DITCH (POEM)

                              Ditch

                                  

We need a ditch for two pipelines:

3/4" electrical conduit

to carry power

down to the pump in the well;

1‑1/4" polyvinyl chloride pipe

to suck water from the aquifer

     250 feet down

and push that water

up the hill

to the house.

I sweat and wonder:

if light were in that aquifer

and if my eyes were there,

what great mute movings

of mineral and water

would I see?

If once I saw that deep place,

I'd see it in my dreams forever,

see it every time

water gurgles up the pipe

I will lay in this ditch,

see it every time

water makes its aural glitter from the tap,

singing water music in our kitchen sink.

Ten feet from the old well,

left at forty‑five degrees ‑

so the ditch will fit the pipe fittings ‑

then fifty feet more

to the new well.

The D‑handle clam shovel

works for a while

in the clayey mud,

but won't cut the shallow asphalt

of the old driveway.

Get the pick.

Beeswax the handle's lower inches

till it's a sticky grip

that doesn't cramp the left hand;

leave slick the hard, smooth,

weathered hickory of the upper handle

so the right hand can slide,

like Rosendo Álvarez taught me

fifteen years ago.

Right hand, you push out and down in

a long arc, then begin

a quick pull to the waist

as the pick comes level.

Left hand, you stay a steady pivot

till we're horizontal, then

all systems accelerate

in the direction of the earth:

Knees ‑ you bend.

Butt ‑ you drop.

Left shoulder, pull

as left elbow rotates

     down and back.

Then, just before impact,

left hand, you

whip the pick.

Ahh.

The stiffly gooey crunch

of the pick's wide blade

through mineralized cottage cheese

of cold asphalt and decomposed granite gravel

satisfies.

Noon.

Stiff‑kneed downhill jog

with tail‑spiraling spaniel

to the mailbox.

Another rejection slip.

Back in the ditch,

whip the pick!

"Interesting," the editor said,

"but not our style."

My anger bites the asphalt:

a good sharp tool.

The driveway's cut now.

Clean the clods

and deepen the ditch.

The pick's still the best tool:

when I dangle the handle, the wide blade slides

along the trench bottom,

scooping out clods

and loose earth.

There.

Sixty feet of clean trench

     in half a day,

just the right depth,

straight as the pipe

that will lie in it.

Next time,

put this skill

in the poem.

Then the poem                                                  © 2013 Dean Metcalf

and the ditch                                                          P.O. Box 548

will carry power                                                    Joseph OR 97846

down to the well     

and water     

up the hill

to the house.                           

BUT THESE KISSES... (POEM)

But these kisses. . .

These kisses don’t sprint:

they slow jog the steep switchbacks

carved in cliff walls

by hooves of mountain goats

in the canyon

east of town.

These kisses swim pollywoggy

in dark underwater grottoes,

rub their backs on

cool blue stone.

These marmot kisses furryscurry home

to our sun-heated crack

in this granite rock.

These kisses sweat in the dark

like a nightshift coal miner

who wants to see his children

before they leave for school.

The other night one kiss fell asleep

and woke up under a taco stand

in East Los Angeles.

I’ve kissed before, been kissed before

but these kisses gambol out along the savannah

where we find lions

and lions

find us.

                                                      ©         Dean Metcalf

                                                                        1/15-2/6/2004

DOGS OF EBERLEIN STREET

Dogs of Eberlein Street

     I was sixteen. We lived in the Shasta View Apartments in Klamath Falls, another leftover WWII housing project that we lived in for most of my childhood because they were always the cheapest. The project was on the far side of town from the high school, and since it was winter and I was in basketball or wrestling practice every day after school and missed the bus, I walked home in the dark.

     I'd long since found the shortest way home. By the time I got to Eberlein Street, bordering  the northern edge of the project, I had it made. One night I turned onto Eberlein and was halfway along it, with only two or three blocks to go, when a dog came out and started barking at me. I tried to ignore it. They can smell fear, I'd always been told, so act like you're not afraid. 

