Town and country
Haz M Saïd
Poems
Town and country
Copyright © 2003 Haz M Saïd
hmsaid@gmail.com
Contents
THE CITY PROPER 5
Choosing two 6
Pen remembered 7
Voir dire 8
At the cliff house 9
Terminal 10
An egg opened 11
A running tally of success measured in storeys 12
Apron string 13
Bob 14
Sharpening 16
The city proper 17
Idea for a life 18
Day trips 19
OFF THE GRID 20
Ready road 21
Accident in the valley 22
Sherpa driving 23
A day where I live 25
Twenty acres 26
Autumn mundane 27
Barndollar 28
Across the creek through binoculars 29
Self made soul 30
Off the grid 31
Fruit 32
Malinger 33
What expatriate escapes himself as well?
Horace
THE CITY PROPER
Choosing two
Here is a bike, steady on its kickstand
In the grass of the yard.
The wheels are good; the spokes are straight,
There’s tread. There’s a working bell,
Where the handlebars curve back to the
Grips there are small hooks for
Streamers, where the fenders attach to the
Hubs there could be put clothespins
And trading cards. With some attention and
An old t-shirt this bike could clean up for a
Small town parade. When I am not using it
The bike goes behind some bushes
As an invitation to neighbors, like Hugh, who
Is 300 pounds and sometimes,
Second breakfast, late for work. Imagine him
Standing up in the pedals all the way to
The quarry and nosing down over the front
Wheel to coast back past the braking
Roadmasters of his shift buddies and
Shriner bosses. When I am not using it, a cat
Curls up on the seat of my bike and wraps its
Tail around the seat post. Early
In the afternoon I will see the bike
Shining for me to take it and ride. And if I do
Shoo the cat and go, imagine me spinning in
My seat, north out of town,
Waving to kids holding pinwheels to my draft.
North and north forgetting
That I will have to make this whole distance
Again home; stretches of road raveling under
Me til I tire in my lungs and in my choices,
Brash as filigree on a quarryman’s towncar.
Pen remembered
Sometimes I just held it. Fiddling with the clip,
loading and unloading the spring, running my
long finger over and over a favorite depression
underside of the initials. Not my
initials; this is a handed-down pen. But aside
my attachment to that smoothed wow made
from generations’ use, this wasn’t but a keepsake
handed-over. That it worked,
that I again wouldn’t have to pay for a fair
regulation of ink that summer, that something
free in the hand might translate to the other
parts of me involved here; that mattered
more than cursory remembrance in a distant
aunt’s cursive will. And as it turns out, the well
of that pen has since limbered much more
than a season’s ream of paper. I count
that among the advantages of this family’s
oral tradition. Still I’m sure there can’t be
much ink left in there. And what good can
come of writing propelled
through such distraction? I set it aside in favor
of a fresh conference room model saved from
last year, a thin blue straw certain to cultivate
in me anything but infatuation. So now,
if cousin visits and sees his mother’s pen on
my desk, I can broadly insist that he take it with
him. And after ritual scuffle we can be proud,
playing out parts in tradition’s dictates.
Voir dire
There are memories like hooks and surfaces
On a hallstand by the keeping door of one’s
Earliest home, heirlooms of recollection
Made of gracious, grandmother-faded
Curtains billowing in the afternoon. I am
Trying to answer your question, my drink is
Sweating, and because of the sometime gusts
Through here, things are swept missing
Behind these hulks of furniture. What have I
Told you about the happenings here? It hasn’t
Changed; there was a family, lights came on
In the rooms, carriages were traded for cars,
There were dinners and twice, on the lawn,
Weddings. Among these and other things there
Is so much of which I am unsure. But, again,
Only she could have put that sully knife there.
At the cliff house
The fog would roll in through the kitchen window
over the landlady’s rattan.
Along the mantle there were your falcons, your
snowmen, canopic jars, toltecan urns, a wish list
amber and the room would fill and its canopy would billow
and the ceiling coved
a lens focusing the darkness
as if the light out wasn’t enough to hide
what I was really doing when I—
Why would you think you weren’t a woman anymore?
It was that well, that tapped hollow
that finally drew me.
The fog pushed on past the couches, the chifforobe
through the armature of the murphy, out
through the washroom window.
The dialogue north south complete
the balance of power shifted.
The terminal fog here, slipping out
over the fire escape like a lost sock that I
am still looking for.
Terminal
An old man mutters
you never lose your love for trains
You look for the eyes, past the bb pocks
and switch furrows, under a
Fur hat in the squinty particulate
heat. And you don’t find them, so
You ask those near, do you know him
is he to be trusted
And with hands rustling in your pockets,
trailing behind him, contemplating
The makeshift serration of a key
you see yourself balancing
On a rail next to this bentwood soul