Nick Hanna

On a Tuesday Evening, in August

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In the pasture tonight, Papa’s burnt-out stone

house shone under the whole moon

like a ruined, shrunken Rome.

Past the peach orchard, on the way

to the pond, the grasses moaned long

and low, lilting strains of threnody

deepened by sunflowers, large

as dinner plates, beating heavy

shadows along my feet.

I know how long the plow has rusted

beside the withering dogwood tree.

The sun unlooses chaos on temporary things.

Come see how young the Earth is

beneath its mouldering wounds.

I saw the sky black with locusts

summers ago when the sun wasted

the tomatoes and shrivelled the pond

small and tame as a wash-tub.

The dried mud was split and peeling

and the grass shivery and mean

when the sluicing cloud passed over

and a great white owl began to scream

on the high bank of the western rim

like a forgotten child, bawling across

the leavings of a Caesar or a Khan.

The sun begets confusion on temporary things.

Come see how sure the earth is

beneath its piddling wounds

The cicada sings past dark sometimes

during a full moon, and in August

they’ll sing straight through the night

and the fictions of 3am are ended

by the undulations and urgency

of noon. Tonight the apple cactus

will bloom its chaste flower and even

the rattlesnakes will sleep and dream

of fat bullfrogs, and the scorpions

will dream of locusts, of soft bodies

that shudder under their tender venoms.

The sun designs its vision on temporary things.

 

Behold, how golden the earth is

beneath its glittering wounds.

Anecdote of the Mill

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Beside the rutted road of burnished clay

buffalo grass, mesquite and prickly pears persist

uneasy harmony with bitter loam.

Down the slope, and the pecan bottom

the occasional oak appears, brazenly first

then certain near the creek’s green water.

There is an outcast there, of horizontal steel,

senseless and mute between diametrical ideas,

re-imagined, to a foreign code.

The mill race brackish water tells,

and the rusted millstone cedes

immutable dominion, for the unprofound.

Baptizing Hole

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The narrow clay road curves

abruptly at the Baptizing place

and stalks the creek for near a mile,

before cattle-guards and narrow

gates and taciturn ranch-houses

begin to resist.

There was a post office and store,

somewhere between on the creek-side,

given over completely a century ago.

Along the road, here, a high modern parody

has been erected: steel posts and barbed wire

and printed words.

Back by the bend, there

were picnics and tent revivals; and

a thousand souls made clean

in the green, quickening waters

below. Mary Smith showed

60 years of children how to swim

and dive and skip stones, here.

And summer days were filled

with unpurged, laughing pygmies

given to sudden, unbidden dazzling:

On a 4pm, beneath a soft curtain

of rain, pecan trees spoke out-loud

to sumacs and oaks, and human

words became insensible, just rippling

in the water. And the creek became

Seeing, and the world a reflection

within its immense green eye—

And sky and fire and wind and rain

and the will and temperament of pygmies

mixed for awhile, to one element,

more sublime to sight, sweeter to hearing,

more pure of taste and touch, than word.

But word is what remained, when the trees

became mute, and the rain had stopped.

It adorns the fence-posts.

All better deeds are writ in water.