Songs From A Suitcase
by Leslie Smith Dow
© 2015 Leslie Smith Dow
All Rights Reserved
POEMS
Silver Queen
Monet Hesitates on the Japanese Footbridge
Prayer for Two Voices
Girl Lost on the Ice, 1914
Brown Trout
Looming Under Nyiragongo
The Eternal Forest
No Mayan Epic
Egypt
The Amazon River
Sweet Edie
Lily
Everything
Fairhead Soul
Manitouk
Margaret's Road
Labyrinth
To Whaleback Shoal
Green
Dharamsala
STORIES
The Lake
Bless the Virgins
Real Estate
Unnamed
Water
SILVER QUEEN
Thirty days I walked her shadow
following her rocks her streams
hills of silver are what I seek
flecks of it in her jet-black hair
Spokane is mountains behind me
only Raven knows the way
dropping sticks in my path like totems
to great deeds remembered, left undone
Too far I’ve been lured by fortune
my hammer divines for home
the ashes of my fire scatter
at the apex of this last day
Down I lay under
her full belly of shimmering dreams
a witch’s moon, rising magic
twilight mountain-wrought
I am a hundred dreams of silver
dusty hooves and clanking metal
men digging the earth into a deep blue sky
I heard the mule train rumble by
Into stillness I woke
bathed my fire in icy starlight
streaming water of silver and gold on my skin
she’d hung my clothes to dry
Her gifts were berries and salmon and sun
wrapped in Raven’s fur and shining dawn
I lay in her arms like beauty
Deep and deeper into dreams she wove me
through forest-deep days and nights
she carved her riddles on my skin
The cottonwood groves sung her words
sung them up high as a hymn
how hard I believed on this lost path
I’d found my way
Only on later clouds did whispers start
rippling across the ice-cool lakes
her voice called endless through the pines
deep and black as thunder
On the edge of wonder
she has bruised me
under her shadow and twined
me in her web of forest sleep
My mouth is a trout on her twisted hook
her face is the rising moon
I am the howl of the midnight wolf
her voice is the Raven’s wing
She rumbles like an illness
sifting sandstorms running through
Silver Queen she calls to me
I only want what’s mine
Two times I saw the rainbow
two times it ended at you
MONET HESITATES ON THE JAPANESE FOOTBRIDGE
Uncertain footsteps over the Japanese footbridge
looking into water black as eyes asking the question
which holds the true light and form?
followed by the deadly pause I cannot see
On canvas the colours grow:
the brush on weeping willow leaves
that's my sign of anger
the one name that dares describe this bending pain
And here is the Grand Allee at midday
nothing but blazing passion under a sun
a sun I held inside
as darkness became
Light remembered on hemerocallis
crushed where I lay
waiting for the earth to receive me
this is what you must look like now
PRAYER FOR TWO VOICES:
MYRA ROAD/THIS PLACE OF BITTER
Eliza Dares I am
and all I know of hope
is
16 full of Eamon's dream
and Eamon's dreaming child
of
rough hewn lifetimes
passed down
these brittle shores
what dreams
I carved out along this life
of Myra Road
sly eyes now
coyote voices vibrate
the bush is unseen noises
May the Lord watch
between me and thee
and
this place of bitter trees
and tumbled rocks
Now I lay me down
Eliza
upon your iron
bed
Eliza let us pray
the Lord
rest our souls
and weary heads
and if I die
before I wake
forsake me Eliza
and forsake
this place of bitter trees
and tumbled rocks
GIRL LOST ON THE ICE, 1914
what stillness sits
between these cracks of frozen water
sub-zeros broken apart
splitting like kindling
on these vast plains of ice
I walk on and on
the crust thin and sharp
as a familiar voice
for fear it will break and heave apart
in this glowering evening of the lake
there is no welcome
only the rumblings of empty
and your shapeless call to follow
on the which-way wind
I stumble
my gasps hanging long and frozen on my face
white on white
into the darkness
looming luminous
like your skin and warm
as cows' milky breath
into the foaming drifts
of dairy cream I sink
at last I sleep enfolded
in your strong arms of birch
BROWN TROUT
Iron-stained
with a hard-hooked mouth
I lurk among the wild rise for you
unseeing bug-on-the-water
as you flex your wings I rise
between your legs
slide smooth scales
along your belly
drink your champagne waters
until breathless
you pant through half-open lips
and I float in your web of lily flowers
your stain of iron is on my tongue
LOOMING UNDER NYIRAGONGO
“La vie est belle,” you said near Rumangabo
“malgre les paines qui nous enchainent”:
wrote those singing words on a plastered wall
formed them out of the dangerous mud we stumbled from.
“Stanley was here,” you might have also written for a lark
to benefit those searching
like me, for them who need no finding.
Then there was a choice to make: believe
or not to believe.
They were part of your polemic:
mercenaries singing old guitar songs,
waiting politely on the sides of war in town
looming all the same
unshaven shadows under Nyiragongo.
Meantime Devotee stirred broth and turned
wet socks
when the sickness wasn’t on her
when children’s scars were only made
to let headaches of the evil spirits
escape their thoughts.
Imagine you, with the body and mouth of a poet,
chasing names through dreams of feeling-fire.
This I thought was your real betrayal of ourselves-that-were.
Your soul weighted down with ammunition clips
exploding grenades in children’s rag beds
rocket launchers glowing like the tips of volcanoes:
wildfire cigarettes we watched across the far valleys,
live now with nightly burnings.
