April Poetry: James McKeon

In recognition of Poetry Month, and to celebrate and highlight our treasure trove of Orcas Island poets, Orcas Issues is pleased and honored to again offer daily poetry during April.

Running Wake

— by James McKeon —

Long ago upon the wide Atlantic,
Long swells upon the quarter, broad swells
Lifting fantail, the focsle sliding down to rise in turn,
The ship working harder now up the long incline,
Shuddering, machine and seas somewhat out of synch,
Our fantail lifting and subsiding in the swells,
A dropping sun behind. Running out beneath the transom,
Welling up in great wheeling bubbles, falling behind
Runs the wake of our parting.
Across the rolling running of the seas spreads
A changing light, a light proceeding from the eyes
Of the off watch crew no less than that gaseous blazing
Falling apricot into swells that run up from behind.
We idlers and dreamers, assembled on the fantail,
Leaning over after rail, clinging to the ladder,
On capstan and deck gear seated, wait upon the
Disappearance of the light, the disappearance
Of our wake.
This light upon the changing sea and us
Turns to jet as stars first prick the sky. And always
The running swells lift and drop the rolling fantail.
The myriad stars roll slowly fore and aft, swinging
From the topmast. At the disappearance of the light,
We turn to bunks, to sleep upon this rolling out of our leaving
Until our watch rolls round again.
So across the dark blue Atlantic, changeful,
Sensing in the rise and fall, now labored, now smooth,
The running out behind like an oil slick trail of our always
Fleeing home, for the ship was but the engine of our
Fateful progress, never our abode, we steamed
Across the Atlantic to a dawn landfall
At Cadiz, gateway to storied ports of call:
Algiers, Tunis or Valencia, Marseilles,
Palermo, Pireas or Corfu
And golden cities founded by the gods
Or heros of long ago, far from our
Forgotten home

Summer of the Apple Tree

— by James McKeon —

A tale I told myself,
A tale of blossoming night,
Became the North Star of my self:
From an ember glowing still
The story rakes itself to life, flames up
And I am nine once more.
When I was nine,
Living with aunt and uncle in a country
Where red wolves still ran,
Not knowing who or what I was,
In bare feet wandered down
Among chickens scattering seed
Below the farmhouse
No longer entirely present in my mind
And with a rake killed the fat egg-lazy copperhead
I almost trod at dusk,
And then weeks later
Saw in the light of dusk beneath
A persimmon that ‘the stick’ before my feet
Was the small thin ‘mate’ of copperhead
“Bent upon revenge,” and killed it in turn,
Not knowing who or what I was
When I was nine.
And then, one night at end of summer,
I wandered out again, past persimmon tree,
Stepping wetly on soft sweet-smelling fruit,
Across the field to the old twisted apple tree
Near the long dirt road that ran back to
Wolf harboring hills, and paused,
Looking up into a moonless sky.
And as I gazed, my eyes gradually acclimatizing
To the light, drew out from darkness stars in ever growing
Number, until like gods they crowded the jostled vault
Of heaven, measureless, unimaginably far and wide.
Like brilliants set within a vast velvet swelling round,
Receding to unguessed depths into which I fell
Long and far – beyond ken or sounding.
This night of stars, and I alike, inexplicable,
Portents strange, somehow tied… and
In the instant, I felt one with that cold deep song,
A twinning inexpressible, a singing motion,
Gleaming there above – and I am,
Who had never to that moment been –
I and stars spontaneously sprung.
Crown of tree netted stars seen by no one else –
Aunt and uncle fast asleep and far away –
But as that thought and I appeared
It vanished on the moment,
And what I truly saw
This tale I tell cannot reveal.

Phases of a Quotidian Poem

— by James McKeon —

The moon had swung from full through new and more.
No poem had spread its wings and rose
On oaring pinions until all at once I observed, //
While traveling on foot along North Beach Road,
A pair of turkey vultures dipping, turning, scanning
The ground below, then saw above limey Patos //
And fingered Sucia, a white raft of cumulus miles long
Slowly drifting east, for Lummi bound,
For Bellingham, snowy Baker, the North Cascades. //
And that night, a dream in which I joined
The queen of the hunt and flew with her fell
Company into the gathering night.//
Above the deep carpet of the clouds
We sped upon the dark gray backs of swans
Toward an ocean of emerging stars, //
While far below, where the clouds had parted,
The scattered campfires of living multitudes dotted
Black sands stretching and rippling to a long beyond, //
And we heard hosts of voices raising,
Song like the beating pulse of time
Carrying on through dawn.