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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  Ameraucana

  Above Ivanhoe

  Far-Fetched

  The Clyde

  A Fly from the Early Anglers

  Shrooms

  Puffball

  Saturday Morning

  Geode

  The Southern

  A Close Shave

  Orpingtons

  New Song

  Syrinx

  Telephone

  Tempers

  Circle Line: London

  Two from Catullus

  Bright Thorn

  Gloss

  Visiting Day

  Fixed Interval

  Means of Escape

  Strangers

  Night and Day

  Owl-Eyed

  The Sudden Walk

  Turned Loose

  Want

  School Days

  Late October

  Leaving Home

  Come and See

  Small Triumphs

  In Search of Mulloway

  Sailing under Storm

  Silver

  Ting

  Scavenger

  Satin Bowerbird

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Devin Johnston

  Copyright

  From hence the River fetches a large Winding …

  —Benjamin Martin

  AMERAUCANA

  Well, Sally Hen, how do you like your home?

  A straight run from the east to the west

  with hardscrabble fit for a choral dance

  and overhead, a walnut tree,

  lord of ice and obstacles.

  In the morning dark or dusk of an afternoon,

  you softly cluck, then settle down

  to roost in mercury-vapor light

  with spring behind your lids.

  At its first true intimations,

  you bend on backward knees

  to crop a tussock of cloverleaf,

  raising a lateen tail above the trough.

  Tufted auriculars disregard

  horn and drums, mahogany tones

  of a tenor deep within the house,

  but not the soft chromatic descent

  of snowmelt, or a breath of wind.

  From a fallow bed, so much undone,

  your parched and reptilian cry proclaims

  a perfect form of incompletion:

  first egg of the year.

  ABOVE IVANHOE

  Above Ivanhoe and Fries,

  blues dissipate the ridge

  as rain comes

  wrapped in itself.

  Pull the curtain so I can sleep.

  A colt’s tail drags a scuff,

  a handbreadth of cloud

  skiffing across the gap,

  its wake a drow of cold breath,

  a mug of dirty light, tipping out

  reflections from a daguerreotype,

  smur that deepens and deepens,

  turning as smoothly as dusk

  from mull to rug

  bickering on the chimney cowl.

  Socked in, you lie awake

  inside a steady rustle,

  a sound as dull

  and absorbing as paper.

  The general condition

  leaves a thousand tokens,

  hissing in the grate,

  swamping the clay chimneys

  crayfish make in secret hollows,

  lifting oil from asphalt

  on the road to Poplar Camp,

  dripping from the eaves

  of Boiling Springs Baptist Church,

  rattling down through

  long-abandoned lead mines.

  Light pursues each instance,

  catching what it can.

  A frog pond of pewter.

  The dull shine of hair.

  At the ferry crossing,

  broad and shallow,

  a chain still glints

  beneath the spangled current.

  Later, along the ridge,

  a few lamps shine

  through tent canvas,

  the woods around them writhing.

  FAR-FETCHED

  Six hundred feet above the dam at Fries

  a stony pasture buckles across the top

  and dips toward Austinville.

  In a kettle, buzzards

  glide at ease

  on the river’s steam,

  up and up

  through clockwise turns until

  they catch a whiff of rot

  and give chase

  at a tightrope-walking pace,

  no hurry, prey already caught.

  Vibrations carry the faintest ring

  of metal struck on metal, a cattle bell,

  a corrugated pipe

  through which a breath

  might oscillate and sing,

  a rough staccato

  bark or yell,

  faint as the chip chip chip

  sweet-sweet-sweet sweeter-than-sweet

  from a yellow warbler’s throat.

  An engine flutters, remote,

  and the crunch of gravel softens in retreat.

  Two horses, hard to bridle, watch the road.

  Another sleeps in shade beside a shed,

  hock-deep in poison ivy.

  Among its vines

  bedsprings corrode

  and blacksnake

  breeds with copperhead.

  You seen a river puppy,

  down by the waterside?

  They got the teeth of chillern

  and fur that fire can’t burn,

  but human reek they can’t abide.

  As gravel thins, the road becomes a track

  that climbs through cloud and sunlight, lead and zinc.

  The ruts have overgrown

  and cede to scrub,

  with no way through or back.

  At this remove

  a couch and a kitchen sink

  have come to rest where thrown

  in thick Virginia poke,

  far from any route

  you’d take in setting out

  from Bristol, Boone, or Roanoke.

