The Law of the Unforeseen Read online

  the new life, the one in which

  nothing is sure, everything governed

  by the immutable Law of the Unforeseen.

  I hear the hoarse rasp of my name,

  see his bloodied head near mine

  when he lifts me from the brambles.

  I’m able then to taste the ditch,

  spit muck and bits of leaves,

  able now to understand he threw me

  to save me, able still to see myself

  in his arms as he carried me up the hill,

  aware of being aware of the light perfume

  of wild roses crushed where I’d landed,

  petals matted in my muddied hair.

  GIRLS JUMPING ROPE

  Three girls, brown-skinned and pigtailed—sisters,

  from the look of their high cheekbones, their wide

  bright eyes—have tied two lengths of clothesline

  to the fender of a parked car. The tallest swings each line

  in a dizzy clockwise-counterclockwise braid.

  The ropes whir as they gyre the air.

  Into these humming ovals the younger sisters leap,

  their skip-hopping feet hardly touching the asphalt,

  as if it might be lava. How hot it is! The soft tap

  of their sneakers syncopates with the snap of the ropes.

  So lithe are they, so graceful, so synchronous

  in their timing, their fine-tuned turning, you want to weep

  at the beauty of the human form in motion.

  After ten minutes a rope catches an ankle,

  the jumping stops, and the three girls, who have not

  uttered a sound till then, burst into the laughter

  of girlhood, a pure shrieking deep-down joy,

  their thin chests heaving, sweat-sheen on their brows

  and bare arms. You applaud. For the first time,

  they notice you on the curb and bow grandly.

  The youngest girl—she might be 10—becomes the twirler.

  They could not care less what’s in your head, your attic

  of dark thoughts, or your heart, heavy as a rucksack

  of anvils. Never mind all that. Your sparrows of despair

  lift into the sultry August evening as much for the artistry

  of the skipping girls as for the music of their soul-igniting

  laughter. About those plans you had to head for the hills,

  far from the thrones of power, to join the ghosts

  of Cistercians in the ruins of Tintern Abbey, renouncing

  all but the earth, to live as an ascetic pure as the currents

  of the River Wye, to leave behind the Forbidden City

  and its emperor, Cronus, he who eats his children

  once they have voted for him, to retreat forever

  on the gauzy side of a Chinese screen of mountain mist—

  those plans are now on hold. You’ve decided to honor

  your contract with the living world, to sit on this curb

  and watch them, the Three Graces, jump once more.

  The sun drops behind a garish billboard enticing the young

  to join the Marines. A street light blinks on, its radiant cone

  spotlighting the girls, their bodies a blur inside the whir

  of the clotheslines. From their bleachers in heaven, the gods—

  Dionysus and Aphrodite most noticeably—clap, stomp

  their feet and cheer like the justly proud parents they are.

  Six: Union Creek in Winter

  ....I see her mother’s face, beaten and

  beaten into the shape of a plant,

  a cactus with grey spines and broad

  dark maroon blooms.

  I see her arm stretched out across her baby,

  wrist resting, heavily, still across the

  tiny ribs.

  Don’t speak to me about

  politics. I’ve got eyes, man.

  ~From Sharon Olds’ poem “The Issues,” from her book The Dead and the Living

  UNION CREEK IN WINTER

  There’s no word for it so far, the word

  for what it means to be in love with you

  in our sinking world, what it means to hike

  through new snow, to hear beneath

  the glass of creek ice the flow of winter

  percolating its way through the ravine

  not quite soundlessly toward lower ground

  to join the wild roar of the American River.

  The word that means we’ve loved

  through the avalanches of our time,

  loved while the wars raged, paid for

  with our taxes, loved while our loved ones

  voted for hatred, for I-want-the-false-past-I-want-

  what’s-coming-to-me, protected as they’ve been

  by their skin white as this very snow draped

  on hemlocks in the ravine’s wavering light.

  The word that means we’re not alone,

  we share that same nature wonder,

  for the flicker tapping on a far-off tree,

  the delicate calligraphy of a mouse’s

  prints along our path, as if Tu Fu

  has been here too, who knew, even then,

  even in the Tang Dynasty, beauty

  leaves behind its faint notations.

  The word that means we will go on,

  we will follow an earlier trekker’s snowshoe

  trail, slog on bundled to keep the chill

  from overtaking us, descend again steeply,

  then climb again switchbacks above the creek

  away from its cold murmurings, to our car

  and the long drive back to the war zone

  of now. Armed with our little courage,

  we must drive straight to the front,

  strap on flak jackets and begin the slow

  search for survivors, slow search

  for the words that might revive them.

  Even now we’re feverish to make contact,

  to know what to listen for, to learn to hear

  those muffled cries from deep in the rubble.

  If we knew the words we might save

  those most weakened, most in danger of giving up.

  If we knew the words we might keep the world,

  its rivers, its ice, its bitterroot, its winter wrens,

  its hemlocks, its moonlight, its children,

  its Shakespeare, its Szymborska, its rosehips,

  its green and orange lichens, its Dylan,

  its kora players, its hummingbirds, you,

  me, and our Muslim neighbor, Maya, alive.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to the editors of the following publications where some of the poems in this collection first appeared:

  2River: “Potatoes,” “The Path”

  Atticus Review: “‘Barb’s Healing Hands’”

  Cascadia Review: “Icebergs Near Twillingate,” “Presence,”

  “Ancestry” (retitled here as “Immigrants”)

  Chariton Review: “Pine Siskin”

  Hinchas de Poesia: “Bat in Daylight,” “Coming to Terms with the Fact that I May Never Get the Hang of Mississippi John Hurt’s ‘Monday Morning Blues,’” “Swing”

  Miramar: “Ax,” “Meadowlark,” “The Return”

  Mudlark: “Honeymoon”

  Rat’s Ass Review: “America, Great Once Again”

  Raven Chronicles: “Great Apes at the Zoo,” “Neighborhood Crows”

  Split Lip Magazine: “Ash”

  Terrain.org: “Union Creek in Winter,” “Spoon,” “View of Richmond Beach.” “Tying a Tie” and “Airborne” won the Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest for poetry.

  The following poems first appeared in Ice Children, a chapbook published by Split Lip Press, 2014: “Catching the Vase,” “Dahlias,” “The Gods,” “Ice Children of the Andes,” “My Father Mows the Lawn,” “The Unfocused Eyes of Drones”

  To
his everlasting regret, Edward Harkness did not see Elvis when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll visited Seattle during the World’s Fair in 1962. Other than that, Harkness is a happy husband to Linda, father to Ned and Devin, and grandfather to Clio. Having retired after a 30+ year career as a writing teacher at Shoreline Community College, he now devotes his time to other pleasures: gardening, cycling, visiting the kids and, now and then, making poems. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Saying the Necessary and Beautiful Passing Lives, both from Pleasure Boat Studio press. His most recent chapbook, Ice Children, was published by Split Lip Press in 2014. Two poems in this collection, “Tying a Tie” and “Airborne,” won the Terrain.org annual poetry prize for 2017. He lives in Shoreline, Washington, about a mile from the north Seattle home where he grew up, and where his mother, Doris Harkness, whose art works grace the covers of this book, still lives.