For the River
by
Jonathan Eastman
In shade, this deep oak
Still bends to hide
A hollow throat
where your eyes first competed
With soft curves of light
Escaping into leaves.
We knew each other like all the meanings
Of the dark
That made secret names
To mark and leave
In the heart of the trunk.
I held you through summer,
Watched for signs,
Our hot blood
Collecting under skin,
Your colors deepening like dusk
In the fall sky.
I forgot to doubt my own voice,
A mirror repeating
Your image
Till the first cold nights
Brought others
Waiting for the ice to crack.
My friends are still eagles
Cocking their eyes.
I am a red fox
Searching the snow for traces…
You are the face of the river,
A reflection of trees,
Always moving away.
Published in Hollow Spring Review (1975) and Colorado-North Review and Scratchgravel Hills (1976)
by
Jonathan Eastman
In shade, this deep oak
Still bends to hide
A hollow throat
where your eyes first competed
With soft curves of light
Escaping into leaves.
We knew each other like all the meanings
Of the dark
That made secret names
To mark and leave
In the heart of the trunk.
I held you through summer,
Watched for signs,
Our hot blood
Collecting under skin,
Your colors deepening like dusk
In the fall sky.
I forgot to doubt my own voice,
A mirror repeating
Your image
Till the first cold nights
Brought others
Waiting for the ice to crack.
My friends are still eagles
Cocking their eyes.
I am a red fox
Searching the snow for traces…
You are the face of the river,
A reflection of trees,
Always moving away.
Published in Hollow Spring Review (1975) and Colorado-North Review and Scratchgravel Hills (1976)
Apophasis
by Jonathan Eastman
If poetry is dead
Dissect its corpse
Split it from crown
To sole and climb down
Inside the cranium
Past pitch black ghosts
Of thoughts and groans
Of the bard in his throes
And descend the pipe
Of words that once flowed
But now hang suspended
Like invisible cobs
Caught eternal in the craw
Take the narrow heart way and lose yourself
In the absence of lust
And hate and any spark
That might light the path
To resurrection
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
If poetry is dead
Dissect its corpse
Split it from crown
To sole and climb down
Inside the cranium
Past pitch black ghosts
Of thoughts and groans
Of the bard in his throes
And descend the pipe
Of words that once flowed
But now hang suspended
Like invisible cobs
Caught eternal in the craw
Take the narrow heart way and lose yourself
In the absence of lust
And hate and any spark
That might light the path
To resurrection
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
The Online Instructor's Lament
by Jonathan Eastman
Bending over jumbled alphabet
reacting to robots, data streams, LED screens,
students I commune with cut me
into belittled bytes, multitask me,
sequester me into segments divided
between which, as with
the distraction between breaths, I
digitally exist, naturally
but am supernaturally set aside,
quarantined like a virus,
placed in abeyance like a broken
chocolate bar incrementally selected, temporarily,
relished but in a moment rewrapped
in glinting gold foil that could attract and tempt . . .
if not shoved into a box and shelved
with ridged chips, sugar-crusted nuts and gooey figs
in the cornucopian cupboard of concentration
whose eclectic smells remain electronically
sealed from the senses behind a dull door.
So, relegated to the remote, I keep
like a covered painting, to my misanthropic self,
my musky oils never giving up drying, always dying
to be interpreted, or just to be beheld
in some mind’s eye instead of hovering
revoked from consideration and empathy
like a mummy rising only for stints
from a social sarcophagus when questions spark
my counterparts’ desire to revive me, reward me
for my patience with an email and small smiley face
and the simple gift of connection.
Published in Teaching as a Human Experience, May 2015.
Ode to Foosball
by Jonathan Eastman
So many silent celebrations
this game of grip and quick
push or pull and kick
to savor the cathartic crack of the ball
invisibly defying Zeno's law
by reaching the back wall
despite a miniature multitude of plastic
obstacles called "his men" so ludicrous
but lucid a segregation by color
of clones whose duty it is to satisfy
a Patton-like desire for battle,
for tallying victories in skirmish after
numbered skirmish or defeats tempered
by the prospect of a whole new war
beginning in the same instant you lose the last
at the drop of a hat, at the drop of the
ball into instant struggle for possession,
control, pass, catch, cradle, caress,
position, pause, feint, then flick the light fantastic
or feel disappointment so transient though
poignant that if not ignored soon enough
could lead to more.
