Michael+Crombie

By David Bottoms  We have all seen them circling pastures, have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing, the fences of our own backyards, and have stood amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift. But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds, every limb of the dead oak feathered black,
 * Under the Vulture-Tree **

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat and pull it toward the tree. The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed red, ugly as a human heart. Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river, reluctant, looking back at their roost, calling them what I'd never called them, what they are, those dwarfed transfiguring angels, who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle crushed on the shoulder of the road, who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost, with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.


 * Pumpernickel**

Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye, onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for, pumpernickel that demanded cornmeal, ripe caraway, mashed potatoes & several Old Testament stories about patience & fortitude & for which she cursed in five languages if it didn’t pop out fat as an apple-cheeked peasant bride. But bread, after all, is only bread & who has time to fuss all day & end up with a dead heart if it flops? Why bother? I’ll tell you why. For the moment when the steam curls off the black crust like a strip of pure sunlight & the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem pulling out of its own stubborn complexity a single glistening truth & who can help but wonder at the mystery of the human heart when you hold a slice up to the light in all its absurd splendor & I tell you we must risk everything for the raw recipe of our passion.

By Amy Lowell
 * A Fixed Life**

What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant; and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.