Evocation Of River And Spirits (Revisited, Revised) Poem by Warren Falcon

for my parents, Warren & Geneva,
for Reginald McClelland,
and for Karthik

A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts. —Willard Van Orman Quine


in this city

to guess

having no acumen with
numbers and math but

father's over there in the
cup*1
tilted
over
spilling
into

o endlessly
its seams

seems as
seen from
river bank
into memory
which is
already
over-said
overheard
redundantly
as 'River
and 'Time'*2

- this one,
Time, now
recalls to
mind, dad

Dad (I address)

the cloud drift
and the flows
the tides beside
the city
(both sides)
is as ancient
as it always was
& is

as in the beginning
was darkness over
deep water & a word,
any word really
would do it,

form something
out of deep, of
dark, of water
which shapes it-
self only by outer
circumstance,

in this case

a word
leading up to
this -


father loves
with his cup
his pipe songs
of love

of love will he
dance between
the violent fasts
from love,

our mother,

with,

fast around around
& around the danced
livingroom
phonograph brass
loud plays
where June
curtains sway
even me and
Mr. Miller

I stand behind
them the curtained
dancers
entranced
entered into/
upon a mystery
how one could
be so swell, so
marvelous &
so cruel

(upon
one silver stem
hangs the metal
tin top*1 jags
tears at
memory edge
opens facts

FACT

that there was love

there was love after
all

I can see
it smell it
feel it there
dancing round
the living

one drop Mr.
Maxwell*1 holds
holds on to &
upon goodness
brown pulled
from below down
& dark into deep
such this is
the riddle it is
all now become
since you
departed, love

since you
departed I shall
count backward by
3's then by 4's

mixed in

(these father
memories)

torquing
the

door which once
embraced you now
never lets you

go

no matter
the black or
blue tide

you were
O lover

what
slips out
ebbs black
back into lapis

lapses into what
self is

uttered/poured
scored trans-
parent upon
surfaces

faces which
are eyes which
now glaze with
love/loss

beside the flue

glazes blue upon
the pane

the jasmine
unspurned
at last/least

O return
soft Junes
the lips of
which are
sometimes
pink, of
lavender
swollen as
if to kiss

x memory

x Maxwell the

house the cup
O Mr. Miller &
an O'Day*3 serenade
playing close

'...Hi ho
trailus boot whip
boo boo daddy
floy floy...' *3

the late night
suppers of chops
the peeled onions
the laughter the
potatoes boil
bubble in the
pot then
father
to dance
the butter in
the sizzle in
the cast iron
pan

their vespers
now descant,
descend

'...How high
the ocean, how
high the moon...' *3


hungry
the dish
it has all
become
feast for
black 'mouth'
which memory
becomes
& black mouse*3
makes again

x 3

the antinomies

a 'string

of pearls'

anemones

& you O lover

bring all them

back, so many,

to me now

x Pennsylvania 6-500


This, just to
reintroduce some
levity

for we (loves)
were many day-ed

x merry

we merrily played
harming no one,
not even the
mouse unmoved

perhaps, watching
perhaps, still,
still, from beneath
the god you insisted
be excluded from
all our nakedness

x 1 too many breaths

exchanged, groped

x many ropes all our

wanting

***
footnotes:

*1 - this image (and other similar references w/same footnote number) comes from large Maxwell House Coffee sign seen on Jersey side o Hudson River memory of dad opening coffee can, poem plays w/jagged can top, the stem it hangs on which like memory, can cut, draw blood/passion/pain which is also relationship

*2 - 'River and Time' - Novelist Thomas Wolfe's masterful novel, Of Time and the River, is evoked/remembered in the poem. Wolfe had and still has a profound effect upon me as human/writer

*3 - Anita O'Day, jazz chanteuse of the first half of the 1900's. She sang and recorded often with the Big Band Leaders of her day. O'Day put her unrecognizable stamp (style) on two popular song hits if her day, a swift dance tune, 'Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip' and a slow-dance-n-drool croon, 'How High The Ocean'

*4 - there had been a black mouse that showed up and moved in the day my lover flew back to India