So you learn to forget failure in foosball
like a fly you shoo so casually
it may never have existed.
this game of grip and quick
push or pull and kick
to savor the cathartic crack of the ball
invisibly defying Zeno's law
by reaching the back wall
despite a miniature multitude of plastic
obstacles called "his men" so ludicrous
but lucid a segregation by color
of clones whose duty it is to satisfy
a Patton-like desire for battle,
for tallying victories in skirmish after
numbered skirmish or defeats tempered
by the prospect of a whole new war
beginning in the same instant you lose the last
at the drop of a hat, at the drop of the
ball into instant struggle for possession,
control, pass, catch, cradle, caress,
position, pause, feint, then flick the light fantastic
or feel disappointment so transient though
poignant that if not ignored soon enough
could lead to more.
So you learn to forget failure in foosball
like a fly you shoo so casually
it may never have existed.
The Guidance of Fathers
by Jonathan Eastman
Arms inside the press
arms across the river
my brown granite in-law
my white marble father
guides purple roiling mulch
guides invisible nylon line
toward the mouth of the sluicing tube
toward the mouth of the rainbow trout
The way the wet wood flashes
The way the long rod lashes
in the hands of the vintner
in the hands of the angler
could be the oar of Peter
could be the staff of Moses
modeling deliberate action
teaching delicate inaction
working toward deliciousness
playing toward ecstasy
Into the cruel machine he rolls them
Onto the cruel gaffs he strings them
survivor of eighty autumns' harvests
surveyor of eighty summers' spawnings
violently he cranks the cold crushers
vehemently he sets the cold hooks
but slowly he siphons the sweet juice into casks
but softly he slits the tender flesh into slabs
At the noon the pressing will be finished
At the noon the fishing will be done
Guido's first batch will be fermenting
Harold's fresh catch will be freezing
and the son will still be learning
and the son will still be loving
The Woman Passing Van Gogh's Church at Auvers
by Jonathan Eastman
You could be sitting somewhere else--
on a smooth bench by a well, in shade,
rubbing a wetted corner of dress
over your taut forehead,
but you are walking in yellow sun,
just now taking the left-hand path,
Ahead, the church's shadow
is a fresh wound over the grass, flowing
and painless. At this moment the light is
hard--the gold-leaf roof of the right wing,
the wave of lillies bending
toward you, the linen basket
and your own blazing smock. Without
sweat and squinting it could be simple,
a kneeling in the deep lawn,
your gaze open into sky above the spire.
Instead, you pass into its shadow,
look up at the dark side of the church.
The stained glass wheels are calm,
a gray like your husband's eyes turned
away from the fire. Rested,
you take up the basket and step back
into the hot dust. You keep your eyes
almost closed, letting the path lead you away.
Published in Gathering, Fall 1986.
on a smooth bench by a well, in shade,
rubbing a wetted corner of dress
over your taut forehead,
but you are walking in yellow sun,
just now taking the left-hand path,
Ahead, the church's shadow
is a fresh wound over the grass, flowing
and painless. At this moment the light is
hard--the gold-leaf roof of the right wing,
the wave of lillies bending
toward you, the linen basket
and your own blazing smock. Without
sweat and squinting it could be simple,
a kneeling in the deep lawn,
your gaze open into sky above the spire.
Instead, you pass into its shadow,
look up at the dark side of the church.
The stained glass wheels are calm,
a gray like your husband's eyes turned
away from the fire. Rested,
you take up the basket and step back
into the hot dust. You keep your eyes
almost closed, letting the path lead you away.
Published in Gathering, Fall 1986.
For the People Who Died in the Salsbury Rest Home by Jonathan Eastman
A fire is destroying a rest home.
Smoke appears in doorways,
enters their hollow gaze
mistaken for a small child
or a shadow of a tree
deepening on the floor.
When they speak
the sound is overpowering.
Outside the window a chainsaw
searches for the right pitch,
young men carry their hearts
carefully over the dead.
I walk out, see this day
hold its blackened bones
to the light. I find an opening
and suddenly come apart,
wielding my own dark laments
at the sullen sky.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1976
and anthologized in Voices From the Interior: Poets of Missouri, 1982.
