The Other Side of the River Poem by Robert Dana

Half-Irish, half-Italian.
A Gemini.

Two operas. One for each head.

The first, dark and sad.

The other, a bluster of light.
Spectacles.
Not stories.

//

Nature passing through us all. Wind through a screen door.

//

The other side of the river,
my old friend,
wicked competitor,

mind that moved words as surely as a surgeon his knife,

sinks daily deeper into dementia.

//

This afternoon, rereading his poems,
I see how nothing blatant troubles them—

no mother-murderers of their children,

no stink of sweat,
no mill hands swilling down shooters at the end of the day,

no dead mule in the cane rows.

//

Money, that subtext of palm trees and dust.
Most distant of stars at the moon's eclipse.

//

Still—
troubles enough to order a life.

A world unsatisfactory.

Made beautiful, occasionally,
by a blues tune, the memory of a girl's white breast,

wild asterisks of sunlight on the water,

an aunt, an uncle, an old house on a dirt road.

//

And now, he's going down hard.
And slow.

//

May 21st.

A chilly, grey morning.

Cottonwood seed sailing down like snow,
whitening the lawn, gathering into little drifts along the drive.

Then the 8 o'clock tumble up the sidewalk—
of first grade boys barely as big as their book bags,
past our maple, past the lilacs,
loud for their bus.

Is there, among them, a Spinoza? Mickey Mantle?

//

Catkins.
Pollen, dried to yellow mud
and crusted at the edges of deck planks and patio tables.

No answer
from the high wind wild in the oaks, hickories, cherries.

No answer from the large, black eyes
of the barred owls down the creek.

Cold night filling up the ravine.