Hayseed Huck
04-09-2010, 05:37 PM
In a country house near Galway Bay
lived Katy and Maddie Tyreen.
I loved them both and traveled there--
sing a ravened Twelfh of May.
After greetings and sturdy drink, I began to sing, but Katy
stilled my melody in whispered chuffs foretelling her wish
to cease life's abrade. Maddie’s words then I heard far be-
hind a closed door mingling with Katy's mortal sighs.
-- Dear friend, we have decided to end our life at evening
close,but upon what and where shall we lie?
-- Oh, let us simply lie down and die in marram grass; but
if we pass in marram grass come ugly feeding pasture worms.
-- May I suggest a frozen pose neath chestnut trees; yet,
chessy trees enlaurel only in the spring, then gray.
I heard laughter in their words
so I felt free to say, "Hold for death
in a sinking bog filled with white white
wine for winter wine seems so chaste,
like Diana's cultic gown ... yet,
it yellows to ugly rime, reminds us
how wasteful we lived our lives."
In time’s interlude softing our mummeries, I remembered one
summer and a cotton dress turning inside out hasty and over,
as Katy's desire inside turned inside out. Outside, near the
dunes of Wilson’s Eastern Lake, a moon rode her leisure,
arcing to the scratching cry of loons.
Before that moon summer rose,
before Kathy slipped out that inside dress,
I was only a boy encased in a husk,
in pods of knotty seeds; then,
toward the cabin fire she turned my face
and warmed my hands on her breast.
Winter and England's northern snow folded snow in horizontal
lines. Maddie’s scarf held wafts of girl-- hair and breath
frost. How she tossed her mittens across the room, stepped
out her satin slip dropped careless at her feet and bade me
follow through the portico.
The tower lantern lights seems
to knit the sounds of far away
carousels to heavy breathing
in their throats and I silent
to my girls sobbing eyes that looked
away from where we are--
outside the little house
perfect we soon will be--
dead in marram grass,
floating in a cattailed moat,
dead at the foot of a crooked tree,
Through old glass I see them years ago when ten and twelve
running hoops, dancing a thousand neon lights violet and pink.
Bright, their sparkling laughter lifts from a playtime park
across the road--
and I say to them,
open your parasols to the sun,
and I'll watch you disappear
in distant soft designs
of wind that settles the marram grass,
straightens the chestnut trees,
pures and crystals the cattailed moat.
##
HH
lived Katy and Maddie Tyreen.
I loved them both and traveled there--
sing a ravened Twelfh of May.
After greetings and sturdy drink, I began to sing, but Katy
stilled my melody in whispered chuffs foretelling her wish
to cease life's abrade. Maddie’s words then I heard far be-
hind a closed door mingling with Katy's mortal sighs.
-- Dear friend, we have decided to end our life at evening
close,but upon what and where shall we lie?
-- Oh, let us simply lie down and die in marram grass; but
if we pass in marram grass come ugly feeding pasture worms.
-- May I suggest a frozen pose neath chestnut trees; yet,
chessy trees enlaurel only in the spring, then gray.
I heard laughter in their words
so I felt free to say, "Hold for death
in a sinking bog filled with white white
wine for winter wine seems so chaste,
like Diana's cultic gown ... yet,
it yellows to ugly rime, reminds us
how wasteful we lived our lives."
In time’s interlude softing our mummeries, I remembered one
summer and a cotton dress turning inside out hasty and over,
as Katy's desire inside turned inside out. Outside, near the
dunes of Wilson’s Eastern Lake, a moon rode her leisure,
arcing to the scratching cry of loons.
Before that moon summer rose,
before Kathy slipped out that inside dress,
I was only a boy encased in a husk,
in pods of knotty seeds; then,
toward the cabin fire she turned my face
and warmed my hands on her breast.
Winter and England's northern snow folded snow in horizontal
lines. Maddie’s scarf held wafts of girl-- hair and breath
frost. How she tossed her mittens across the room, stepped
out her satin slip dropped careless at her feet and bade me
follow through the portico.
The tower lantern lights seems
to knit the sounds of far away
carousels to heavy breathing
in their throats and I silent
to my girls sobbing eyes that looked
away from where we are--
outside the little house
perfect we soon will be--
dead in marram grass,
floating in a cattailed moat,
dead at the foot of a crooked tree,
Through old glass I see them years ago when ten and twelve
running hoops, dancing a thousand neon lights violet and pink.
Bright, their sparkling laughter lifts from a playtime park
across the road--
and I say to them,
open your parasols to the sun,
and I'll watch you disappear
in distant soft designs
of wind that settles the marram grass,
straightens the chestnut trees,
pures and crystals the cattailed moat.
##
HH