Poetry:
Pavlich, Walter
POEMS Walter Pavlich
The Hand Beginning to Burn
If you wake the coals at night with your hoe, if you scratch off their burnt coats, there is the skylight into the earth, there in the orange polish...
...The squirrels will not fly over it...
...My axe won't kill any more shadows tonight...
...No, a pearl of rain slipping out of the wind-tipped skillet of a nasturtium leaf.ped skillet of a nasturtium leaf...
...Tomorrow we'll find two sparrow anatomies that did the fire-dive off the power lines, fell to start this one...
...for Bruce Latimer) Hardhat Pillow I am an outline in the ash...
...Roots burn circuits beneath us...
...A hand beginning to burn- fingers an infusion of bees arrive at your face-the hive that isn't there...
...Minea mercury drop swimming around the palm of a hand...
...Their small decisions brought us here, the coolest place in the fire...
...I am too tired for water...
...Don't push down on the glow...
...They'll feed us...
...Boots smoke, soles like boiling tacks...
...A thunderhead passes over, scattering us in any direction...
...Others sleep without moving, nailed down by weariness...
...POEMS Walter Pavlich The Hand Beginning to Burn If you wake the coals at night with your hoe, if you scratch off their burnt coats, there is the skylight into the earth, there in the orange polish and breathing...
...They'll write the checks for next month's bills...
...You submerge to your knees...
...The flames flaring up the underside of your name...
...The poor will not chase dimes down there...
...I am where it started, calling calling...
...Flying to the Fire with the Doors Off Above lodgepole, ponderosa, tamarack, a sharp drunk globe out of balance, the world back-spinning, under and behind us...
...I'm listening for the treetops scratching our ship's belly, the pilot with folded beer cans behind his seat, and you leaning out, shouting as we tap into an updraft just before the next ridge...
...You are upslope in the smoke, sparks spitting on you, where you shouldn't be, daring the fire to step over your gashed line...
...We are lightning's employees, mountain-scrapers, twice the water in our canteens that we piss out...
...A fuse and wet fingers touch in each of us...
Vol. 116 • September 1989 • No. 16
