walking helena

what follows is a poem
by a friend from way back
we were in 4th grade together
we graduated from the same high school
and the same college

i've been asking him about this poem
for a few years now

it came today via cyberespace

i type it out lovingly
as if i have nothing better to do

i suspect the reference to ed lahey
is geographically constrained
to montana


WALKING HELENA: On Hearing Ed Lahey Proclaimed Our Finest Living Poet
(For Lee at Fifty, a fair daughter of Kathleen ni Houlihan)

Wives hate poets on long grey afternoons
With no grass mowed or gardens tended
And the only ground broken in the heart.

Dust dancing in shafts of light
Above the kitchen table
Mixing with the steam of coffee cups
And mugs of tea laced with spirits
A slight ripple across the surface
From the tremor of nerves washed clean.

Words passed back and forth
Hard and fast
Occasional jarring shards of silence
As images settled
Breathing light into the space between.

Eyes gleaming
Blood running high in Irish cheeks
Specks of brownies lodged in beards and teeth
Words unlabelled
Making nothing happen at an alarming rate.

Wives hate poets alive with words
And pride and blood-cracked eyes
Crying for ghost horses and broken down miners
Breaking rocks colored and alive with peacock screams.

As dusk descends on supper smells
And hungry children circle among the words
Tossed back and forth
Breath tinged with whiskey and cigarettes
A rage of sound softer than the evening news.

Wives hate poets who spend the night
Beneath quilts on couches
Snoring words past remembering
To children in the morning on their way to school
The breath and adventure of miners' muck
And picks and hard steel rails running into darkness.

Leo Ward
September 2005


it's a poem one could live with for awhile
i will restrain from comment
as i tend to believe we place to much emphasis
on such things as commentary in our day