Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch. David Bottoms

Maybe a Little Music

      3  No Voice in the Trees

      4  Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch

      5  Other Evidence

      6  A Scrawny Fox

        About the Author

        Also by David Bottoms

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special thanks

       1

      Why, then, do I kneel still

      striking my prayers on a stone

      heart?

      R.S. THOMAS

      An Absence

      Near the end, only one thing matters.

      Yes, it has something to do with the moon and the way

      the moon balances so nervously

      on the ridge of the barn. This is the landscape of my childhood —

      my grandfather’s country store, his barn, his pasture.

      His chicken houses are already falling, but near the end

      only the one thing matters.

      It has to do with the prudence of his woods,

      the way the trembling needles prove the wind.

      Let’s sit here by the fence

      and watch for the fox that comes each night to the pasture.

      Imagine how the moon cools the water in the cow pond.

      Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,

      those moments you turn your head —

      the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,

      or the print by the pond suggests the fox.

      Near the end, though, only one thing matters,

      and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly.

      Studying the Small Hill

      Sometimes when my wife and daughter are asleep

      I stumble outside

      with our dog at three or four in the morning to piss in the yard.

      In winter the moon scorches the tree branches,

      and in summer it frosts the hillside

      with a shabby glaze.

      Then the bird feeders standing in the smudged shadows

      of the maples

      look like human skulls impaled on poles —

      and sometimes wind and crickets and tree frogs

      make lurid voices in the trees.

      This is when I empty myself of anger and resentment,

      and listen to them puddle

      in the grass at my feet.

      Jack runs the fence line and trots out

      of the shadows, panting, to piss in the grass beside me.

      Often in his eyes there is more to envy

      than anything human,

      and gauging the frantic influence

      of the moon, I study the small hill bleeding shadows.

      It’s easy then to affirm the Christ metaphor

      and all the tenuous ways

      tenderness seeps into the world.

      Slow Nights in the Bass Boat

      Some nights when the fishing slows,

      when the stripers

      and hybrids drift through the cove like elusive thoughts,

      you crank in the jig, prop the rod in the boat.

      Some nights the trees on the bank are black and soundless,

      a fat wall of darkness,

      and the silence on the water feels like the voice

      of a great absence.

      Across the wide cove the lights of the bait shop

      flicker like insects,

      and, finally, a few stars struggle through the shredded clouds.

      Silence, then, exceeds the darkness. Silence.

      You grasp the gunwales and lean forward,

      you catch a long breath.

      That gnawing in your chest sharpens and spreads.

      Your grip tightens.

      The rustle in your ear is something grand and awful

      straining to announce itself.

      Your jaw trembles. Out of your yearning

      the silence shapes a name.

      Question on Allatoona

      The moon was in the sky and on the water at the same time, and the sky

      filled with stars. A dock jutted into the cove,

      and the banks were heavily wooded and dark, the whole cove sizzling

      with small sounds. From out of the woods on the far bank,

      an owl called twice, paused, then hooted again.

      Beyond the cove the lake widened quickly,

      and a mile or more away

      lights of the fishing camp flickered on the surface of the lake.

      Our tackle box sat closed on the floor of the boat.

      Far behind us on the porch of a cabin, a guitar

      backed up a mandolin. We listened

      instead for the question with no answer,

      watched the moon on the water, then the moon in the sky,

      and when enough silence had passed,

      the frogs let go in great bellows up and down

      the edge of the water.

      There