Inside the knotted plastic bag he tossed
and caught in front of him the whole way home
were two new fish. They seemed to him to bear
a trademark not quite rare, as though the two
were penknife souvenirs from the next county.
The fish were alien and mediocre.

He felt his strength as if it were a bomb
that detonates with no complexity
of wires or clocks, fuse or even impact.
His tosses changed without much thought to heaves.
They arced, slowed, hung like miniature flames
trapped in a bubble, glanced the power lines . . .

The fish sped back an inch and forth an inch
in the bag cupped in the boy’s hands, and then
not in his hands at all, then on the grass.
He rolled the bag experimentally
over the gravel drive to demonstrate
again how well he kept from breaking it.

He hung it on a stick and jabbed the air
fitfully, like a hobo shooing bees.
He did his undecided best to burst
and also not to burst the bag. And when
within these limits neither fish had died,
the boy put down the bag and went inside.

##

See page 206. From "The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets." Edited by David Yezzi. Gotta love your local public library.

For Sean

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

##

I found my old poetry book from high school. This poem I remember well. I still have my pencil notes scribbled all over the book. The book is "For All Seasons." Edited by Rumboll and Gardener.

Imagine the first fire, the doubletakes

Among the vegans, cold, dark, wet: Cave guy

Strikes flint and, boom, you're grilling mammoth steaks,

You're holding hands, you're hooking up, you're dry.

And (years of R&D) it catches on,

Brick ovens, candlelight, of course appalling

Losses, but still, fondue, filet mignon,

And the three-alarm, fanned fire of your first calling

Until there's no more call for you, you box

Up your life's work, archive the ardencies,

The once hot, test -tube topics, and retire

To country climes, keeping an eye on the phlox

In your old field, avuncular now, at peace

With not quite having set the world

                                                                on fire.

##

See p 301, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets. Edited by David Yezzi

A branch that broke with the weight of the winter snow

went on with April, blooming anyway,

its death not having reached its hasty bud.

How simple- not to stop or think or know;

to answer a single impluse with a drive

that assumes the sap as a habit in the blood;

to carry on with business of the day

and eat the light and call itself alive.

 

##

I found this poet and this poem in a book I got out from our local library. "The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets." Edited by  David Yezzi.