Barbara Cully



Into the black forest 

                                     
That was the day I tied my hair straight back in order to see my jaw against the skyline changing. Directly marching into what was left of the sun. In the lateness of the world, my solitary brain familiar and adrift. Eyes tight shut, nose enveloped by the lovely rot of pine. (I was trying to memorize the whole of a setting yet unclear.) We now know that in such woods pajama clad prisoners fled, already their own ghosts. Where in the line of fire pregnant women dropped toddlers briefly in the mud. Then the picking up and the moving on. Granddads-to-be as soldiers not yet twenty shoulder to shoulder offering tense or tender eye contact at the call to go back apart across the fields. Or to go over the top. To cross over to whatever was in store. Before enlightenment we trudge cliff edges hoping not to fall. After enlightenment we trudge the edges too.

 


The echo of a word starts with a word


Between the rust of a street sign and a creeklet. Burnt-orange and crocus colored. The hard moon opened in a hedge of grass and gold. The temperature that seeks the fun in everything is us wrapped and walking. Sleet slowed down enough to feel. White-capped oceanic turbulence intertwined with a white beard on a departed face. (I will miss you; come back; does it have to end?) Look: we almost made it. To handle the crowd, we walked directly against it. Last week or so. The Thames on our left. The Tate up ahead. In winter, in Wales, on the ferry, we hoped against hope. Without knowing what it means. We forgot how to swim. All foolishness is forgiven blowing a tin whistle into a tuft of song. The detail stuff is all there, for sure, in the guidebooks left behind on purpose on chairs. Ancestors upon ancestors in their tight gravesites. Leftover Eden scattered throughout the view. Barren Irish cliff-sides of zero trees and much rock. A tour bus driving us into and around fence lines of flagstone crushed. Whole rivers seeping down, and down, ten thousand years or more. After all of it, there will be another us. To face the planet like a hurricane. Like cheerful animals ravenous for more.

 

Also by Barbara Cully: A Place Where One

Barbara Cully

These poems are from a longer sequence called “Back apart across the fields.” Barbara Cully is the author of two poetry collections from Penguin Books: Desire Reclining and The New Intimacy, which won the National Poetry Series Award, and two collections from Kore Press: Shoreline Series and That Place Where. Her most recent collections are Under the Hours (Jackleg Press) and A Place Were One (Green Linden Press). She is co-editor of two writing textbooks Writing as Revision and Entry Points (Pearson). She has been a guest writer at the Prague Summer Writing Program and was recently awarded the title Distinguished Professor by Golden Gate University, San Francisco.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2020