  THE CLYDE

  We took your name from firth and river

  that you might go forth and meander

  from narrow waters of your birth

  across the surface of the earth

  and take such windings to and fro,

  each scribble unconstrained yet slow,

  each stroke and shallow stream of babble

  transumptive, metonymical,

  the idle tracing of a mood

  with purposeless exactitude

  that curls now on a backward course

  and almost seems to reach the source

  but turns away eventually

  to join the firth and open sea.

  A FLY FROM THE EARLY ANGLERS

  In August, on a hot day,

  walk by the Tweed and mark what falls

  on the water, in some quiet place,

  beneath a bridge, above a bed

  of sand or gravell, wherever a Trout

  lies boldly gleaming neer the top

  and keeps watch for a wrinckle

  betwixt him and the skie.

  Take a brass-plate winding reele,

  and for your line, five horses hayres,

  and for your flye, a Cloudie Darke

  of wooll clipt from be
tweene the eares

  of sheepe, and whipt about with silk,

  his wings of the under mayle of the Mallard,

  his head, made black and suitable,

  fixed upon a peece of corke

  and wrapt so cunningly round the hooke

  that nothing could betray the steele

  but a hint of poynt and beard.

  At no time let your shadow

  lye upon the water

  or cause a stone to clap on stone.

  Be stil, and smoothly draw your flye

  to and fro in a kind of daunce

  as if it were alive.

  SHROOMS

  He learned to read before the rest of us

  and rose to the highest stream by six,

  a reedy laugh above the din of voices.

  Before dawn, waiting for the bus,

  he stooped to pluck a shaggy parasol

  and offered it to me, a boutonniere

  from the wrong kingdom, a different form of life.

  I didn’t know him well, you understand.

  At fifteen, but for an earthy musk

  and army coat, he left the world

  and entered a circle of silence.

  Survived by delivering pizzas, dealing pot.

  Prepared nothing, confiding in no one,

  why I never knew, with none to ask.

  After twenty years, I could still find him

  living here, lodged in his mother’s basement,

  shooting pool and breathing through his gills,

  inhaling the base notes of wet dog,

  woolen afghan, and stale tobacco.

  Small fears bloom through lethargy

  like mushrooms through their universal veils.

  Should he emerge from his cul-de-sac

  and over Silas Creek, autumnal sunlight

  snapping at his face, caught in his lashes,

  he might well give a sign of recognition,

  tipping a phantom cap sardonically

  with the furtive look of a poacher on his rounds.

  PUFFBALL

  Beside a richly

  rotting oak

  a moon fruits forth,

  a tender moon

  about the size

  of a human head,

  of the earth

  yet nothing like it.

  If you pass

  this way at dusk,

  bring it home

  in a paper bag,

  light and full

  as a thought bubble,

  enough, enough

  to displace

  whatever you had

  in mind.

  SATURDAY MORNING

  Regret the time

  wasted on work

  which finds you

  even here

  but not hachures

  of steep ascent

  or the unremitting need

  for learning facts

  and calculating

  unresolved events

  ripples at the edge

  of an ancient sea

  Liesegang rings

  from water and iron

  corrugations

  of unclenched surface

  graffiti

  light as lines

  from a graphite pencil

  scribbled around

  a medallion of lichen

  absorbing the sun

  Wind and rain

  go on eroding

  hoodoo from bluff

  the mutable form

  of horse or mushroom

  loaf or anvil

  a cloven god

  unresolved

  and self-absorbed

  in slow collapse

  back to the clastic bed

  and hoof clatter

  just beyond

  an ice sheet’s

  leading edge

  GEODE

  In a farmhouse at dusk,

  a young girl sorts her rocks

  and stores them in a cardboard box

  where they nestle in tissue paper,

  at rest from erosion.

  Her fingers, soft as tissue,

  lift and turn a geode

  (the accident of epochs)

  as if it were an egg.

  For her, the stone is new.

  THE SOUTHERN

  An oval fob of brass,

  key still attached,

  surfaced in a shop on Cherokee

  and now rests atop my desk

  beside a small obsidian axe.

  Absently, I rub my thumb

  across the fob and feel

  Southern Hotel, Room 306.

  The elegant lobby survives

  in a few steel engravings:

  palms and spindleback chairs,

  fruit in thick cut glass,

  men loafing in spats.

