Warren Hayman lives in Moscow, Idaho and is a lecturer in the University of Idaho’s English Department.
Hayman holds an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and writes, “I am a somewhat boring lecturer, husband, and father here in Moscow.”
---------
The Lightning Tree
If terror is a kind of understanding,
so is awe.
Today I walked through some familiar woods,
something which would have nothing to do
with awe or terror, save the weight
of a sky soon to storm,
the thunder of late afternoon.
All day the heat climbed, the air
trembled under the tension of itself,
building down, so thick you could taste it,
the wind so slight
dust settled in its tracks.
My own tracks
are as permanent now
as anything in the past,
and will soon be gone, which is
another permanence,
with its own kind of terror.
In the same woods a woman and I
once escaped a similar heat
and found, in a clearing, some moss.
We lay down, as lovers do,
into and away from ourselves.
High overhead the cedars
were like the rafters I remembered
in a cathedral we saw
together in southern Mexico—
so strong and dark above
they seemed to hold the world.
After, as we lay back
not yet completely ourselves, we felt
the release of wind,
the rumble of close thunder. We dressed,
and, taking cover under branches, saw
the yellow blaze of lightning
criss-cross a nearby tree,
the bits of bark blown off, the sound
knocking us backward, into
the ozone stench and smell of crackled sap.
Having survived everything that afternoon,
we said little.
Maybe that is the most surprising thing—
not what we say, or don’t,
which is its own source of wonder,
but what we are able to survive:
lovemaking, lightning,
the cathedral of cedar trees,
or even the one in southern Mexico—
the beaten gold leaf of the walls
brilliant as any sun,
the terrifying icons of saints nailed to them,
and the novena candles, scores of them
in every corner,
small, darkly burning,
their tiny flames hard as lightning,
sustained by simple prayers and a faith
deep-rooted, we say,
barely thinking of trees.
I came to the clearing, to the tree,
and traced the scars of lightning
wrapped around it,
tight as any lover;
the tree that didn’t break into flame,
but remained
standing,
scarred and alive.
Procession
First the little girls of the town
come with flowers and candles.
They sing the verses of a funeral song.
Their voices quaver, their five-year old mouths
have not fully learned
the shapes and sounds of these death songs,
so impossibly easy to sing.
After them the smaller boys, voiceless,
fidget in rows, in shoes, unused
to the stares of shopkeepers
leaning from quiet doorways.
Next the older ones, those
with the body’s first knowledge
of death, sing the whole song,
chorus and verse. Then the adults
sing only the chorus,
answering in a cadenced bass
the verses of the children.
The widow walks behind the casket,
her face veiled, her voice
small as her steps,
as if her grief has eaten her
so completely all that remains
is an outline, a querulous prayer.
After her a few friends
mumble into their work clothes,
struggle to contain their children
kicking rocks at stray dogs.
Butchering
We slipped in, with ladder and flashlight,
to pick the roosters to slaughter,
slicing the beam through the rafters
and playing it over the flock,
humming a high, thin song to ease them,
to calm the goats shuffling in straw.
Moving up the ladder, rungs
ticking like knifeblades
locking into place,
I grabbed their legs from behind,
swinging them down, into their cages,
the squawking over in seconds.
Sunday morning, when the water boiled,
we carried them to the yard.
While one held the wings
we threaded each head
between nails on a stump,
stretching the neck out full.
Taking aim, I raised the axe,
its glint a flash in each one-eyed stare
where squinting, I could discern
the dulled dot of light that was me,
and exhaled the length of the swing,
their own lungs collapsing,
as I scooped up the heads—
eyes blinking at nothing, beaks gaping—
and shook with the dark joy of being,
shook hard as their beating wings.
Oyster Divers, Matatenchen Bay
Dawn. The damp heat hovers,
soaks into the skin.
A day already old
as the hands who work its length
diving for oysters, day in and out,
who measure the days by the tides,
who pray each night for whatever
small salvation they can find—
bad weather, a pearl,
the open arms of their wives.
If I look
into this hot blue sky
and say it will bring rain,
I believe it
because I want to,
and because it’s true.
If I say to them
in the breathing space between descents
they have grazed on salt grass
for the seven lean years of their lives,
they will laugh
because they know it’s true,
because they are already
salt grass and seaweed,
their swollen hands streaming.
They will take their thick fingers
and point to the sky to say
today could be any day,
today is, was, and will be
when there is nothing left
for the sky but storm,
the clouds grazing the water,
finding us at last.
Boy on a Dock
Come dusk when the blue heat fades,
and water is the same
washed-out grey as the sky,
the boats come in, the children
gather at the dock to help,
the youngest no bigger
than the fish he unloads,
his eyes bright as scales.
Soon the boats, inches lighter
and moored for the night
disappear into their sounds,
the intimate rub and groan
of wood on sea-worn wood.
Before he is old he will grow
into his name and face,
his hands and eyes creased
as the sails of the family boat.
Each day he returns
to currents, tides,
the sunken fear of reefs,
the shudder and gust of waves
breaking on the hull.
He will learn the trust in ropes
hand-spliced by fathers,
the pain of fingers
scored clean by quick fish.
He will come to love
evenings, the boats in harbor,
their spread nets drying,
framing the stars.