Tom Sheehan - Two Poems
Concession to Wood
Windowsill Passage
____________________________________________
Concession to Wood
What is heard as ankle deep
bites of an ax is my son
tossing a ball at the end
of the house, past the garage
quiet as an empty box
this April day before grass
begins its perennial
struggle through last year’s leavings.
Only an hour ago we
found a last handful of snow,
but a mischievous toadstool
playing hide and seek with spring,
beneath our quarry of leaves
scattered about like small talk.
In a last act of winter,
or spring’s prime, for that matter,
he first molded it to form,
then flung it the diamond length
of the yard at a maple tree.
He doesn’t know the maple
talks to me on legend nights,
that it says, "Hold. Hold. Hold on,"
or sideways broad leaves catch hold
of southwest winds, desert-fed,
saying. "Sun is in this wind,"
or that split limbs whistle words
I hear through housebroken wood,
sills, uprights, joists, lintels;
"I lay claim a space for you.
I mine this territory for
the repose of your soul."
I acquiesce that dark roots
carve a deep earth sepulcher.
When I lay my spirit down,
when my final breath is frost
and blood is brighter by stars,
the soft room within those roots
will accept my tenancy.
All my son hears is the storm
barrage-like in gray tree limbs
during northeasterly wars,
or calamities lightning
loosed last August in its heart,
bright blue flares and white phosphor-
ous powders arcing to an
incomprehensible light,
like God’s eyes had exploded
the final incandescence.
Occasionally he hears
the tree empty its buckets
of heart-flamed leaves extracted
from the hot core of fire
only autumn can ignite,
or he hears new spring trickle
from a miniature ladle
half an inch beneath the bark.
He never hears the tree talk,
never hears it speak of pain,
or how many miles its roots
have gone dowsing underground.
He hears the sounds I’ve forgotten;
gunshots from a baseball bat,
chattering of hockey sticks
like old folks in a circle,
crowd noises, fathers prodding
the shadows of their egos
to a capability neither one
of them can ever reach.
We hear the sounds of our times.
What he hears he must grow with,
not that he must have my ear,
or even accept my thoughts,
but if some night in August,
when the moon’s a peach basket
and the calendar’s thicker,
he puts his ear to the tree,
he might hear a deep root break,
he might hear a breaking heart.
Windowsill Passage
Every year the same rose returns,
bloodied with June.
She feeds it flesh of fish
From the Atlantic toss.
When the sun images up
Behind it, air between fires,
You’d swear the steam is red,
Veins serve the predicament,
Intrude in pale shafts of light,
Shift where her hands shadow.
Even when dread August is done,
The carnage complete,
She waters the dark earth, the dark roots.
Ice is not unknown there, deep frost.
All the snowfall long she aches
For trowel, the blood of June.
