Gone to Ground

 

when weather moods to strange
the townies look a certain look
at distant silver cloud sweep

read moveable graffiti
in litter ground spin
that spreads across a walk

they orient to steeple
listen for the Angelus
think-pray deliverance

clear cushions from a porch
plan indoor birthday parties
consult the Almanac

speak quietly with neighbors
when black swans shelter glide
to a weeping willow

and when a wedge of geese
disintegrates to strands
within a frantic clamor

the townies…wise and stoic
know temporary, and already
they are gone to ground

Bonnie Marshall

Artist: Jamie Wyeth
“Other Voices” 1995

 

To Give a Damn

 

 

I.

from someone else’s mind
I gathered image word
and feeling meaning

it sorted to my brain
somewhere in a neuron
synapse cell to cell

I hear him say it …
that Rhett Butler voice …
that cocksure gaze …

brilliant framing of the
door between his worlds

at the turning point
he didn’t give a damn

about her

flawless timing  … always
absolutely perfect for
remembering of know

 

II.

Giles from Salem
beat someone’s heart
to stopping … damn you
Giles from Salem

old Giles from Salem
they witch hung his love wife
for mumbling in a corner

cried him out for wizard
to claim the family land
if he, innocent,  confessed

plank and boulder pressed him
rigid … Puritan … earth
three days to eye bulge, tongue loll

“Confess you are a witch!”  they shouted
one on the plank to crush his heart

“More weight … more weight.”  his dying words
damn them, Giles from Salem

 

III.

in the revealing black and white of it
The public doesn’t give a damn about integrity.
A town that won’t defend itself
deserves no help.
Lon Cheney’s  jaded sheriff lines, High Noon

Katy Jurado tells Lloyd Bridges
And, it takes more than big broad shoulders
to make a man.
she is a survival realist
leaves on the high noon train

before she leaves she talks with Cooper
Jurado: Kane, if you’re smart, you will get out, too.
Cooper: I can’t.
Jurado: I know

 

Bonnie Marshall
artist unknown

All Manner of Things

 

as needful to our being,
we partake of the essential
nourishment of air and water
and swallowing of bread and milk
and savoring of salt

we endure the sufferance
of idle conversation dispersed to nothing
(god, keep me from the spider’s web)
and abide time’s slide to otherness

so that if and when our worlds disperse
in gravity of a quasar blasting passion
and firm new courses in existence
frighten us with strangeness

then we shall hold to knowing
that breath means life
and water is abundant absolution
and bread and milk are nurturing
and salt … is preserving certainty
of  friendship … wisdom … love

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Pieter Claesz, 1644

 

wilderness in women

 

I’m old…
I can tell you this

women need wilderness
…especially when they’re young

for in wilderness they learn
not to trust old maps;
and they swim in icy streams
if bridges are washed down

in wilderness…
they hear honest sounds,
and know when nestlings
rasp for raw sustaining flesh
they hear healthiness…
not the noise of whining

and on the day they die
women raised in wilderness
sing to themselves…remembered
songs to float with them from
this world to the next

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork Balthazar Denner

 

Another Fire in California

 

I wonder … when its sulky breath
shrouds their valley vineyards,
shall we taste it in our Cabernet,
and will its wind storm char
translate to their Sauvignon
before cavalry Pacific mist
is temperance enough.

Insensitive of me … I know Napa Valley,
know the genuine of people there,
and taught Shakespeare to their children,
to some now staying with the land
to grow their family and their grapes.

And I wonder …
in the midst of conflagration
how The Tempest fancy
helps them to face the present.

How crass of me to think it might,
now as fire breathes across their land
melting trampolines and bikes and trucks
and wide porched reality.

 

Bonnie Marshall
Published in August, 2015

Movie Scene: A Walk in the Clouds