1 poem
It the Hum
1.
On the beach on the Gulf
in Sarasota in
2015. In the sand staring
at the waves listening
looking for the calm they can bring the sound their breathing rings
in and in to
chase the unwavering
hum it thrums out
an unending movement out
of which the rythmós:
more than just matter
moving, more than pulse of
blood: the air the light:
the waves the distance:
flesh and world awash in
sensation streaming to hush
the unceasing hum
in and in
and buzzing out about my cranium this thrum
not the drone hovering over
the post-Katrina Gulf, Deep Horizon, Long Island
after Sandy, the ricochets of Sandy Hook or Charleston
(my father, Charles Edgerton,
only months
deceased), nor the scream of men
dead from their blackness
lit up
by blue fire,
nor the whir
over the discounted in Baghdad,
in Fallujah, fleeing Syria (incalculable), no, at this tick
it only my small monotone it
my sharp Theremin whine it
only my unrelenting regret, a lung ever emptied out,
only my petty, anxious, welling need, my dislocated it
id-itch
always for more
or less than
fullness or negation
ever rivering
( Ocean )
( Ocean )
( Ocean )
2.
The beach for the waves for the calm.
But nothing
but distraction—screeching
children, tourists
splashing, walking
the wet edge (the dry sand
so hot it hurts), feet
submerge in, emerge from
over and over in
measure, bag and book and
chair in hand—chasing
an impossible isolation
insulation from the hum
it pulling. Turning
from the voices, the aureate water,
my head I try to sink in
a book just slides off as if
frozen.
And so I give in
and swipe on
my phone to window shop
on Grindr for the
impoverished consolations
of an improvised encounter
in which to escape
it can’t escape it
it buzzes—
Looking?
So tired
of my diminishing need to be
wanted, my taunting desire
for more and more than
( Ocean )
( Ocean )
( Ocean )
for less and less than
the Gulf
*
warm rhythm laps against
skin muscle tissue and sinew
extending compressing promising
to release you
to the shore you beat are beaten against:
that line you cannot pass to reach for:
that horizon beyond beach beyond city and
sea:
sometimes to be
only body, any mere part, eye
or ear, cock or hole—push and pulse—and so
ocean
so sex so
the resonance of your singing
you wholly the sound the force:
rythmós rippling face throat chest
nothing more, nothing less: the music
you forge with words, your mind
the body
of the letter shaping page forming sound vibrating through
your head only the poem
for a time it satiated it satiates it it
needs need it wants want it-it more It
saved my life
a poet once told me
after a reading in New Orleans
Poetry saved my life said the same poet’s
poet brother in Providence,
dead despite it
or from it it-it will cross it
( As I write this )
( another poet )
( out )
3.
And in bursts Creeley,
his memorial at St. Mark’s, 2005, his poem, that line, her reading
she struck me
a wall crashing over the pews
again and again over
the years, the decade since, that sentence
in that poem of his I feared
to ask her to name to show
my ignorant ass I should
just read
every last one to see them
lining up to break
in my head
again and again
that they not be
my deathbed words
I want to
be in
my life
C.D. at the podium, her grain
a flintish fiddlefunk of quartz against
the steel of the blank
sparking, as singular
as her tone,
echoing in my head now
as I write this
in the fledging sun
of 2016,
she only two weeks gone.
( I want )
( I want )
( I want )
I poetry
she wrote
and I wonder
at every inflection of it striking against
our depleted eyes, our slighted ears, our dumbed flesh
can’t help but wonder (if only I could unmind) if
I am I do I will
be, myself, or unbeknownst already am
in my want in
my life: my poetry: cannot
correspond
one to one in the sand.
I wonder
how poetry
happened in
to this poem, how C.D.,
how memories of poets
only memory and their poems now.
And their poems, too, will one day cede.
I remember her reading my New Orleans sequence
so generously
outside of class, talking work with me, my struggle:
how to write
about Katrina,
transplanted only a year when it hit,
she sharing her own
with her current project (2005)
about her mentor, “V” (honor of my life
to know her, she said),
not knowing
where it would lead her, how it would hew the page, hitting up
against uncooperative elements, it was a fight it was
relief and liberation for a young poet to see, and then to see her
win with One with Others and now
( ShallCross )
( ShallCross )
( ShallCross )
4.
People packing up the last bits of day: their sand-clotted
clothes and wet towels: draining out
the exit: their umbrellas and coolers and
kids in tow: abandoning (but how)
the rubied water: the burning gulf: sky (so close now)
then the one
remaining incarnadine
streak sinks
beyond final or first,
and for one unsplit sunless instant: water-lit sky.
Then sudden night.
Almost nothing.
A knotted cloth.
No moon.
No stars.
No exit
sign no emergency
lights only wind.
Only soft sand
and sharp shells, my feet
wet flopping look
to look past
the wall of infinite-dense
space I bang against
for a door
and seeing
I’m alone,
unknowing
which way the street which way the car which way
unending shore.
Surge of
fear.
Then one un-split stillness opens inside the roar:
one faceless expanse
of voices ambling, aiming,
casting off:
all
( Wave Lilt )
( Pitch True )
( Hum Hush )
spar
spar
sparking against
the muted sharp
Dedicated to the memories of Robert Creeley, Michael Gizzi, and C.D. Wright, with gratitude for their teaching and writing. And to the memory of my father, with love.
Michael Tod Edgerton is the author of Vitreous Hide (Lavender Ink 2013). His poems have appeared previously in Interim, as well as in Boston Review, Coconut, Denver Quarterly, EOAGH, New American Writing, New Orleans Review, Posit, and Sonora Review, among other journals. He holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. A native of Lexington, KY, Tod teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University and lives with his husband in the city that used to be San Francisco.