Poetry:
Westerfield, Nancy G
POEMS Nancy G. Westerfield Erasing the Angles As dancers know it: akimbo can never be Beautiful, but useful only for comic Effect: and all the hours before the barre Are given to forcing fluidity...
...The underwater-blue of television spasmed With life...
...No need of breaking the news to any: There are none...
...That field...
...But out there with a level when it's April...
...Miss Marple cracking a case was lately Her solace, found open on the bedside table Beside her reading glasses...
...Broken by eighty-seven years Of news bearing havoc and loss, she rocked Solitary before the television, stoically Tuning it in...
...He says, "in a December sleet-storm Was an ice-crust over mud up to here...
...the front Screen snaps catching its loss, the news Of her own death delivered to the door...
...this county, and the stringing Of its power lines, have been his lifework...
...The gathering clouds blew At the tent-flaps...
...Those are mine...
...No one has telephoned To stop the daily paper: at six...
...His footwork mapped in mirror-images Of networks on a heaven nearer than ours...
...the air had been alert With rain...
...So ceaselessly suppled, the body Becomes only dancing: back and its branches Of arm and leg, finger and toe...
...I should be paying them for my job...
...POEMS Nancy G. Westerfield Erasing the Angles As dancers know it: akimbo can never be Beautiful, but useful only for comic Effect: and all the hours before the barre Are given to forcing fluidity where bone Is jointed to bone, stretching the fiber Of muscle to ribbon out over elbow And knee so that motion flows silkenly, Angleless...
...Death Will be lime enough for their comic effect...
...The words were hurried, to send us Home in dun darkness...
...The knife-edged moon Showed itself just as we came to the door, Straining to outrun its sinking into what 'The end of day would bring...
...he says proudly, pointing out What we hadn't even noticed as we drive: The stretched grid of wires overhead that mesh With pylons in the field...
...connected To the spiraling core of life...
...turning it off at ten to turn in...
...But none keep him...
...Catching the News At six o'clock any evening, we could tell She was catching the news: behind her sheers...
...Even the harshest breath Must be confined to an inkling of lifted Breast...
...The Surveyor How he sees the sky is different horn the rest of us recognizing, clouds And weather...
...It look us Again through the afternoon of ritual: 'The green pavilion looped back over the grave To let in the stooping few who gathered For last words...
...Those fences across the field keep the cattle, He says, away from loving the poles too much...
...His trudge wet-footed With a tripod is everywhere revealed For him by gloriously ascending spires...
...And now the rain...
...Sinking-Heart Moon Some lime in late afternoon, it surfaced 'Through the thunderheads, the silver edge Of it almost bright as sun against the swagged Green raggedness of the storm...
...The mortician Balances them precisely against her nose...
Vol. 117 • February 1990 • No. 3
