Charles O. Hartman
Charles O. Hartman — Poems
Honeydew
As the poem paces down Main Street
on its way to the sparkling harbor
it knows to notice tints on the pigeons' backs
but "tends to forget" the man heaped on the stoop.
The better the poem knows its business
the smaller its business needs to be.
Its shoes are tied, its jacket buttoned up;
its pockets are sewn shut. The man wonders
if the poem has any money, but the poem
has no money, is proud of not having any money,
of having only the sun to make gold of the sidewalk
and glamour the water in the harbor awaiting it.
A hole the size let's say of a honeydew
passes completely through its chest.
Shave
I'm thinking about how I shave my face because yesterday
I shaved my father's for the first time. This sun's going to rise
a little farther right now every day. Soon I will return
to my normal life in another city and the year will decay
in an orderly fashion. He gestured me to cut
off the mustache. I wouldn't. Everybody I said, every
damn body should have a mustache. Life is trouble.
Later I strode out looking for the car: one who can
walks from the hospital. This mirror,
I can't get it right. The edge of my eye
comes and goes, watering. After a while I know
the days will turn back and walk north. I try to do
what I'm told. My sneeze rings louder in my father's house,
I pace his carpets on naked feet, one of his cigarettes
in my hand. All the machines there hum and glow,
warming up, ready with readouts.
Outside his window, here, a mockingbird
runs on for minutes without repeating, stops
to consider her options, runs it exactly through once more.
She does the wren, the crow, the creaking door.
The sun gives up and lets go of the horizon.
I turn the light off and the razor on,
get back to work on a face I know
even in shadow.
Things Coming Toward Their Shadows
mostly falling
speak to us of falling
leaf
I think this through
and my steps begin to meet
the ground like mild ghosts
a monarch
half asleep with autumn
wobbling near my hand
huge wings shuddering
the body back and forth in
pendulous air
in heedless election
falls and clings
to the base of my thumb
ebony pipestem
legs embrace
the feet prickle
the tongue
hangs like a mainspring
O for the moment I
bear that weight
I weigh
nothing else
Unaccountable
The heart of man — he says — is a mailbox dying of curiosity.
The soul entrusts it with the inscrutable. Our own houses
stand agape at our audacity. We baffle the sea.
Everything the hand of man lets fall is perfectly unlike
everything other, even and especially when made in imitation.
We astounded the gods when we had gods. Every day —he says —
I surprise myself, don't you? Look at these books, this garden,
that cannon in the square under the marble soldier.
Hollows
Moon in the day, never the sun at night.
Water inland, never land long under water
because it isn't called that any more.
In hollows in the rocks, pockets of salt.
Summer coming to term in cicadas' dozing.
Cat in the open window, wrapped, asleep.
In a bed, in the afternoon, a man in a woman.
Fire inside the lantern. Roots in earth.
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