In Memory of Jean-Pierre Kolbach
by Jonathan Eastman
Slouched over soup
his cheeks hang
wrinkled
then suck hard
through rubber lips.
He laughed like a crazy man this morning,
bought us beer
and drank white wine,
joked about the war,
the Nazi with a broken bottle
who gouged a hole
in Jean-Pierre's skull
while he crawled through mud.
We were still
as his fingers traced the dent
grown smooth as his bald head.
He joked while we licked foam
off beer the waitress brought,
we couldn't watch her legs,
about a prison and two camps,
Auschwitz and Treblinka,
the cold turning the ground hard
under bare feet
joked as we drank
about a Polish man
they hung upside down in the yard
till the blood filled his head,
the head bulging
deep red and soft.
They popped it open
and he watched the sun
go down in blood
joked and walked us miles
around his city
with our questions
mumbling Luxembourg,
the underground,
when the Nazis came.
We listened in the old air
believing
his hands behind his back,
the ruins in the valley,
our shadows lengthening over stone.
Published in The Rectangle, Vol. 51, No. 1, Spring 1976.
his cheeks hang
wrinkled
then suck hard
through rubber lips.
He laughed like a crazy man this morning,
bought us beer
and drank white wine,
joked about the war,
the Nazi with a broken bottle
who gouged a hole
in Jean-Pierre's skull
while he crawled through mud.
We were still
as his fingers traced the dent
grown smooth as his bald head.
He joked while we licked foam
off beer the waitress brought,
we couldn't watch her legs,
about a prison and two camps,
Auschwitz and Treblinka,
the cold turning the ground hard
under bare feet
joked as we drank
about a Polish man
they hung upside down in the yard
till the blood filled his head,
the head bulging
deep red and soft.
They popped it open
and he watched the sun
go down in blood
joked and walked us miles
around his city
with our questions
mumbling Luxembourg,
the underground,
when the Nazis came.
We listened in the old air
believing
his hands behind his back,
the ruins in the valley,
our shadows lengthening over stone.
Published in The Rectangle, Vol. 51, No. 1, Spring 1976.
In Memory of Don Beerbower, US WW II Army Ace Fighter Pilot
by Jonathan Eastman
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me
--Traditional Scottish folksong
To bank, circle back, and re-attack,
we'll have to dare like Richthofen
when he followed his last dog down,
deliberately over enemy lines—he broke
with pilot sense and chose
sure-fire wreckage on one field or the other.
I'll make that choice then, for our piece
of payback that’ll make Bonnie B’s stick rattle.
Just let my indiscretion end in luck
cause we may all be ducks in the ack ack--
dummies re-strafing dummies
as my wingman fears—the airdrome's trick to lure us
Mustangs back in range of their sighted guns.
What a first run! Their strip and hangars still
all smoke—marked targets, we're half done!
So I, Jackknife 31, will finally transmit
Let’s have some fun, this is Red One, over
and lead my two flights in, no second guesses come,
even knowing the damn flak guns now draw better beads.
Well, surprise, sun and balls are all one aren’t they?
Here I go. Here we go Fighting Cobras!
Go! Go! Bonnie’s fifty-cals cast deadly ropes of lead,
real birds explode on the tarmac
and I take out towers one and two.
Bonita, Bonita Lea, this run’s yours,
Elayne, Please Elayne, don’t tell Dad
I love this so much I’ll have to stay even after war--
for this administration of flying steel, for sway
over fire and death, for squadron spirit under my command
more intense than flesh and yes, even challenging your satisfied sigh
surging under my hand. Forgive me, forgive me, please!
Under my Malcolm hood I can see clear,
thank God, in all directions, though
I am just human, just totally in synch with Bonnie and my men.
Our watches hack at the last seconds of the fight
but is that hubris I hear buzzing near? No, my nemesis--
a twenty-millimeter tears through her fuselage,
pares her wings and blows my canopy clean away. Glorious
at least to die climbing in my P51
above French fields, Reims’ haze, the winding Marne.
Here's a last salute to 3rd Army’s advance; I smell
Patton’s cigar and see Bradley’s widening smile.
Fascism is a sun that no longer blinds us.
But I am burning in this personal ether
of so many swastikas, my great record of kills
stenciled black on Bonnie’s side.
Top Ace, I am, Top Army Ace in this timeless moment,
this summit, grudgingly giving in to earth’s gravity,
falling back in a blaze like Phaethon fell back
to the Fields of Asphodel and flame.
