seeing in circles
reading Ben Myers’ Elegy for Trains
1
what is not here is always
here. there is no there
there. it is hard
to plant one green thing.
out there is
America,
seeing in circles.
the city is where I am. we
is that by which I am.
mountains always
wait for nothing.
2
somebody’s grandmother
thought a white horse
is not a horse.
the whiteness of the whale
passes. the whale
remains.
3
my daughter’s eyes
roll at the sound
of Iowa.
she knows
suffering a day there
will suffice for a life in poetry.
around here, we pronounce that Ohio.
4
a just word is
worth a thousand pictures.
nothing always
rights itself,
like a book,
like a river
that eats levees
the way you say modernity
ate its scholars, like
the memory
of water.
5
tadpoles are a city
at your feet.
trains pass.
the poem is nothing.
6
water never leaves the sky.
every real boy lies
in some bloody city.
dry is forgetting how to love
for so long every prophet turns
and runs. every gourd vine withers
while god counts cattle,
waiting for nothing.
7
a poem could be a failure
of stem cells, a failure
we will never
correct. never
finished, it is
abandoned.
8
we are
now, beginnings
everywhere. crows see
the light, get happy.
spirit breathes
on the face
of every body
of water. pray
for rain.
sun, you know,
doesn’t rise at all.
it stands still
while the world
turns, dripping
waves of joy
we take for light.
9
take, read,
this is my body.
10
light catches everything,
contains nothing, a blessing.
reviewed by Steven Schroeder, Chicago
Benjamin Myers. Elegy for Trains. Cheyenne, OK: Village Books Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9818680-6-6.