JAMIE IRONS


Fourteen Lines for Elijah by the Sea
Tomales Bay

Willow and alder tangle noiseless, bare
Limbs grappling where the Holstein sink knee-deep
In cold muck's stink, and ruminate and stare
Through us, to hills. We're dumb to them. That creep
Of soil downhill, that glassy winter calm
Where tides that put a second on the year
Retard the earth's turning, raise the alarm
None hears. By now we've all turned a tin ear
To change, the winter opening like a rose
To hold us, the air flaking off sapphire
Oceanward, and I'm freezing.Now suppose
I break down in pasture, like an old tire,
A last gesture, artless as one that left
Nothing but sinew, hair and bone for Death.

 

Poems by Jamie Irons:

On Hearing, But Not Seeing, a Cardinal
A Second Reading of The Book of Tea
Celestial Mechanics and the I
Mowing the Field, I Spare Convolvulus,
Blue-Eyed Grass, Wild Iris, Wild Hyacinth
Spring Equinox Spent at Planned Parenthood
Fourteen Lines for Elijah by the Sea
Motion in Three-Space, Motion in the Plane
Hitch-Hiking
Beautiful River
Finding the Complex Roots of Unity
Burden
After the Shipwreck, Crawling Back to You
The Calculus of Variation Holds
Iron

TIMES TEN: An Anthology of Northern California Poets