by Vanessa Vie

Salut Papá, a Moment to Talk about some Reveries
                          excerpt from a work in progress

  1      There’s Rêverie
          near Dover’s White Cliffs —
          From the coastal path you see
           enrobing fields of wheat
            made somnolent by heavy haar
              and haystacks that walk toward
                the mighty sea

  2      Haystacks beckoning in rear fields:
          Windmills
            blear in a descending cloud
              bell to the vacuum of all
                serenity . . .
          “Look there, friend Sancho, where thirty or more
            monstrous giants present themselves . . .”
          — To the giants! to the giants
               that maw roots entangled in quarry!
          “. . . Fly not, cowards and vile beings,
                for a single knight attacks you!”
          “Look, your worship”, said Sancho,
          “what we see there are not giants but windmills . . .”
          And getting caught in the spinning
            blades and arms of a dying
              God —
                 With fortune put on hold

  3      Daughter to father writes to unfold:

          Dear seeder of Mother,
          I’ve never seen you digging. Digging
          like Seamus Heaney’s father. Like my grandfather
for potatoes, for onions; in drill, in blue.
I’ve inherited blue — an overall blue
in my furrowing brow, and a kerchief.
And like my great–grandfather, alone
  with the Raitán,
    seek food and the rooting
      balladry:
One two one two
One with the ground:
Found grub from bold
To cold decades of digging
And of milking —
Three four three four
One with the pen:
Found little and still

Digging
There is Rêverie, papá,
  in hammock held up
    by two apple trees:
      one for Adam, one for Eve

  4      But cometh the hour. A worm stirs
  the red clay, and in the air

    the mighty sea
Six bestriding giants loom
across the farm’s back field:
Haystacks
   blear in the descending cloud
    advance toward the heir

      hiding behind the barn door —
The night is turbulent
The ugly night and the elder daughter
in blade and arms of a dying god
wait for the giants to knock on the door.

And they knock on the door
and in entering saw:
rocked crib and graffito

  on wall:

Rêverie (it said) Prithee — Rêverie!
And with this on the tip
of the tongue and nib: she
And the giants left
  astride the White —
    to ward

NOTES: —
Part 1, Haar: a cold sea–fog on the east coast of England and Scotland.
Part 2, cf Chapter viii of Cervantes’s ‘Don Quijote de la Mancha’ [Don Quixote].
When I was a child I owned a beautiful copy in five volumes with red hard covers and illustrations.
Part 3, Line 7, Raitán: Robin in the Asturian language.
My grandmother told me that when her father was working the land, he would return home at the end of the day’s labour and reassure his wife and extended family of fourteen siblings that all would be well, because the Raitán had been with him the whole day, whirring about his head and resting on the line and branch.
To see the Raitán was an auspicious sign, akin to the Albatross for sailors.

by Vanessa Vie

    1      How a hawk flew:
      Forked are the wings
      Forked is the substance
      For whom the bell tolls

        Over water
        Over a single stem of dandelion
        Over lovers seeing this    single stem of dandelion
         And weeping    willows drooping    to touch water

         Lest death
                                         and after–death
                                                          please some
                                                                                  signs of solace

              2      There was a bus going to Jericho
        but we pilgrims walked
        at canal–water pace    athirst
        to St Barnabas Church —

        How the light shone extra brilliant
        t h r o u g h the rose window

        Then I saw    inscribed on the wall
        an igniting note: Cherubim & Seraphim continually do cry

Heathcote Williams (1941– 2017), English poet, actor, political activist and dramatist.

by Jared Harél

I heard a great howling
and lost my herd.
We were together, here
in the clearing. Then we weren’t.

It was just me, and up ahead,
a few enormous birds
pecked apart a relative of mine.
Fine. I barely knew her,

but what of the others
I considered real pals? Hard
not to have hard feelings
about that. I felt light–headed.

My innards moaned
for food and water as I wandered
the dry, deserted world
before me. That was before

I met you. Before
you appeared and mattered.
Before either of us had uttered
a single, ridiculous word.

by Jared Harél

The city that never sleeps
is sleeping fine.
No heads or headlights, no sign
of life. No me–first siren
gunning its echo,
or even a few NYU kids
ruptured into pairs.
For once, our billboards
have no one to hassle —
the blonde lingerie model
can’t get a date.
How long has she been up there,
stunned in her underwear,
eyeing SoHo
like it owns a warm coat?
A stray shadow
slinks past a trashcan.
The neighborhood bakery
smells like rain.
What happens next
is anyone’s guess:
months of darkness,
or an April Fools’ parade
plowing down our street.