St. Paul Wheat Field #2, Pastel, by John Cummings
AFTER DINNER
I’m sitting in the kitchen after Sunday dinner
while my lady mixes batter for lemon cake,
and next to me at the table sit
Li Po, and Hayden Carruth,
and a bottle of wine two-thirds gone.
Leaning against my shoulder,
the cat waits, head bowed, with his tail
wrapped forward over his paws
like an eighteenth century great-coat.
Solemn and still, he has the look of an old colonel
who has tried, and failed, to warn the young men
leading the army that their plans are poorly thought out,
and will cost the lives of many soldiers.
You will bring our cause to ruin,
that is what he seems to be thinking, though
he says nothing, only shrugs, and looks up
when he hears the wind rattle chimes
out on the porch like a drunken guest.
Dusk. Pea-sized hail falls together
with snow so round it seems as if
my grandmother rolled each flake over and over
between her fore-finger and thumb.
The poets are talking amongst themselves.
“Remember,” they say, “we all are exiles.
Any sense of home you have is a delusion
helped along by wine, and the warmth of a ready oven.”
Even the cat, twelve years old this week,
knows better than I do what home means.
He has seen many campaigns
against mice, and shadows—he has defended us
from wild chickens and gryphons. Outside,
a junco is searching the ground
beneath the feeder which I have left empty
for three days, so, without a sweater, my feet
shod only with sandals, I take a cup full
of sunflower seeds out to him.
The wind pulls at my hair like an absent-minded barber.
It’s getting thin, he says. Your beard is turning white
already, aren’t you still young? Aren’t you afraid
to be seen like this? Cut it, I answer,
why tell a fish what it’s like to swim?
Chilled in moments, I return indoors
to watch my lady pour batter
into a cake pan, to help her measure
sugar for the glaze, like an alchemist
who no longer believes in magic,
but keeps working, keeps cooking lead, taking notes,
just in case he’s wrong, just in case
one of his spells accidentally turns something,
anything, even the wine, into gold…
______________
William Welch
Review by Nancy Christopherson
I deeply admire the T’ang Dynasty Chinese Masters, of whom Li Po is considered one of the greatest. Li Po, the “banished immortal” who penned his famous Thoughts on a Quiet Night and left behind a body of work of over a thousand poems. Left us his legendary drunken-death-by-drowning while out in a boat trying to embrace the moon. Needless to say, when I came upon Li Po and Hayden Carruth together in the same poem seated at the dinner table next to the poem’s speaker-protagonist along with a nearly empty bottle of wine, I was immediately taken and sat bolt upright to pay close attention. Something extraordinary and profound was about to happen. “The poets are talking amongst themselves”, the poem intimates. Yes, oh yes, I say, the reader is all ears. Absolutely irresistible moment and this reader found herself fully engrossed, hooked by the poet’s lines. Brilliant piece by William Welch.