RICHARD JONES is the author of seven books of poems from Copper Canyon Press. His most recent volume is "The Correct Spelling & Exact Meaning" (2010). A professor at DePaul University in Chicago, he is the editor of the literary journal "Poetry East."
Blue
This would be a wonderful night
for sleeping, except for the pillow.
One might as well rest one’s head
on a sack of rocks. And the window—
the curtains are pretty much worthless:
the moon shines in like a searchlight.
I don’t mind the thin blanket, moth-eaten
and full of holes, nor the staticky music
of mice running inside the walls all night.
But the two men in suits and dark hats,
whispering together, conspiring in the
corner, do bother me. I lie listening
as the two dark strangers blindly rifle
through the drawers of the antique dresser,
the floorboards creaking as they move
about the room in their heavy shoes,
their hands and faces blue in the moonlight.
Closing my eyes and turning away,
I remember my mother’s admonitions,
her stern voice velvet from years of smoking,
the blue clouds that poured from her lips
telling me always to be polite, be polite.
So I rise from bed, turn on the light,
introduce myself, offer to mix drinks,
and seeing their worried countenance,
invite them to sit with me at the table
and tell their story.
Quest
He lay in bed all night
waiting for the sun,
but around four or five
birds started singing
in an arcane language.
The black windows
turned gray. He got up,
dressed in the dark,
boiled yesterday’s
coffee in a gray pan,
then drank the black cup
quickly, as if he were
drinking a deadly potion
or some healing elixir.
Whatever the alchemy,
suddenly he could see
he didn’t need anything,
could leave everything
and take nothing.
Under a kitchen light
that hung straight down
like a plumb line, he
inspected the contents
of a small bag open
on the round table,
then zipped the bag
and put it on his shoulder.
He switched off the light,
shut and locked the door.
The dark shape of the car
waited in blue shadows.
He stood on the cold porch;
the light had not yet come.
He tried to see in the gloom.
With a handful of leaves
he wiped heavy dew
from the silver windshield.
Inside, he looked inside
the glove compartment,
rummaged around
as if he might find old
maps with forests,
mountains, castles,
all the starry heavens.
He sat for a moment,
listening. The dark trees
were like insane people
there was so much
singing inside them.
He could have turned
the key in the ignition,
but the keys rested
in his hand, and his hands
rested lightly in his lap,
palms up, open,
as when staying at home,
sitting on a pillow,
he meditated on the way to truth.
Empty
“the city in the clouds”
I wanted to go up to the mountaintop
and see the ancient temple of Venus.
In early darkness
I left the whitewashed house
locals called “The Fisherman’s Hut,”
where on a cliff by the sea
I’d tried to discover
the best way of doing the work.
I took the morning ferry
from the island of Favignana
to the west coast of Sicily,
standing on the open deck
like Odysseus
sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.
When the ferry docked at Trapani,
I drove my tiny Fiat
across the ferry’s lowered ramp,
and ventured forth, map in hand, expectant.
The narrow roads
soon rose steeply toward clouds.
As I navigated the switchbacks
and climbed through the forest,
I envisioned the goddess of love,
the temple’s torch-illumined altars;
but when I reached the mountaintop
I found only tiny Erice,
a gray town of cloistered stone,
secluded and sheltered
high on the wooded peak.
I was, at first, disappointed.
I followed the signs
that guided me to the car lot
in a pine wood outside the town walls
and then walked with my bag to the hotel,
passing under the stone arch.
Medieval castles with walls and towers
protected the heights
and where the temple long ago reigned
I found only the abandoned shell
of a disused convent.
But as I slowly ascended
silent marble streets
free of the noise of cars
and deserted even of pedestrians,
I discovered the emptiness
and peace to be a gift.
All that winter
a chill rain fell endlessly.
The hotel’s sole resident
and the only tourist in town,
my footsteps echoed
down labyrinths
of cold, chiseled,
cobblestone passageways.
I searched out small, unheated chapels
where I could kneel
and on rainy afternoons
I sipped coffee in a warm café,
happily sketching the bell tower
or mapping Erice’s maze of streets in my journal
so I might learn the place by heart.
