poems from the cycle "Savior Salt"
 

1.
 

Shadow World

i.

In a world of fighting shadows you lived two last years, mother, in Chesapeake Bay

Breathing the word love

When there was no salve.
 

A train carrying yellow phosphorus derailed in western Ukraine, releasing a cloud of toxic gas into the air over 14 villages.

You close the paper which you cannot read anyway: you are blind.
 

The radio, however, is on:

''A disaster has happened. After the Chernobyl catastrophe we are dealing with a case that can pose a real threat for our people,'' said Kuzmuk. ''It is an extraordinary event, the consequences of which cannot be predicted.''
 

"Turn it low," you tell the aid. Local residents were advised to stay inside, not to use water from wells, eat vegetables from their gardens or drink the milk produced by their cows.
 

She hears it anyway, her hearing acute, can hear a sparrow fall off a branch.

Local residents were advised to stay inside, not to use water from wells, eat vegetables from their gardens or drink the milk produced by their cows.
 

"The coal corruption in China," you sigh,

"The shaky nuclear

industry in Nippon."
 

ii.

No one hastened to your death

Though the funeral bell

Was near they could not believe you would not rally one more time:

Like rust iron, the clang rang, the subdued summer

Knell in hell

When your own child burned, & gestured like Christ, like a scarecrow spine aflame

                She fell

                &  you wait till morning to call a child-doctor, to tell.

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2.
 

How champion a mother's life
 

She was not       (living by the Bay, having cut her teeth on Shakespeare)

beyond the power of speech

But where was love?

Still critical of people

She could not work it out:

Denial was the icon

dusty glass bubbles at the rim from the diver by her head:

Instead of an embrace, she traced

Her slowed downrace

a note

To its brace

cadence:

Like a rusty dove, fatally bulleted, bleeding

To her dovecote

Lost

Below on earth
 

Below on earth

From it?s

Outlined as on onionskin paper from above.

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3.
 

River-language
 

"Translation is part of the after-life of a work."

What come to hand, to mind are winding rivers

Elbow bends

Water of sparkling Chesapeake Bay

A miraculous crossing

From Newfoundland.

Noofies.

How does one move forward, water folded over the arm

Like a blanket

To make a bed.

Other peoples? daughters

In the morning we lost electricity

In afternoon water:

The solitude of stadium

Dark Salt.

Of savior

Of bones.

------------
 

4.

(Postlude)

We speak a river language
 

A damsel fly settles            on me.

In Finland snow crunches

In Toronto, it sends up a shower.
 

We offered a guest a mini pie in a pyrex.

Glass over crust

With Saskatoon berries, resembles a clear cup behind museum glass.
 

Mother told the ugly world to stop & let her off.

Will you land on a safe runway?

Scenario it out.
 

Eloquent sets of pipes down south write me

Who become bitter

That the help can swim in a pre-day drizzle. Lucky Dog.

What can one expect?

No envy? Tumor & sleeplessness, a river language this, it thrives.

No finishing school for swans, these irons, these cobalts are the crude pigments of our lives.