at eighty miles an hour;
and you don’t care
because you’re from Minnesota,
where you’re always looking inward,
the tall trees holding up their arms,
blocking every horizon,
preventing you from seeing
too far ahead or behind.
You think if you awoke
under a sky this wide
every morning of your life,
things would be different with you.
Moon Haiku
a crescent moon hangs
in ethereal blue sky
miracle of light
This Pale Moon Floating
It’s just the view
from my point of view,
just geometry, really,
the work of gravity,
this pale moon,
barely visible,
floating in blue sky.
Mathematics could explain the moon
moving in its orbit of the planet,
but math can’t explain beauty,
the stirring of tides in the soul,
why I call a crescent moon ethereal,
light, a miracle.
Poetry doesn’t explain it either,
though poetry reveals
what knowledge conceals.
Tango Luna
What if
instead of playing golf,
the astronauts would have danced
on the moon;
done clumsy pirouettes in bulky spacesuits,
simple box steps
kicking up moon dust in starlight
instead of just that one giant step?
A slicing golf ball, even hit on the moon
inspires no one.
They could’ve danced a lunar tango
in blue-green earthlight,
leaving a pattern of intricate footprints
that would’ve set everyone on our little planet
dancing the same dance,
the way we used to when the moon was full.
While Watching the Leonid Meteor Shower
I’m lying on the lawn,
head propped on a stone,
while Orion stalks the Great Bear,
Sirius, the star dog, at his side.
They pay no heed to burning meteors,
shaken like rain from the lion’s mane.
I envy the Sky Hunter his long life,
while in the brief flashes of fiery dust,