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me
--Traditional Scottish folksong
To bank, circle back, and re-attack,
we'll have to dare like Richthofen
when he followed his last dog down,
deliberately over enemy lines—he broke
with pilot sense and chose
sure-fire wreckage on one field or the other.
I'll make that choice then, for our piece
of payback that’ll make Bonnie B’s stick rattle.
Just let my indiscretion end in luck
cause we may all be ducks in the ack ack--
dummies re-strafing dummies
as my wingman fears—the airdrome's trick to lure us
Mustangs back in range of their sighted guns.
What a first run! Their strip and hangars still
all smoke—marked targets, we're half done!
So I, Jackknife 31, will finally transmit
Let’s have some fun, this is Red One, over
and lead my two flights in, no second guesses come,
even knowing the damn flak guns now draw better beads.
Well, surprise, sun and balls are all one aren’t they?
Here I go. Here we go Fighting Cobras!
Go! Go! Bonnie’s fifty-cals cast deadly ropes of lead,
real birds explode on the tarmac
and I take out towers one and two.
Bonita, Bonita Lea, this run’s yours,
Elayne, Please Elayne, don’t tell Dad
I love this so much I’ll have to stay even after war--
for this administration of flying steel, for sway
over fire and death, for squadron spirit under my command
more intense than flesh and yes, even challenging your satisfied sigh
surging under my hand. Forgive me, forgive me, please!
Under my Malcolm hood I can see clear,
thank God, in all directions, though
I am just human, just totally in synch with Bonnie and my men.
Our watches hack at the last seconds of the fight
but is that hubris I hear buzzing near? No, my nemesis--
a twenty-millimeter tears through her fuselage,
pares her wings and blows my canopy clean away. Glorious
at least to die climbing in my P51
above French fields, Reims’ haze, the winding Marne.
Here's a last salute to 3rd Army’s advance; I smell
Patton’s cigar and see Bradley’s widening smile.
Fascism is a sun that no longer blinds us.
But I am burning in this personal ether
of so many swastikas, my great record of kills
stenciled black on Bonnie’s side.
Top Ace, I am, Top Army Ace in this timeless moment,
this summit, grudgingly giving in to earth’s gravity,
falling back in a blaze like Phaethon fell back
to the Fields of Asphodel and flame.
Old Television Coming On
by Jonathan Eastman
A blue pulse gone with its coming
Leaves electric residue
To fulminate in grey--
Neon whey tincture warning me
To step away from what might
Blaze from the bone-white enamel frame,
What sleeping imago I’ve conjured
Hunting tubes obsolete for half a century,
Coaxing a wizened stranger to tinker
For “the first color” and myself
Welding its main connection with primal fire
And a thin collar of magic—tape solder.
Husbanded voltage hums a modern mantra
In resurrected circuits . . . with no acrid incense
That would signal my experiment nonsense . . .
With no penal bolt of lightning and thunder.
From a distance far as Tartarus
Comes a glowing as in a crystal ball or a day-
Dream opening in a child’s mind—consciousness
Gelling in the interspace, a transmogrification
Of the face of the void into Aristotelian forms,
Causes, principles filling the big tube’s womb
Like a microcosmic holocaust rewound in time-
Lapse, and static laughs as if God were stroking
The stubble of the manifestation of “chin”
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
Leaves electric residue
To fulminate in grey--
Neon whey tincture warning me
To step away from what might
Blaze from the bone-white enamel frame,
What sleeping imago I’ve conjured
Hunting tubes obsolete for half a century,
Coaxing a wizened stranger to tinker
For “the first color” and myself
Welding its main connection with primal fire
And a thin collar of magic—tape solder.
Husbanded voltage hums a modern mantra
In resurrected circuits . . . with no acrid incense
That would signal my experiment nonsense . . .
With no penal bolt of lightning and thunder.
From a distance far as Tartarus
Comes a glowing as in a crystal ball or a day-
Dream opening in a child’s mind—consciousness
Gelling in the interspace, a transmogrification
Of the face of the void into Aristotelian forms,
Causes, principles filling the big tube’s womb
Like a microcosmic holocaust rewound in time-
Lapse, and static laughs as if God were stroking
The stubble of the manifestation of “chin”
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, "Garden Nettles" July 2012
Mongolian Beauty Contest
by Jonathan Eastman
Contestants hump in from the Gobi
already wearing crowns but
of caramel hair, coiffed by a hundred
wise men wedged between their work
become themselves shimmering orange
and aquamarine and topaz
center gems in their queen’s tiara.
