The sky eats up the trees

Readers of this blog also know that I love (my boy) James Schuyler. He was a master of the Write Right Now. Thus, his National Book Award winner, The Morning of the Poem which is one continuous dream of a morning, of a poem, of life observed. The Award was well-deserved. His work continues to influence writers of today.

Today.

The world seems scary. There isn’t a lot of solace. So I turn to poetry. Now is the time to immerse ourselves in poetry. To turn away from the world and all it’s turmoil and trauma. I’m not exactly going to put my head in a hole, but rather I want to describe to you another world. One without a ranting and raving orange-haired man. Thank you.

The sky eats up the trees

The newspaper comes. It
has a bellyful of bad news.
The sun is not where it was.
Nor is the moon. Once so
flat, now so round. A man

carries papers out of the house. Which makes a small

change. I read at night.

I take the train and go

to the city. Then I come

back. Mastic Shirley,

Patchogue, Quogue. And for

all the times I’ve stopped, hundreds, at their

stations, that’s all

I know. One has

a lumberyard. The sun

puts on a smile.

The day had a bulge

around 3 p.m. After,

it slips, cold and quiet

into night. I read

in bed. And in the a.m.

put a recond on to

shave to. Uptown in a

shop a man has blue

eyes that enchant. He

is friendly and inter

esting to me, though he is

not an interesting man.

Bad news is a funny kind

of breakfast. An addict

I can scarcely eat my

daily crumble without

its bulk. I read at

night and shave when

I get up. That’s true.

Life will change and

I am part of it and

will change too. So

will you, and you, and

you, the secret—what’s

a secret?—center of

my life, your name and

voice engraved like

record grooves upon

my life, spinning its

time between the lines

I read at night, a

graffito on the walls

of flavored paper I

see, looking up from

pages of Lady Mary

Wortley Montague or

a yellow back novel.

A quiet praise, yes,

that’s it, between the

lines I read at night.

From Collected Poems, James Schuyler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.