     But the dog persisted. It wasn't your typical frontyard mutt sounding the alarm as you passed its territory. The dog seemed really angry, though I hadn't done anything, and hadn't strayed from the sidewalk. I got scared. The dog came in closer, barking and growling with real menace. It went for my ankles. I turned and kicked; it dodged just out of reach. It seemed to become even angrier. Other dogs in the neighborhood started barking. A second dog came out and joined the first. It seemed to have the same peculiar anger, as if the two of them had just discovered a kid who had severely abused them as puppies.

     They teamed up on me, making it difficult to move along the sidewalk. More dogs came. There were five or six. They all behaved the same way. I was terrified. I broke and ran. That infuriated them even more. Oh no you don't, they seemed to say. They worked like a wolf pack, cut me off. They got me in a circle. I broke out and ran. They cut me off again.

     I made it to the street light on the corner across the street from the project. They cornered me there in the cone of light at the base of the pole, barking furiously and growling and taking turns lunging in to nip at me. I was doing a frantic dance to avoid their teeth, trying to kick at them to drive them back, yet reluctant to actually kick one hard for fear they’d just tear me apart.

     I yelled at them, yelled for help. Porch lights were on all along the street, but no one came. I couldn’t believe that the noise the dogs and I were making didn’t bring people pouring out of the houses to help, or at least to see what was going on. But no one noticed. The human world was locked away inside those houses, and I was banished to some bestial zone outside it. 

     I finally flailed and yelled and stumbled my way across the street. The dogs peeled off and left once I entered the project. I ran into the apartment. I was shaking. I got out my .22 Ruger single action revolver, which Mom had let me buy on my sixteenth birthday, and just held it. I wanted to load it and go kill them. I knew I couldn’t just walk out in a populated neighborhood and start shooting, but every throbbing part of me wanted to. Mom tried to calm me down, and kept an eye on me lest I load the pistol and head for the door. 

     That night I went to bed and lay awake, holding the pistol, still shaking at times, looking out the window, looking for the dogs, wishing they would come up to the window, now that I was armed, wishing they would try to attack me again, right through the window, so that I would have no choice but to load and shoot, wishing I could shoot and shoot and kill them all.

ICICLES (POEM)

1/4/02 Chief Joseph Mountain

For three days, snow has fallen

onto the roof, thawed, slid,

frozen, slid again, curved, re-

frozen until a foot-thick whitecap

of corrugated ice

hangs above my door, a row

of two-foot icicles

along its lower edge. As

the ice became a half-circle

the icicles turned and pointed at the wall:

the very claws of winter.

It thawed again, and the icicles thinned

at one point only, near their tops, and

they drooped, then bent

until they pointed long slender

lumpy-knuckled fingers

at the ground.

Comes the light. Blue moon glows through

gauzy clouds; white stars blink

between.

I step off the porch,

look up, watch

as light enters ice.

Light enters ice, turns,

pings around inside

until the icicles begin

to vibrate, then hum.

Light becomes music, and

the row of crazy icicles

are skinny silver temple bells tolling

the hymn of winter.                                   

                                                               © Dean Metcalf 2002, 2012

IN THIS NEW TIME (POEM)

                           In This New Time

In this new time must come

to keepers of the word,

and to us all,

some yet unimagined alchemy

of the hard and the soft,

of the warrior and the nurse,

of Dad and Mom.

What we need is this:

the strength

to hammer stone apart

from every other stone

of that ancient wall we use

to keep us from ourselves,

and from one another;

the gentleness

to heal and help

the wounded bird of dormant sweetness

that we find, broken-winged

         and blinking,

huddled on the light-starved soil

behind that old stone wall.