  One of them slips next door

  for a quick nip

  and winds up slugging down

  half a dozen oysters the size of eggs,

  rummaging through the shells.

  Amidst the bright din

  of cutlery and chatter,

  the whiskey—a second, then a third—

  encourages equilibrium,

  then a calm indifference.

  The evening sun goes down,

  drawing river smells

  through shadows of the Sixth Ward,

  blushing the hotel’s stone façade,

  enflaming its westward-facing rooms.

  Behind the front desk, a plaque

  commemorates Chief Pontiac,

  leader of the Ottawa

  and great friend to Louisiana,

  buried in a blue coat

  beyond the cemetery gates,

  no one knows quite where.

  A CLOSE SHAVE

  From Baden, or what’s left of it,

  pursue a long, smooth curve of road

  that skirts the northern flood wall

  to parallel a palisade

  of channel markers sunk in earth,

  the folly of a cement works.

  Its blank silos overlook

  a pit of argillaceous shale,

  the fine and fossilized remains

  of bivalves, sponges, spines of shark,

  quarried and burnt with limestone charge

  to alchemize a binder of brick

  and the city’s shallow, brittle crust.

  Around a bend, the riverbed

  swings wide to open a fetch of field.

  Shadows skim its mucky thaw

  as juncos, whisked about by the wind

  on courses neither fixed nor free,

  give but a quick metallic chink.

  Behind you, rain has wrapped the bluffs

  and scumbled limbs of sycamores.

  Ahead, each bend assumes the name

  of a gaudy packet run aground,

  or snagged and sunk, or blown to bits:

  for one, the side-wheel Amazon,

  pluperfect wheelhouse painted green,

  that struck a honey-locust pike

  still rooted deep in river mud

  and tore its hull from stem to stern.

  Down in minutes! Within the month

  an island silted up behind.

  A flock of luggage floated south,

  remarked by those on Water Street

  loafing before the trading post

  and the barbershop of Madame Krull.

  She can eternally be found

  at work in her elaborate room

  toujours prête to clip and coif

  or wield her razor with great skill

  for those who favor her with their chins.

  The scent of ginger tonic blends

  with that of borscht, its acrid tang,

  consumed behind a wooden screen

  as Illinois grows dark. In this,

  her second year since coming west.

  ORPINGTONS

  A pair of Orpingtons,

  one blue, the other black,

  with iridesce
nt necks

  and fine, ashen fluff

  cackle through the dark,

  their damp calls close enough

  to chafe, a friction with no spark.

  They settle down to roost,

  two rests along a stave.

  Each curls into itself,

  comb tucked beneath a wing,

  as the days grow long enough

  to kindle in each a yolk,

  the smallest flame of spring.

  NEW SONG

  after William IX, Duke of Aquitaine

  As sweetness flows through these new days,

  the woods leaf out, and songbirds phrase

  in neumes of roosted melody

  incipits to a new song.

  Then love should find lubricity

  and quicken, having slept so long.

  The bloodroot blossoms, well and good,

  but I receive no word that would

  set my troubled heart at ease,

  nor could we turn our faces toward

  the sun, and open by degrees,

  unless we reach a clear accord.

  And so our love goes, night and day:

  it’s like the thorny hawthorn spray

  that whips about in a bitter wind

  from dusk to dawn, shellacked with sleet,

  until the sun’s first rays ascend

  through leaves and branches, spreading heat.

  I have in mind one April morning

  when she relented without warning,

  relenting from her cold rebuff

  in laughter, peals of happiness.

  Sweet Christ, let me live long enough

  to get my hands beneath her dress!

  I hate the elevated talk

  that disregards both root and stalk

  and sets insipid pride above

  vicissitudes of lust and strife.

  Let others claim a higher love:

  we’ve got the bread, we’ve got the knife.

  SYRINX

  Just a glimpse

  of rufous thatch

  and curved bill

  a brown thrasher

  flipping up

  wood chips

  at the water’s edge

  scuttles through sumac

  and shakes the hedge

  with oscillations

  Panic constricts

  the double syrinx

  water reeds

  bound with wax

  goad and goaded

  again and again

  toward improvisation

  chelping a wet

  couplet through ceramic

  licentious yet pure

  yellow eye

  disinterested

  witness to the song

  TELEPHONE

  A mockingbird

  perched on the hood