Continuum
[i]
for the many dead
in this residence of woe—
And me, holding a family wedding photo.
*
1 January 2020
When the weather turns anxious—
the bright cheek of autumn grayed.
In a chartreuse-lit lab—
In a gold-strafed bureau—
men construe a new world—
The lifted bow of another year hovers over the strings—
the season freezes in a glass of bourbon
I drink as the balloons fall and the burlesque queen sings—
Auld lang syne my friends!
And we kiss another decade in the millennium crawling across the continuum—
Then—
Winter/Spring 2020
Wo warst du wann? I was skiing, old limbs to tree runs—
bracing the Wyoming cold. Hadn’t I seen a moose—
loose beneath the lift? Such good luck. À votre santé!
A sniffle and a line dance in the cowboy bar at night.
Forgive me my love, we were silly. The tower clock warning—
wringing its snow-covered hands. So cold. So cold—
a white kimono fastening over our hearts,
the blue-lipped kiss of the yuki-onna on wintered earth.
I slept in that month and the next. Until the mackerel
dragged the sea lions inland. Until the lilacs flurried.
I’d forgotten to rush out the door. Forgotten the crush—
As if the fortune teller had thrown the Major Arcana card—
As if the white horse had thrown the skeleton—
So much change in my pocket and no one takes it anymore—
We all know someone, we said. You or you or the other.
Immune sounds like commune but it’s not the same.
I had not thought death had undone so many wrote Eliot. On a walk—
the parade I join twice daily, faces cloistered—
bright eyes, bright eyes. Following the river of death downstream.
I wave to Rick, the bookseller. To Claudia, another poet.
My words churned beneath the lane of cars
cruising Beach Drive there is no
where to go and everywhere.
I spade my garden after the hyacinths
die. Drop in seeds that promise bees and butterflies—
The carcass of winter turned over while I was sleeping—
revealing a portal.
Who would we greet there in our pajamas
while PBS gives nightly tribute to the dead? We mourn
through a box at a box. Grief squared—
What are my odds? Singing Che ci toglie il respire
from my balcony.
In the heat of the moment, I think to escape prayer, not
my thing. Yet, as the months engrave their weary hours—
as thousands became millions become you and you and others—
as the world turns inward, like a lazy eye—
and then ruptures, my meditations become laments—
then petitions. My piety, my hypocrisy.
Winter 2020-21
Haven’t I blacked out often? Forgotten—
where I am. Where am I?
The bars remain half empty, masked in—
gloom from much too much. They say variant, virus—
I hear Vivaldi’s L’Inverno allegro non molto.
A year of tangled bedsheets, the bathrobe of evening.
Windows clicking on and off with a frozen handwave—
Goodbye! We’ve stopped counting, math skills slipping
across the ice. It is winter solstice, dark at dawn
and the barbarous king lies in his gold-encrusted chambers, a burnished throne—
Drawn velvet drapes scrape the carpets where the minions kneel
playing a game of checkers. Plotting the king’s leap backwards—
over the uncrowned masses. But what do I know?
I worry the dishrag, purge the cupboards, guillotine onions
into stew because there’s still Christmas to stage—
Bring me flesh and bring me wine. Bring me pine logs hither.
We muddle our cocktails, muddle through— a toast probst!
to having survived and to all who—
Listen! The first violin racing in Vivaldi’s final I’Inverno allegro—
the pace quickening. Yes, something’s wrong. That restless—
As the king rises from his shadows, dragging
his string puppets, his mimicry of family, his rabble—
Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses, call my train together!
And then—the Bastille stormed by the king’s own men.
N calls from London. What’s happening at the Capitol?—
What to say to my son? Words elbow down the hallway of my throat—
my brain’s been stun—gunned, and there’s no ceasing the heart’s
hammer, the hurrying up of CNN—
the scurrying up and over the barricades.
Live cut across the cold steps—
to run, stamping one’s feet at each moment—
the high stepping crowd, the threatening clouds—
seep through the blue of my library walls.
The king whisked away in his black armored car—
Do I remember? Do you remember— Nothing?—
Amnesia buttons itself like a three-piece suit,
wanders the marble halls looking for the broom closet.
What have I forgotten? I can’t find my keys
to the kingdom. A wall rises—
I raise my vax card to your King of Spades.
What are the odds we survive this game?
And then it’s suddenly over, swept under—
as we vagabond into hope—
along the banks of the frozen Potomac.
Winter 2022
Who could forget the buttercup poet on the Capitol steps?
I thought of daffodils defying lock down—
of tulips and narcissi. Of this past year of maybe—
its dark bulb promising.
Yet today the snow persists, and cold—
war mutters in my ear.
Let’s go backwards when forward fails.
