Six Poems

by Douglas Twells

LIGHT REPLACES OBJECTS

IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY

Lights double, triple, elongate in the bay

and other waters nearby.  Commerce

would have crowded together, if permitted, all

of the means for profit - mine, quarry, factory,

warehouse, office building, distribution

center - retail and wholesale, plus institutions

that meet our peripheral needs which seem to be

legion - libraries, jails, museums, schools,

churches, hospitals - to name only a few; but here

geography prevails and prevents this blight

from spreading according to its own whim.  Here,

the lowliest trades wear beauty and grace acquired

from each lingering wave, each climbing

hillside, each vista of shore or mountain opposite. 

All of this becomes by night not

buildings, not roads, not groaning vehicles,

but light - a profusion, a multitude moving

and at rest, or distant and shimmering, of individual

lights.  This is the truth, this is all

there really is.  The day is false, a mere filler

to separate and showcase each magical

night when we learn reality is light.

MARCHÉ AUX PUCES

Place du Jeu de Balle, Bruxelles

End of the day. No vans.

Moroccan, Tunisian,

Congolese, bruxellois—

all the vendors gone.

Emptied, nothing now the square—

jumble of over-sized bricks,

dirty, black and gray, uneven,

given to tripping the unwary.

You’ve finished your drink,

paid your tab at the café.

Why sit longer this way?

And where are the girls?

Stooped and picking

cracks and crevices,

hands disturbingly filthy,

your granddaughters collect

trinkets and baubles,

bits of this and that,

stuff they’ll pocket and keep

or lose or their mother

will find and toss

before they end in the wash.

And what’s keeping you,

last one in the emptied café?

Stooped and picking—

from where else?—your brain,

the cracks and crevices, gray,

uneven, given to tripping,

finding bits of this and that,

baubles, trinkets, making

notes on cards you pocket

for poems you’ll keep or toss.

THE ALASKA BUILDING

Creeping trains in downtown Seattle

sound soft horns at 3:00 a.m.

They serenade insomniacs - travelers

who stir in their rooms in the Alaska Building.

No dinner, no drinks, they landed late,

got checked in, found their rooms,

bodies still set to Eastern Time.

Trains comfort and set them dreaming.

Here’s history written in masonry and steel.

Beneath the rehab, the hotel renovation

that likely preserved it, the Alaska Building’s

impressive features mostly go unnoticed.

For once don’t rush – note how white marble

lines the majestic elevator lobby.

Step in the stairwells and there it is again –

thick, white marble!  Banisters

and balusters line the way up.

Find the brass box - marked ‘Mail’ –

near the elevators, and the glass chute

ascending through the ceiling – a mail drop!

Take an umbrella and stand across the street.

See the façade, a Beaux-Art beauty!

Fourteen floors from 1904,

a Gold Rush relic, banking barons

backed it and made the Alaska Building,

Seattle’s first skyscraper!

Daybreak!  Suited, serious, intense –

those travelers descend, rush the café,

then hit the street by foot and taxi.

All day long, an immigrant staff

will vacuum and clean, change towels

and sheets, scrub and polish, then vanish.

Now evening, travelers return, weary,

worn, day’s work done, they drink

at the bar, swap tales on hotels and flights. 

Finally they retire, take to their rooms,

plan the next day, catch the news,

read a bit, drift into sleep, and dream:

A tall ship from Seward finds its port.

Down the gangway, old prospectors descend.

However weary and worn, they’re hopeful

as they haul heavy sacks to the bank for assay. 

As for the leading citizens, they gather –

in the penthouse - over bourbon and cigars.

There they admire their city from its tallest building.

For those travelers who still turn and toss,

soft sounding trains creep along,

comfort, and serenade them back to sleep.

BLAME THE CAR

flying over ­­Anytown, USA in the afternoon

Chance or sixth sense,

turn from your book

and there it is,

all the sprawl,

unbound, untamed,

uncontained,

the essential,

the endless

American City.

Forget the several spikes—

concentrated capital—

at the empty center,

one thing on the ground

standing at the curb;

from the air

a trivial diacritic

for a populace

splattered across the plain.

Blame the car for this:

it flings malls

and rubber stamps homes.

Work, school, after school,

PTA and back—

it hijacks hours

and reroutes love.

Grab that wheel!

Hug that road!

Space to call your own

even if you’re never there,

freedom and dreams

drain away with gasoline.

Erase the family farm.

Every city a Motor City.

Where does it end,

find its center again,

the city contrived of cars?

MIDWAY AT MIDNIGHT

In preparation for landing, turn off all electronic devices.

Return your seatbacks and tray tables to the upright position.

Stow all carry-on items underneath the seat in front of you.

i.

Striding your silken paradise,

you marvel at the work -  brocade

in gold on black – lattice, vine,

and vase, paisley and arabesque,

intricate yet not to excess,

subtle, delicate.  You turn and nod.

Your bursar hands a velvet bag

to the old man cowering near the entryway,

the craftsman, weaver of this world.

For a time you enjoy your time alone

with this magnificent work.

For a time you savor the idea

of envy in the eyes of visiting sheiks

and emirs.  And for a time you sleep

without a worry for your fortune.

Times however change.  Nothing

stays the same:  envy and deceit

threaten.  Waking never ends.

