Poems

aaron novick

Row, Row, Row…

Its rabbit-ears prick up, tuned to the light 

that’s breaching the palpable sky. Shallowest 

of flowers, the iris creeps across the water, 

wavers. Look: how perfectly it mimics 

its original. I say original 

but only feel this breeze that’s blowing now. 

A silent picture hazarded in flux, 

a reverie reflected in my face, 

the iris now unsettles, now reforms.

(The deathless poem will be made of words) 

The deathless poem will be made of words, 

and those words of letters, and those letters, 

in their turn, of indelible 

atoms suitably mixed 

with void. There is the trouble, the void, 

the emptiness that leaves room 

for motion. Give an atom 

room and it will swerve, 

unpredictably. It may 

not seem like much, a single atom 

swerving, but it compounds 

faster than you’d think. 

That is why nothing fashioned from matter 

lasts forever, not even the goddess 

who has so kindly given 

me these few words. 

Do not be afraid, Felicity. 

Death is nothing to us – nothing.

Scene (3) 

Beyond your window, earthen notes: the chirr 

Of a weed-eater (the grass a froth); the swell 

Of cars, waves crashing on rocks, falling back;

Crickets, ceaseless, heard in the slight gaps. 

At the quietest, even the trees, shuddering. 

Have you heard? Nor the finger, nor the eye 

Reaches. Lay your hand on the silver maple –

The moon, eclipsed by Green Tree's water tower, 

Emerges, shining dimly down on fog-

Occluded trees, then sinks under the glare 

Of the rising sun. In its feebleness, the moon 

Seems gossamer, as if this conspiracy 

Of angles had penetrated right to the substance 

And sapped it, and, what do you know, maybe it did. 

Above you, water is cascading down 

A meager falls. Beside it, dulled to brown, 

Hang the snapped stems of once-lush greenery, 

Now growing only a thick coat of ice 

From water that, jubilant in descent, 

In droplets dances upwards, catches, holds, 

Never reaching the bullfrog dead below. 

A mirror shatters in gravel, each fragment 

Reflecting fragments of the whole you feel 

That you are not (such as that waterfall 

In Alabama, the tree that, just beyond 

The cascade's reach, clings to the rock, its roots 

Suspended gladly in air, its branches ghosts, 

Gasping in spray), except for those face-down. 

Or else the water black with tadpoles, the mud 

Squirming with frogs. Transience! "What a bargain!" 

A jocose voice cries out, though it goes on 

To treat it in dead earnest. No, it says, 

That is how the gift must work: a purchase, 

Paid for with the losing. So why gift? 

The funny thing, it says, concerning words...

Time, ever stranging, deserts you, wanders off 

In indecision, resembling a multitude 

Of crows that, from a single tree, badger 

The sun to wakefulness on a winter morning 

Only to, later that same day, shout it down 

From its perch, until one final constant remains: 

The dog that's always barking in the loom. 

You tried to weave this tightly, but you failed: 

The threads are tenuous, and draggle stragglers 

That obscure the pattern (assuming pattern 

Is really the just word), waiting to catch 

On the gnawed-on branches you're now stretching out 

And unravel. – yes, lay your hand on the silver maple: 

You will only feel the distance the more.