Both king and queen carry their own
cup—beasts deep inside their blood
the oval cells, and men on their belts
the silver bowl—both beautiful
in patience between well and trough
and milk tea. But which Bactrian is most
beautiful? Can some judge fairly, weigh
what’s beneath the gold fringed humps,
brushed beard and eyelids’ double row of Marilyn
Monroes? Their long-lashed looks seem to say
I am too sublime for judgment;
I have ferried caravans across the continent
for centuries untold like gods wafting souls
across the eternal cosmos—but pick me
because I am eminently most gentle.
already wearing crowns but
of caramel hair, coiffed by a hundred
wise men wedged between their work
become themselves shimmering orange
and aquamarine and topaz
center gems in their queen’s tiara.
Both king and queen carry their own
cup—beasts deep inside their blood
the oval cells, and men on their belts
the silver bowl—both beautiful
in patience between well and trough
and milk tea. But which Bactrian is most
beautiful? Can some judge fairly, weigh
what’s beneath the gold fringed humps,
brushed beard and eyelids’ double row of Marilyn
Monroes? Their long-lashed looks seem to say
I am too sublime for judgment;
I have ferried caravans across the continent
for centuries untold like gods wafting souls
across the eternal cosmos—but pick me
because I am eminently most gentle.
Early Spring Sestina
I saw seven robins
in a tall sycamore tree, bare
of yellow leaves but one,
baring red-orange breasts to the rising
sun, except one that suddenly flew
from its stiff spindly perch
away into this world’s one
place no man or beast even robins
could look with eyes bare,
unscreened by branchy perch
or dark lenses as it flew
with my kindled soul rising.
Against the alabaster blaze it flew
somehow sacrificing as one, for one
who stayed to twitter like the robins,
shifting and ruffling on my own mental perch
without wing or risk of rising
out of feathery comfort, blinded and bare.
All little wishes and plans of day bare
but held like hollow bones, brooded on as robins
brood on eggs and give up thoughts of rising
and settle for hope at least one young one
will that spring spring from the perch
to seek all fledgling dreams that never flew.
As always at the corner I turned and took the rising
sidewalk away from the sycamore and the robins
and the symbol of a soul that sprang and flew
instead of staying safe, and I felt regret laid bare--
a pang of losing my chance to leave the languid perch
and fly up toward transcendence, a becoming one
with the world not just the one day rising
on the mundane neighborly horizon, the one
moment of sycamore and sun and one that flew
while others preferred the community perch.
So I fought to keep the scene and bear
it with me home to type in words like robins
on lines like bare branches where words perch,
and I fought not just for the image of those robins not rising
but especially for the meaning of the one that boldly flew.
in a tall sycamore tree, bare
of yellow leaves but one,
baring red-orange breasts to the rising
sun, except one that suddenly flew
from its stiff spindly perch
away into this world’s one
place no man or beast even robins
could look with eyes bare,
unscreened by branchy perch
or dark lenses as it flew
with my kindled soul rising.
Against the alabaster blaze it flew
somehow sacrificing as one, for one
who stayed to twitter like the robins,
shifting and ruffling on my own mental perch
without wing or risk of rising
out of feathery comfort, blinded and bare.
All little wishes and plans of day bare
but held like hollow bones, brooded on as robins
brood on eggs and give up thoughts of rising
and settle for hope at least one young one
will that spring spring from the perch
to seek all fledgling dreams that never flew.
As always at the corner I turned and took the rising
sidewalk away from the sycamore and the robins
and the symbol of a soul that sprang and flew
instead of staying safe, and I felt regret laid bare--
a pang of losing my chance to leave the languid perch
and fly up toward transcendence, a becoming one
with the world not just the one day rising
on the mundane neighborly horizon, the one
moment of sycamore and sun and one that flew
while others preferred the community perch.
So I fought to keep the scene and bear
it with me home to type in words like robins
on lines like bare branches where words perch,
and I fought not just for the image of those robins not rising
but especially for the meaning of the one that boldly flew.