A Chapbook

 

George Eklund

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Frontier

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Wet sky, wet life

In the language of the cumulus

The constant breakage of the sky

 

The circumference of my will

Is small

The wet sails of the light

In my hair

 

Our long drive connects the elements

The spasm is something holy

Holding us as we cannot hold it

In a bay or a yellow room

 

Every place may be the strangest place in the world

 

The child is pulled from the ditch

The cloud pulled from the air

 

The virus is a terrain

Fastening itself to what breathes.

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Altar

 

 

 

One makes little altars repeatedly

 

I drop my weight into a chair

At the desk

Amazed by the violins and their particles

And the quiet color of my clothes

 

Every picture that comes to me

Is a derangement

Place from place

 

A pellucid cry across the barren Easter

The pointless stroll through the city

 

The wheels of grief complete

And our hands follow our eyes

Skimming upon the circles of the altars.

 

 

 

Rhodes

 

 

 

On the island of Rhodes I knew so little

Down the sunlit walks above the bay,

On the beach we played chess

With the priests of 1972,

Then took the final cab ride to Lindos,

A perfect place for making love and dying.

 

When my brother appeared in my dream

I began to know more

Of what we carried to the windmills at night.

Every thought became the beginning

Of a miracle—

 

Lifting a small block of wood

From the tide of a warm sea,

The gulls swooping in their hungers,

The robust Germans crying Wolfgang, Wolfgang

Frolicking in the surf.

 

Now I am nearly old in Lindos.

In the left hand a golden glass of warmth,

And in the right, a lengthening rope

That sinks beneath the starry waves

And my brother watching

In the breeze that strikes the windmill blades.

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