But one fear

assails my mind

in this new time:

that I should

with clumsy word

crush the bird

but leave the wall                                                               Dean Metcalf

all standing.                                                                        P.O. Box 548

                                                                                           Joseph OR 97846                                                                                                    

FINDING JESUS, AND EB HOGUE'S KNIFE

Finding Jesus, and Eb Hogue's Knife

     We were living in a little rented house on Conklin Avenue in Grants Pass. Darrell and I met a kid named Eugene Wright, who was my age and lived a few houses up the street. He'd come around trying to sell Cloverine Brand Salve, some allpurpose ointment that magazine ads said you could sell door to door and make a lot of money. It came in tins the size of a snuff can. He didn't sell many. 

     Something had happened to Eugene's parents; there was some reason they couldn't raise him. He lived with his grandparents, the Hogues. He was an only child, a chubby kid who wasn't very strong. He'd been labeled a sissy, and took a lot of shit from other kids. He was very religious. 

     He and I became friends for a while. He didn't do much that I liked, like playing football or baseball, but he did read books, so we had that in common. He talked a lot about Jesus. I got bored with that, but everybody said it was the truth so I figured it must be so. He worked at converting Darrell and me. I remembered a time in Pasco when I'd asked, "Mom, is there a real God 'n' Jesus?" She'd just said, "Yes, dear," as if I'd asked if the sky were blue. I wanted more of an answer, but none came.

     Mom had been praying a lot more lately. It was pretty much in the air we breathed. In the small towns where we'd always lived, whenever somebody was born or died or got married, the seriousness of the occasion meant that it was a religious one. Heads would bow, some old man would pray out loud, and you had to be still. 

     Eugene kept after us to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal savior. He warned that we'd go to Hell if we didn't, and we knew he was right because everybody else said the same thing. The difference was that most people only said that if you asked them, and Eugene said it without being asked. Darrell and I shrugged and said, Well, guess we better do it, sure don't want to go to Hell. (Back then, you always capitalized nouns like heaven and hell and any pronoun or adjective that referred to God or Jesus.) 

     So one time when Eugene was talking about Jesus we asked him how you went about doing this.

     "It's easy," he said. We'd need a special place, one that was sort of secret and private. We were at his house. He led us out back to a shed that had a partial attic and we all climbed up there and knelt down, which we'd have had to do anyway because there wasn't space under the roof to stand. This was perfect, Eugene said, because Jesus didn't care where you accepted Him as long as you did it, and He could see everywhere, so you didn't have to be in church. (Pretty good, seeing through walls. Wish I could do that.... I imagined myself walking down Conklin Avenue watching women bathe.) Darrell and I hoped Eugene was right; we didn't want to go around thinking we were saved and then end up in Hell because we'd gone about it wrong. 

     So we knelt on the boards in that shed's attic and Eugene Wright asked us if we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and we said we did, and we all bowed our heads and Eugene said a prayer and that was that. We were Christians. Eugene was excited. Lots of preachers don't do that good, he said, getting two in one week.

    Some time later Ebenezer Hogue, Eugene's grandfather, put a .22 rifle to his head and killed himself in their living room. Eugene and his grandmother couldn't bear to stay in that house, so they moved a short distance away. Mom rented their house. She let us see the bloodstain on the wooden floor once, then put a rug over it and we moved in. It was the best house we'd ever lived in, with a back yard big enough for a vegetable garden. We’d learned in school that Indians had taught the Pilgrims to plant corn and beans in the same hills so the beans climbed the cornstalks. I planted ours the same way, and sure enough I didn't have to put in poles for the beans to climb. 