The thought of staying on
in a place so desolate
and quiet
seemed reasonable,
and one day I spoke with the innkeeper.
The hotel had all I could want—
a well-appointed library,
a parlor and fireplace,
and a spartan room
I found elegant and restful.
When it rained,
I could lie in bed listening
to cataracts arcing
from terracotta roofs above
to the empty-of-love streets of stone.
When at last the rain and mist and clouds
blew away from the mountaintop,
the clear sky sparkled, the sea below shined,
and from my window
I could see
all the way to the Egadi Islands—
Marettimo, Levanzo,
and butterfly-shaped, wind-blown Favignana,
the sunny island from whence I’d come,
its one small mountain
silhouetted on the far horizon,
sheep grazing on the parched hillsides.
And clinging to edge of a sunbaked, limestone cliff,
the empty whitewashed house I’d left behind,
the oleander-scented courtyard,
the bead curtain
hanging in the open doorway,
and inside,
my reading glasses waiting
atop the lines of a poem:
…sad and lonely
the man and woman
turned toward home,
where they would
touch each other
gently and with respect,
then with increasing
passion and need,
healing each other simply
with their love.
Honey
At dusk I carry
a brown ceramic bowl
of drowsy bees
through the town square,
down narrow streets
to an empty house,
where I somehow open
the door with my elbow,
and once inside
shrug off my coat,
holding the bowl
first in one hand
then the other hand,
before climbing stairs
to a whitewashed room
with a wooden chair
and table where
at the stroke of midnight
I stand by an iron bed,
place the murmuring bowl
of drowsy bees
on a soft down pillow,
and with freed hands
light two tall candles
and sit all night
at a spartan table
with pen and paper
and write a book of poems
called Honey.
The Light
If, sitting on the long sofa
under the big front window,
I should say, “I’m sad,”
my wife will ask, “Why?”
Then we will sit in silence
for a couple of minutes
while I think about it,
this sadness, which arrives
from nowhere, the way
the sun unexpectedly
shines from behind a cloud.
In the stillness I ponder
the warm light that’s traveled
ninety-three million miles
to be here, its journey
through space and time; then
I think of my slow progress
when I drive across the country
with wife and three children
in a red van, luggage piled
and precariously roped on top.
To survive long trips like that,
we exit the endless, glaring
treadmill of the interstate
and search back roads for motels
to rest for the night. We swim
in tiny heated swimming pools.
We eat fried chicken, stay up
watching tv until late, fall
asleep on top of one another.
Road trips like that take days,
but light from the sun arrives
in eight quick minutes,
pouring through the pines’ highest branches
and rushing through the brilliant
glass of the big front window
to dapple the oak
of our living-room floor.
The light
helps me see myself
reflected in my wife’s green eyes—
very small,
yet clearly shining.
When finally with a shrug
I tell her, “I don’t know—
I don’t know why I’m sad,”
she doesn’t say a word.
Rather, so I may feel her warmth,
as I feel the warmth of the sun,
she moves a little closer on the sofa.
Small Talk
Night comes
and I could weep for gratitude
as I climb the stairs,
shrug off my coat,
and hang it
on the doorknob
of the bedroom door.
I drape a red silk scarf
over the bedside lamp
and sit in the old chair
with the broken springs,
pulling off my shoes,
rubbing my tired feet.
At the open window
a breeze ruffles the curtains,
reminding me
this is the time I live for,
listening to my wife,
who lies in bed,
propped on her pillow,
half asleep,
welcoming me home,
talking a little bit
about things that happened
during the day—
the children,
or what she’s been reading—
nothing extraordinary,
just small talk.
When it’s late
and she’s weary,
my wife tends to whisper,
a soft rustling sound,
like the word susurrus,
as if at day’s end
she were telling
secrets, confiding
in me, her trusted
friend and husband who,
slightly deaf in one ear,
doesn’t always hear—
curtains lifting
and falling
in the red lamplight—
every word,
or follow exactly
what she’s saying
and who couldn’t
repeat verbatim,
line by line like a poem,
the pleasantries,
the kindnesses,
the lovely dreamlike
things she says.