What’s the value of a sultanate

to a sleepless sultan?  Pacing

at midnight up and down your carpet,

you pause, step back, breathless,

halfway across your assembly hall.

You ponder for the millionth time

the central feature - where patterns

swirl and wrap ‘round an intricate

design – in your eyes a flourish

of feminine fingers draped in gems –

hands held up for admiration –

in fact the glorious medallion

at the center of everything.

Distressed lest another magnate

grow jealous and covet your carpet,

anxious that one night thieves

and assassins overrun your camp,

Your Eminence has nearly half

shorn ‘way, sectioned, and,

most graciously, bits passed

among the subjects.  As for the weaver,

another worry, a heavier bag

of velvet and, with missing fingers,

one-way passage to a foreign land.

Now you and only you, have seen

and you alone possessed perfection.

ii.

The plane homes in cutting

north, then east, south, then west - 

Chicago from the sky, the night sky,

clear and dry, a landing pattern

that lingers long above the patterns

on the land, and the lakeshore

that terminates the pattern, cuts off

the light. The outer drive defines

the edge where habitation ends

and there begins an inland sea

reaching all the way to Michigan.

The fortunate, those with a window seat,

those in the darkened cabin who aren’t

asleep, see the city not as city. 

No week’s work, no flight delay

can weaken this aerial wonder,

the woven world of other artisans -

Burnham and Sullivan, Khan and Jahn.

Make no little plans!

Soon enough sodium vapor

lamps, bungalows in rows,

trash cans lining alleys, a child’s

tricycle in a back yard.  Soon

enough a startled face in a car

on Cicero.  Soon enough

reality - wheels will screech and engines

scream - the pilots try to stop

this thing.  For now there’s time enough –

time enough to doff the turban,

time before the magic ends –

this landing Levantine.

PARKING GARAGE, AFTER WORK, SUMMER

i

If the sun were flat,

a blazing circle on a backdrop,

and this multi-story parking garage

a cut-out that pops up

in three-dimension

when the card is opened,

and if the card were opened

on the hottest evening of the year,

ninety-eight degrees and humid,

say at 6:30 p.m. when

nearly everyone else has gone home,

then, briefcase in hand, you

could be the sole pop-up person

striding across the street, happily,

fixed free in still-life until

someone closes the card.

ii

If your shoes were glued

to the sidewalk

beneath your feet

as you passed the pines and

prepared to cross the street,

that too would provide you

an appropriate excuse

to stand stock-still before

the eight-story garage

now, certainly with the exception of

your car, emptied of all the day's

traffic, and admire far longer

than you normally could

the alternating sunlit walls

and dark floors, vacant now

but formerly filled, and

you could cast your own growing shadow

(Here's movement!),

lengthening to meet the shadows

of the long-needled pines

and make angles across

from the parking garage; but

there is no glue.

But if there were, and,

if someone, another straggler

or the security guard,

asked you what you were doing

or offered their assistance

in helping to free your feet

from the shoes (if the shoes

themselves could not be pried loose),

you could say,

"Thank you very much.

Most kind of you.

I am merely paying

homage to Edward Hopper." 

(Or Ansel Adams,

or some such thing). 

"And I apologize for

any inconvenience

I may have caused you."

That is, if there were glue,

a guard, and cause.  Otherwise,

you could stand still

and remain silent.

iii

How could you have neglected

to mention the air? - so thick,

so heavy, heated by the all-day sun,

now well off its center;

but the heat remains, undiminished,

maintained into evening by asphalt,

concrete, and steel and trapped close

to the earth by exhaust gases;

the air, the air, all the more palpable because

since morning you've been sealed away,

insensate, in an air-conditioned building,

whereas, now, this air, the sparrows'

evening air, is unsealed, unconditioned.

Ah!  The sparrows!  Note how they play

and carry on in the pines!

Hard to believe at this hour -

they must be there at other times,

certainly in the morning,

but no one could hear

above the din of traffic,

lawn mowers, edgers, aircraft,

and the mental din of worry

and day's work beginning.

If you stayed stock-still,

stood all the night,

you might detect them,

at their first song, in the morning,

and see the dawn drift down the street

and up the side of the garage,

before work, in the summer.

Otherwise, no way to know.

But they're here now,

just the sparrows, and you,

after work, summer.

iv

Summer is over.

So caught up are you

in autumn responsibilities,

constant, unrelenting,

you wish you were in Morocco,

Tucson, or Mexico,

somewhere and possessed

of the wherewithal

so you could build

an eight-story parking garage

in a desert replete

with reliable light and heat,

possibly, ideally, sparrows,

no helpful passersby, no security,

and not a single other parker -

your car alone shall occupy it. 

Then, standing near it,

in it, or on it, or seated

quietly in the heat, you

could cease to think

or stand or be

anything, all the busy

moving things of other

places, other seasons,

and stand stock-still,

silent, among the shadows,

forms, and shapes

of the parking garage forever,

after work, summer.

BIO: Retired from a career in university administration, Douglas Twells continues to write poetry and study ancient Indian literature. His poems have appeared in several journals including Spotlong Review, Scribeworth Magazine, and The Metaworker Literary Magazine. Twells and his wife divide their time between St. Louis and Chicago.