     Eugene gave me a hunting knife that had been his grandfather's. He didn't want to keep it because it saddened him, and he wasn't a hunter anyway. It was pretty old, with a small brass hilt. It had had a handle of two pieces of some early plastic, one riveted to either side of the tang. One side had fallen off. It had a crude sheath that Eb had made. He'd told Eugene it was the Indian kind. (The old man had told Eugene about seeing real wild Indians as a boy. When Eugene retold the story to me, I was so thrilled I could see a file of dusky figures, moving among the trees like a warm breeze, disappearing over a ridge.) The sheath had leather covering the blade but also wrapping around most of the handle. That way you didn't need a keeper strap, which brush could unsnap anyway when you walked through it, plucking out the knife without your even knowing it. Plus you didn't have to unsnap anything to draw the knife; you just grabbed the top of the handle and pulled it out. The hunting knife I carry to this day has a sheath I made the same way. 

     It wasn't a pretty knife, but it was mine. I didn't like that it was missing part of the handle until one day when I was throwing it in the front yard. Most hunting knives are heavier on the handle end, making it harder to control how they turn in the air, thus harder to stick. Having half its handle missing gave Eb's knife a nice balance. 

     I practiced. There was a tree in our front yard that was big enough that I could hit it every time, and its bark was soft and even, so the knife would stick easily when I could make it hit point first. I became a kid zen knifethrower. I would spend hours a day standing back from that tree, throwing the knife, retrieving it from the tree or wherever it had bounced to, walking back, throwing it again. 

     It was a matter of grip, release, and distance. It worked best to grip the knife by the blade and throw it overhand so the knife made a half turn and arrived at the tree point first. Once I saw the principle involved, I chose a favorite grip, the one with most of the blade in my hand, and settled in at the distance from the tree where that grip would give me a nice half turn and stick in the bark. I threw and retrieved and threw and retrieved. After a few days I could stick it almost every time at my chosen distance. I began to throw harder, and that changed things for a while but when I found the right combination it became even more consistent. Then I chose a spot in the bark for a smaller target, and before long I could throw the knife hard, stick it most of the time, and often very near that spot. Then I no longer seemed to be throwing the knife; it just flowed out of me as I let it go. 

FOOD CHAIN (POEM)

                         Food Chain

or: The 52^nd Screaming Fish

of Thanksgiving Day, 1971

                              by Dean Metcalf

You, fish ‑

I, fisherman ‑

we are the Cain and Abel of muscle.

Your yellowfin tunabelly

full of lesser fish

that you have murdered,

you take my double hook

your yellow side thunders under water

slapping sunlight up through blue water

all the way back to the sun.

You fight for your life.

I fight for your life.

Braided nylon line

slices my hands with

the electromuscular force

of your fighting, then massages

sea water and diesel fuel and fish slime

into the cuts.

I, sunburned sinew, throw

silver, blue, and yellow

thrashing muscular you

screaming, bleeding

to the heaving bloody oily

     salt steel deck.

Your scream is tiny:

a squeak, like escapes the quick turn

of basketball shoe on maple floor

yet in my ear it makes the whole blue Pacific

resonate with your dying.

I reach into your slime‑slick,

     hard‑rubber jawed,

     finetoothed mouth

for the hook;

you bleeding screaming

staccato tail‑flap

sewing‑machine‑STITCH

the hook across my hand,

leaving perfect dots of blood.

My skipper's voice grapples with the voices of the wind

and the Jimmy 671 diesel engine:

"You got other fish on!

Get that hook

back in the water!"

My hand is trapped inside your mouth,

all wrenching teeth and hook‑points.

I raise the other hand,

shout into the wind,

make a fist,

hammer it down,

crush your skull.

Your eyeball,

the size of a small lemon,

scoots: does it transmit

the sight of triumphant bloody me

     aboard a dizzy deck

back to your squashed fishy synapses?

Your fifteen pounds of perfect muscle

shudders, lets go my hand.

Your blood and mine mix with diesel

and seawater, wash out the scuppers,

returning home.

I will unload your body

at the Star‑Kist Cannery.

I will walk to the hock shop in San Diego,

redeem my guitar, adding the fifty cents

your life means to me

to the dollar amounts of the lives

of your frozen kin

here in the hold of the Dora B.

Or I will fall overboard,

where sharks circle,

waiting.