Some nights
the Moon is ivory
and the sky ebony
like Liberace's
white piano
and some nights
it's blue
as my worn out
work shirt
the sky black
as dirt
I've dug from
the Earth
or maybe
an empty plate
howled at
by a hungry dog
a woman
in a yellow dress
she lifts
wading in the sea
an empty ship
sailing west
its cargo of diamonds
having scattered
far in the wind
but some night soon
it'll be the nightlight
on the wall
across the room
from my dark
shaded window.

The ocean through an opened window
Frontier between all that's known
of here
and sleep
riding out the waves as they come

A gull cries in passing

Waves sating themselves
in the womb of the earth
kissing the neck of Bride's Brook
Her seaweed streaming hair
in wind of tides
The moon's pull to release
coaxing spent and tender moans--

the farthest reach of sighs

the old woman stopped crying

though she knew the tears would return
like the prairie winds, without warning,
from some place she could not see    

soon they would come for him,
place him on the gurney
cover him in white shroud
wheel him through the door:

a horizontal journey,
like the vertical one he had made myriad times before,
on two strong legs, to and fro the pastures and pens
where he did sweat honest work  

she leaned over to kiss him a last time
in evening's fading light

she had honored his final request and turned him
so he could face the open window--his old eyes then toward the red barn, the gray fences, the ground his livestock grazed  

past all this, to the flatland that seemed to go on forever

perhaps a mirage is a dangling carrot
to keep us ever-seeking

perhaps our bodies are the freedom clothes
for our souls

and perhaps our sanity,
isn’t

sane at all
but a fata morgana

science has proven
the moon to be a

bell ---
hollow and resonant

for hours ---
a seismic anomaly

which sounds
when hit

perhaps science
is the fata morgana

and we are sane
after all


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

Such a huge, beautiful sky
Now that the mountains have all
Called in sick.

Plains where valleys were,
Seas withdraw as if in retreat;  
Defeated armies of

Timelessness. Wake of
Soil and stone. Such a
Huge, all embracing heaven  

Not even looking down.
And now, enter her, as I make
Myself comfortable with

My new life of treatments and
A violently shortened lifespan;
The one I always loved from

Within the shadows.
Willing me to live.
Caring.

A sleeper angel deployed to
Hold the holder;
Double-wing-cover from

The snow. Old love unspoken.
The kind that makes hills run for
Themselves.

Steady and unquestionable;
Tectonic shifts between hearts
Running out of

Tic-tocs and bass lines.
Plains where valleys were. She
Fills craters with her presence

In the room.
Never my girl; always my girl.
Sleeper angel activated.

I see why the seas withdraw.
No wonder the mountains called
In sick.

She raises solar storms with her little finger;
Conducts atmospheric changes with
A sigh.

Imagine we are home
and not lonely, imagine
our love which once cut
through strange waters
like longboats through hearts
not slow and heavy
from the moss of fear
we are here and not here
nights in our land are sad
the risings of the moon
are like sores we have given
our women, and we cannot sleep
for what we dream
the enemy will do, like filling
our children's throats with rocks
and place them in shallow swamps
where they will rise up
to tell us of fish with odd shapes
and men with torches
coming in from the sea
up to the beach on a black night
throwing open the gates
to our dying city.

It has been stamped with dispassionate blue ink,
Signifying its future lack of suitability to sit on the shelves,
Having been elbowed aside by this and that year’s thing
(And the book had not been checked out since the mid-seventies,
Perhaps some young man all but short-circuited
By the prospect of a bathing Julie Christie,
Or some female counterpart shedding bell-bottomed tears
Over doomed love, which, in her cosmology,
All such things were fated to be)
Placed in some temporary cardboard casket
Which once held bananas or copier paper or ancient time cards,
Sitting cheek to elbow with cookbooks, breathless biorhythm tomes,
Buffeted about forces unseen and beyond its control
As it faces the uncertain and uneasy prospect of possible reclamation.

i.

The sisters are, like their brethren everywhere,
An amalgamation of gentle touch
And soothing words delivered in sepia tones
(Comrade, you will be up
And out of here before you know it)
In such a manner as to convince you
That they believe it to be true as well,
But I have made something of a living
In the interpretation of the unsaid,
And what I have seen in a certain knitting of their eyebrows,
An occasional tightness around the throat,
The set of the jaw as the doctor studies my chart,
And I suspect that this may be
The final station on my excursion,
The last listing on the timetable;
Indeed, as I click off the inventory of my own person
(The fever, the unsightly and damning rash)
I have come to the conclusion
That I may find the denouement of this particular tale
To be highly unsatisfactory reading.

ii.

I am at considerable leisure to think, reminisce,
And even, though wholly without purpose, to dream.  
On more than one occasion
I have drifted back to a certain train ride
(I was headed to the Congress of the Peoples of the East,
Not without some trepidation, I might add)
Traversing almost all of Mother Russia, from Murmansk to Baku.  
Oh, there was any number of wonders
To be viewed through the windows:
The broad, seemingly endless steppes,
The grandeur of the Urals and Caucasus
The wide, sluggish Irtysh,
But there were other sights,
Unsettling, almost portentous views as well:
Villages, burnt and abandoned,
Cows and horses so thin
Their hides appeared almost threadbare,
Peasants of all ages whose eyes gave evidence
Of seeing such pain, hunger and death
That it was a wonder they could still stand upright,
Or, indeed, have the desire to do so.  
We, conversely, rode, if not in the lap of luxury,
Comfortably indeed—no shortage of coffee and *****,
Even caviar on a more or less daily basis.
Finally, no longer able to contain discontented thoughts
(I knew my outburst would be reported back to the Comintern)
I said to the Red Army captain sharing my compartment
That it seemed incongruous, if not counter-revolutionary,
To be overfed when the backbone of the proletariat
Was starving and dying before our eyes,
That, surely, there was something we could do.  
As he walked from his seat  toward the window,
He smiled and said as he pulled them downward
Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to pull the shades.


iii.


Again, having a certain gift of observation
Proves to be a mixed blessing:
There are certain signs (the adjacent beds
Being placed a touch farther away,
A certain distance, physical and otherwise
By the doctors and nurses)
And it is clear to me that my remaining sunrises and sunsets
May be counted on fingers and toes,
And my musings have turned to my placement
After I am discharged from further ministrations,
And I find it somewhat amusing if not entirely suitable
That the epitaph upon my tombstone
(If I am afforded such a luxury;
It is far from certain that the pig-eyed Zinoviev
May not just have me thrown into some dungheap,
There to sate the desperate hunger of the cur and the swine)
Will be likely written in Cyrillic,
An idiom I found wholly perplexing and inscrutable.

i.

drunken in my pockets,
the day whispers to the trees that
pin to you, albatross
of a wind-swept sea loosening
feathers and heart-beats in
short, death-caught seconds.

ii.

gorgeous girl of height,
your caves are bright mysteries
your light an elephant's graveyard
of grey.

iii.

bitter note of earth,
you anchor birth
to our eye sockets, unwrap
mint and honey from the hills.

iv.

uneasy mistress,
dark daughter of sight,
sunk into all the corners of the world
you break like string,
you break and i break with you.



v.

vignette of ivy-coloured dreams,
sunny trail, you break my heart and
glue it back, sigh and sigh like a viking raider
conjured out of porcelain
and rose-water.

vi.

warrior of distant planes,
dense harbour of a lonely city,
landscape of water, unravelled
in an instant, a velvet
ribbon tied into a bow.