Home & Away
The Old Town Poems
Kevin Miller
Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press
New York
Home & Away: The Old Town Poems
By Kevin Miller
ISBN 978-1-929355-48-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930742
Design by Susan Ramundo
Cover by Jonas Lerman
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Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following magazines and presses where versions of these poems first appeared.
The Silence after March Beloit Poetry Journal
Poem for Jonas Before Independence Day The Burnside Review
The Battery in October Crab Creek Review
One Kind Boy Crab Creek Review
In the One Crab Creek Review/Tacoma Arts Commission Broadside Series
Spider Said Crab Creek Review
Box of Spider’s Crab Creek Review
Eighth Grade Spring Crab Creek Review
Your People Crab Creek Review
Clown Curse Cranky
These Matters DMQ Review
Late August, Dog Days DMQ Review
Near Spring, Old Town Gingko Tree Review
Fall Gospels in Old Town Gingko Tree Review
Anniversary: Four Plus Change King County Poetry on the Buses 2001
At Clancy’s Fruit Stand King County Poetry on the Buses 2001
The Water in These Dried Things Literary Salt
The New Place Literary Salt
Jim Returns Wearing Picasso’s Shirt Plymouth Writer Anthology
He Nails His Poems to the Cabin Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf/Peasandcues Press Broadside Series
When You See Yourself as You Might Be Poetry Northwest
What Stopped You for Years Pontoon
Sleeping Till Noon Pontoon
Old Town Pears Seattle Review
Heir Apparent String Town
Poem for Flemming Palle Hansen String Town
What Muriel Gave Jim Triton
On Lunch Duty, The Principal Considers
Intelligent Design Twaddle/also Cascade
Dishes Voices on the Wind
Horse Heaven Hills Windfall
To Make Ends Meet zyzzyva
From this Angle zyzzyva
I am grateful for the Tacoma Artists Initiative Grant from The Tacoma Arts Commission, which assisted with the completion of this project.
My thanks to Barry Grimes, Derek Sheffield, Joseph and Marquita Green, Peasandcues Press, Allen Braden,
Casey Fuller, Loren Sundlee, Jim and Karen Bodeen, Blue Begonia Press, Jonas Lerman, Vance Thompson, Kathi Morrison-Taylor, Dan Peters, Mike Robinson, King’s Books, and Jack Estes.
For Cam
Small things
make the past.
Make the present seem out of place.
Eavan Boland
Table of Contents
I. Home
Poem for Jonas Before Independence Day
Near Spring Old Town
What the Day Provides
The New Place
Renting
Three Bridges Building
October, Commencement Bay
Fall Gospels in Old Town
Tacoma
The Water in These Dried Things
First Winter
From This Angle
Anniversary: Four Plus Change
Understated Garden
Apology after Saying…
Walk Me to the Moon
Conversation Before June Solstice
One Summer
You See Yourself as You Might Be
Incomplete Plan for the End of the Year
Clown Curse
Saturday in December Light
The Mail, November
The Birthday Ministry
The List of People You Wanted to Be
Non-League Play
His Place at the Table
Dishes
There
Kickspace
TableLate August, Dog Days
Horse Heaven Hills
Old Town Pears
II. AWAY
To Make Ends Meet
The Silence After March
One Kind Boy
Eighth Grade Spring
Petition for Sister Angela McCarthy
Your People
These Matters
Your River, Your Morning
What Stopped You for Years
The Battery in October
Driving North in September Rain
March, Hawks Prairie
In Mary Anne Waters’ Book Jacket Photo
Sleeping Till Noon
Rescue
The Here After
To Stay Beyond the Season
Poem for Flemming Palle Hansen
The Grenå
In the One
Spider Said
A Box of Spider’s
Even Better Than Luck
Cate at the Kitchen Table
Heir Apparent
Jim Returns Wearing Picasso’s Shirt
At Clancy’s Fruit Stand
In the Wenatchee Valley Late March
Wasps
What Muriel Taught Jim and Jim Taught Me
On Lunch Duty, the Principal Considers Intelligent Design
The Hoop in Wallace Stevens’ Backyard
Custodians
Voucher
He Nails his Poems to the Cabin
HOME
You nearly have to be born
into a place to know what’s
going on and what to do.
John McGahern
1.
Poem for Jonas Before Independence Day
The celebration begins tomorrow.
No one will settle for candles and cake.
Distance between us is metered in marks
where people have stepped out of their lives.
Melissa gave up a child and her apartment
over the store. Little things mean more
than they should. Starlings are in the fig trees.
People on 27th painted a brick house white.
A neighbor races up the alley
as if some god will mend any child struck.
Tomorrow they will hang the flags in Old Town.
Nothing frees my sleep of the man racing
after his bus. He waves one hand, his raincoat
no more help than the briefcase banging his knee.
The driver always sees him and continues.
No flag unfurls here. I snap clean the rug
that announces the bunker’s entrance.
Today I practice my basement anthem. Its slow
deep refrain sounds best against concrete walls.
Nothing explodes or sparkles in this dark.
I keep safe a place for children, for the first lost dog.
2.
Near Spring, Old Town
Tacoma, Washington
The famous neighbor pulls weeds
in her rockery like another mother
down the block whose peonies make
their quiet way underground this short month
when rain clouds loom as dark as loam
on the roughed hands of working women.
Work and worship, they genuflect
in the shadow of St. Patrick’s tower.
Women praise this warm earth.
Their hands turn beds to borders
for lavender and alyssum to cross.
They make a place safe for snakes,
sparrows, a strip of color and shade.
One woman cannot see the other.
They have daughters not home from school,
jobs, mail on the counter, the idea of May.
One woman’s pine tree casts a shadow
within feet of the other’s yard, one has a row
of plum trees ready to line white light
for neighbors to follow to Commencement Bay.
Days from now when March clouds hail,
they will warm their hands with cups of tea.