Only for you could I believe in oxymorons
like fighting for peace
in a place where even the land rears up to belch out
any of the particular colours that I have on
where the banana-boatmen travel fast with their pirate cargoes
on deadly lakes bubbling with burning sulphur
even on a good day.
Blessed you may be, awakened into so much reality
standing in a jungle dripping rhythmic quiet
a machine with a heart in the darkness
into haphazard green and jumbled rock
a shapeless shrug of bones.
I am your Devotee and the pain that chains us:
waiting for a job in Beni.
THE ETERNAL FOREST
in each trunk each oak
is locked a myth of you
giant under the moss
hanging still and long
as our old night-time tales
when we murmured the spells out of our hearts
turned over
the old mysteries in our minds
what places have you gone
wearing my name
what myths can I weave
without the breath of you?
when even dragons have crept
away across the lake
vanished
where we walked on pebbled water
NO MAYAN EPIC
why speak to me
in words I can't understand
in riddles of the dead
from giant's tombs
and out of the dusty corners
of the houses of dwarves?
you were no sorcerer
when I knew you
your voice
drones the days
from the tallest steps
wanders through
the cities of dead
I wonder
will you ever show
your real self again
will you ever speak to me
with flesh not signs
resembling no Mayan epic?
EGYPT
in the sweetness of this orange
this dawn
there's you I hold
warm and wet
your saffron stains
your kohl-rimmed eyes
your river
where a water buffalo
wails for night
THE AMAZON RIVER
it was during those
underground years
you learned about invincible
left alone
with only legends
of the dead
mothers and sisters
grandmothers
aunts and daughters
all flowing Amazons
unspoken beneath your fingernails
and like blood
in their hands
lives were written
huge as hearts
but love was spattered
like an upturned spider
a warning across their palms
only later did you feel
the whispering of their quiet
on your neck
and in the comfort of their silence
you became
an Amazon
SWEET EDIE
Sweet Edie lived in an apple orchard
slept among the bales of soft alfalfa
wrapped in corn silk and feasting on blueberries
she was queen of the country lanes
in her sweaters of spice and gingersnap skirts
a voice of fuzzy juniper and the blues of robins' eggs
Edie walked under ladders and spilled her salt
laughed when dust devils danced down the road
paid no heed to rings around the coppery moon
together we climbed the farm-gray silo
danced from its top that late fall day
then she fell and the roof gave way
I had no spells to stop the golden kernels
pouring down around her
Sweet Edie swallowed by the harvest corn
that filled her honey mouth with silence
LILY
Lily is scrawling out of the river
like another saved soul
but when she sees that Jesus has a face
she loves the man
and knows she
has come too late
even dead men from themselves
cannot be saved
from behind closed eyes
her skies flame sunset red
as breath from some man's hands
touch sighs
then she knows miracles can happen
and all deaths are only small
and Lily's comforts soothe
another man's interrupted sleep
her arms scarred from too much love
only watching as the seasons change
in someone else's eyes
only thinking of backwaters
and willow branches
that traced soft designs
on someone else's wet water skin
into these waters
unknown to him
she lowers herself quietly
each night when he touches her
EVERYTHING WAS AUTUMN
Everything about her was autumn
fire in her hair
and eyes dancing leaves of sorrow
about to fall
asleep in the coming winter of the world
Bonfires curl prayers of leaves to heaven
Can she hear?
Skeletons of trees
dribbling through the low northern sunset
rattling stick music to the winds
that used to whip her hair
and laugh as she twisted to get free
Only listening silence under the big sky
the vole burrowing through dead grass
flattened like her hair spread out that day
we looked up at the endless atmosphere
I felt her heat
a shooting star crashed to earth
a vapour trail left behind
My eyes are still scarred
from looking too long on that flaming sky
everything was autumn
FAIRHEAD SOUL
Olden days tramped past your road
scratched their symbols on your gate post
fairheaded daughter of a fairheaded daughter
their packs carried thoughts of never returning
but crept back all the same
to marry you late at night to love and danger
foretold in lines of little fortune
in the marshy bottoms blue lights flicker
little lamps of fairhead soul
what is luck but knowing where your spirits dwell?
MANITOUK
Silent faces
the colour of storm clouds
sacks of grain unground
In the little clearing
walking to the sun
dying in the lake
"Two Bears, calm my heart"
calling to their silences
I am afr
aid of them now
I never could come closer
Soon they were the colour of night
I had to stop running
MARGARET’S ROAD
Giant walks my road
high and early is his passing
sack clinking on his back
Shadow never touches me
I am on the morning side
when back he strides
His empty pockets jingle
nickels and darkness fall westward
onto the children of evening
Who will fly
under the giant’s shadow?
LABYRINTH
Together we made the beast
who lives within us
buried deep and deeper
every twist and turn you made within me
both of us lost
Our is a land of ancient dreams
where every waking thought is a graveyard
and every life a reconstructed ruin
even the lies are broken
Under the towering fir trees
only scars remain
shards of love and latex
and this plaque bolted to the bars of our prison:
‘In this valley a river once ran…’
TO WHALEBACK SHOAL
what is it we call home?
lost in the piney memory of forests cradling the cabin
grey silk sliding into corners of mist
what does it mean to be wind?
blown here, instead
on the way to Whaleback Shoal
smell of sacred desecration
festering in wounds of change?
he never could pinpoint it exactly
GREEN
you float ahead of me
through the green-accented voice of trees
snow-warmth whiteness enfolds us
this is love I don’t know how to feel