Within the barricades, the violin still plays.
I hear a branch rattling at the window—
I hear battling, feel my adrenaline kick.
And I’m holding my grandbaby, her eyes
searching for light, the tendril of my voice.
And my heart’s landscape lies—
under siege—glass shards, stolen relics—
And this world as newborn gift—цей світ.
Who plucks the strings? Who pulls
the strings? Some will say none of this ever happened… we were
happy and went to see the puppet shows in the park.
See my grandchild growing into the days—
Somewhere in trenches, a tune summons—
a coal tit—its song, a formal offering to the icy air.
At the pulpit we weep yellow fields of flowers—
and orphans arrive at our airport to bouquets
of balloons.
Summer/Fall 2022
They asked politely but it was raining—
so I didn’t stop—
for the Planned Parenthood people.
Anyway, I’m on their list.
Still the next day I thought less—
of myself, you know. Thought maybe
they need money
to ferry women out of Idaho.
Every time I think, I mean I can’t not remember—
my own—
eons ago. Honestly, I’d forgotten—
until having it taken stirred memory—
And Idaho! I mean I’ve had sex in Idaho!
Now, as if another century, as if chattel,
as if cattle lowing in a locked barn. Good night Bess!
Good night Lulu! Good night Mabel!
Over coffee, L recalls Mexico—
how the border patrol looked her
over. ¿Dónde esta? ¿Dónde esta?
the coiling streets—
a grated door, the swinging
noose of a light bulb—
shithole in the floor and sheets
like a Francis Bacon painting.
O ugly uterus, they deem not really part of us—
estranged innards, impolite company—
too rude to include in any legalese—
Dis-ease with our kind, minds full of—
fluff. And so just like that, puff!
and now it’s as if—
my mind and body isn’t my own—
owned by the state of Idaho.
I think of my granddaughter living in a state
where a woman’s body is tethered
to a stake. Sometimes a river defines—
a border and all the residue
eventually flushes—
out to sea. Other times
there’s no geographic order,
just a cattle trail crossing a state line—
7 October 2023
My son’s wedding—
vows beneath a California oak, vineyards marching
the hills, a fiery sunset.
I missed the news
of the cross-border attack—
I was dancing
someone hoisted a chair—
even as elsewhere, another morning was waking—
to carnage
to the reincarnation of—
the past is rotting in the future—
in this puzzle of land.
A land I thought I knew—
Knew only dust escaping a beaten rug,
a kerosene flame—
attar and sage wafting off tea the Bedouin
offered me for my endometrial pain—
I have risked so little.
2024
The exiled king returns from the ruff—
up to his belly in muck, stench
perfumed with
Something’s always wrong. Again. Again. Again.
And aren’t we too sated for seconds?
I bring my knives to the butcher for sharpening—
I tenderize the lamb leg myself—
Easter’s early this year. We had thought Florida—
gawkers at the gates—Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
I feel that sense of déja vu (perhaps the Ambien?)
as dictators shoulder around a game of Risk—
but there are too many to play—
and more on the way—stand by. Bereitstehen!
While you and I and the other hum along
to a Pearl Jam song, Then put your seatbelt on—
Buckle up Buckle up Buckle up!
Or is it that other tune, Your time will come.
the king’s favorite, played with a whistle
the hounds respond to.
Way back when, I hadn’t thought—
hadn’t a thought. My life laid out
like a tennis court or the lanes at the bottom
of a pool. Do you remember?—
There was always birdsong then—
and spring and summer and autumn and winter.
Do you remember?—
Nothing—I remember the amnesia from a fall—
memory returning like a ferry in the fog.
Haven’t we met before? Somewhere—
on the infinity loop, looking for a terminating
condition, an end to it all—
On the Continuum
On the train to D.C., to Düsseldorf, to Istanbul, to Mumbai—
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know, you know
On the hottest day ever, I enter the Sainte-Chapelle nave.
Vivaldi rising in the thickened air.
I sweat through the seasons—
Through the crescendo of tanks grinding villages to resin,
of boots on the march, again—
Doesn’t it seem like every day the world burns to the ground—
as we silence the alarm—
So certain: somehow
tomorrow—
persistent as fireweed—
[i] With lines and lyrics by Anna Akhmatova, Dante Alighieri, Peter Allen, David Bowie, T.S. Eliot, Art Garfunkel, Iron Maiden, A.A. Milne, Ilya Kaminsky, John Mason Neale, Pearl Jam, William Shakespeare, Evie Shockley, James Taylor, Toad and the Wet Sprocket, Antonello Venditti, Giuseppi Verdi and Antonio Vivaldi.
Heidi Seaborn is executive editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Editors Prize in Poetry. She’s authored three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry. Recent work may be found in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU.
