Alvarado

   Alvarado Street



   Over in Alvarado Street

   The siren cries its cry of other’s troubles;

   In the captive night of walls

   Each house is an infirmary

   Of undeclared wounds.

   On this bed of night and darkness

   Only my senses are pierced by

   The gunshots I hear,

   Like a telephone ringing in the distance.

   The quarreling voices weave arguments

   Beyond meaning

   Like the squabbling of birds

   Or the invisible children who cry out

   And wither and fall to pieces

   In alternate universes.

   Out the window there is nothing to see:

   Spilled light, the gray puzzle of streets and buildings,

   Cars that rush after private illusions,

   A sky in which all the stars have sunk

   Beneath the muddied waters of space.

   I feel only my body.

   Copyright 2000 by H. L. Rucks. All rights reserved.


	Always You Already many times by then we had seen The single coin of the moon Reflected in the mirror of our tears, As we floated by the burning towns On a raft of thorned memories. In the encompassing night I heard your sobs amid the mountains of the sheets. The salty moistness of your mouth Filled with carnations and spikes Crying out for new Life, new Love. I banished you with the ghosts of morning And endured what fragments of eternity Happened my way to endure. Until the moon spilled your body of milk Again into my bed one day before dawn When the laws of Newton were in abeyance And the logic of Time slid sideways. Our sweating limbs entwined in mutual denial, My mouth praised Egypt your thighs. The broken melons under the window Gave up a fragrance of stored rain. An errant breeze wandered in from the garden, Carressing the scorched canyons, And wrapped the toothed flesh in mist. We believed again, cloaked in a mantle Of miraculous forgiveness, Sowing love's tear-shaped seeds Almost purified, almost immortal One last time. Then the day, like raw meat; you were gone. My pedestrian eyes searched your imprint On the bed for solace but found only The abstract outline of a warm illusion. It didn't matter-- there were others to spill Their hair upon my pillow. You did not come back; I did not search for you on the banks. The numbered eyes of money that count the hours From office and factory walls Made their endless revolutions, Totalling weeks and months, And finally years. You became a myth, A circle of ashes ringed with stones, Tales I told myself of wholeness, A secret island the waves of days erased And rebuilt sometimes at night in dreams. Down the road of many Sphinxes, Crouched behind their riddles, I remained aloof-- that talent you taught me To survive the shifting borders And spinning stars-- To lay no claim to the dunes Or the waters in the wells. In short not to bother about love. How could I have known then It would always be you behind the veils Of the others, your delegate flesh? Variations on a theme of you Sent to test my faith. I have been true. I remain in the garden Amid the bones, Flayed of love. Copyright 2000 by H. L. Rucks. All rights reserved.

Amazing Grace
   (for Ruth Nash)

   Red River Valley tears of funeral
   Mounds neat as furrows
   Buried in their white shirts and overalls
   Between the railroad tracks and the Interstate
   Not peace exactly, but a freedom from going.
   Here, rooted at last to this hillside beside the caravans
   They have come to rest, their hands without work,
   Excused finally from ownership and striving.

   We picked the white irises from beside the porch,
   Something of yours in the brass urn,
   Stems tumid, petals like frail wings
   Fluttering in the breeze
   As if they would ascend to heaven..
   Then after the Biblical words, the living released,
   The angels forgetting their poise,
   Soon accumulated most earthly
   Stains on white frocks,
   As breathless granddaughters
   Fled with butterfly urgency
   From cousins bound in ties.

   The wagons are all gone, the mules extinct.
   The old house leaned and kept on leaning.
   Finally lightning got the pear tree
   After so many fat jars of breakfast sweetness.
   The hames and harnesses turned to dust
   On the barn walls whose nails
   At last despaired and one summer evening
   Succumbed to the impertinence of a storm.
   Only the scores of quilts remain,
   Warming the bodies of the living,
   Causing a few to recall at times
   The busy hands that guided the needles
   And the gentle squabbles of the sisters
   Over how to sew the scraps.

   At night under the stars you can hear the trucks
   Coming from a long way off,
   The hollow whine as they cross the river,
   The gearing down to make the hill,
   And then the swoosh as they shake the ground,
   Passing the cemetery on the north,
   Devouring the miles, the hours, the darkness,
   Thundering toward Dallas, Tulsa, or Phoenix.
   The trains come too, several times a week,
   With their lonesome wails that wound the heart
   And ruffle the prairie grass and then fade
   Into the distance with their elongated message
   Of perpetual motion.

   Copyright 2000 by H. L. Rucks. All rights reserved.

   Spontaneous Generation



   Suddenly a cloud-burst on a summer afternoon,

   The heavy thud of falling water on rooftops,

   Pavement, and leaves,

   Each droplet beating the drum

   Of ancient being.

   The smell of sky mingles with earth,

   Unleashing children who roam

   Splashing through rivers,

   Lately streets.

   Hair wet back on their heads,

   Sliding across puddles sleek as seals.

   They shout, Watch This!

   Happily regenerated

   By this unexpected sea-change

   In the dusty heart of August.

   Copyright 2000 by H. L. Rucks. All rights reserved.


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