The Poetry of James McCorkle
Winner: 1999 Campbell Corner Poetry Contest

New Sonnets

My Daughters’ Discourse on Beauty, As June Begins and the Bombing Continues

Long pendents of flowers hang from the black locusts,
Willows have unrolled into green; under them in deep shade, past
Newly turned fields, phlox are blooming and my daughter
Pronounces them as "beauty", not beautiful she insists-
Something more absolute she sees in their pooling, passing them
Each day, summer beginning to heighten beyond the trees.
She wants to dig up a clump and plant it in our garden,
Rank, wild, letting it spread: does it then turn from beauty
To beautiful, spreading to become ornaments in the uneasy air.
This morning, listening to you and your sister proclaim the world
Again, full of beauty, seeing forests where the tree-line abuts
A sprawl of houses, and faintly the radio, turned down to listen to you,
Reports capitals bombed in the night half a world away, beauty
Must be the domain of innocence, beyond ditch-line and pasturing cows.

Reflecting, that must be criminal, the slippage of events
While trotting out the personal-or is that side-long glance the only one
Afforded me, driving toward town, one not as famous as Rambouillet,
But as obscure as Rezela or Urosevac, beyond where I turn off a marker
Notes a burial site and beyond that another marking a lost encampment
Of the Seneca; in early photographs the land was cleared bare, one tree perhaps,
A house, and beyond that the gray cataract where sky and dust collude.
Names mentioned, then drawn into the air, drifted into dust,
Settling among the phlox I forget to look for again, before writing this,
Too intent on the road ahead, a failing I would say of fathers,
Watching what might stray from the edge, deer or squirrel,
While my daughters have the far fields for themselves
To watch, looking for another sign-and found, urge me off the road,
To run through the grass, as I watch, summer beginning to blister the shade.

top of page

Deer at the Corner of the House

Sight takes place at the edge, around corners, along snow-sagged
Fences, cutting across spirea flattened under a mat of white.
Looking straight ahead is dangerous for what can be
Missed, not that answers slide along this corridor of hedge and pine,
Coming to us by luck, not that answers even move
In the snow-stirred air, as though someone had passed by, as they have
Before, in the early morning before light, here and elsewhere,
Never to arrive again, like deer at the corner
Of the empty white house above the ravine, caught sight of
By the luck of passing by not too quickly that day--they must come
Out of hunger, the snow too deep to paw out shoots,
The branches ringed like a shell’s suture with new buds,
Maroon and hard--then they turn, as though the short nights
Of August were already here, the gardens full, and no one on this path.

top of page

Following a Windbreak into Woods

A crust of snow follows the windbreaks, the fields otherwise
Clear, steam-hung in the early morning, the ground thawed,
The first green runners in the brown thatch of old crop and weed.
Now we can see the damage, certain and undisguised
Before canopies of leaves drape twisted branches, torn
Bark, heartwood jagged as a dog’s tooth.
The ground wrung with snow-melt, too soft to hold
An ash or maple--toppled with the last heavy snow.
The shape of the woods will not be the same when we follow
This track tomorrow: the leafless branches will be beaded before
A crew with saws come through to cut the broken down, to keep
The stream from ponding-up, the soft yellow sawdust spreading
Through a stand of maple saplings cut to the ground, and past the woods,
The fields yellow as split poplar wood spread.

top of page

Looking East, From Pre-Emption

At this point on Pre-Emption, looking east, is also looking across
And down: the lake, a slice of blue, possible only because of fields cleared,
Before hidden from the uplands, by hardwoods.
The sky tilts closer at this height, the hills an illusion of summits, carved
From glacial pushes: turn the soil, stones ground to roundness spill
From the shovel. Vista or perspective predicated on the clarity
Of space, fields made and encumbered by only air, and bounded
By a thin line of pears or stooped willows. Our sight glides down and across
The moraines, accumulating the measure of space, as though emptiness was
The measure of possibility, the uplands discerned once the slope
Was tilled: coming here now, it seems this always was, even the woods downhill
Are new growth: we wait, hoping something will step from the tree-line
That no one remembers when it was last seen before, last trapped or shot, pegged
And stretched, but nothing does, the fields wait at the edge, beyond surprise.

top of page

Relic

Coming first from the south before a storm: the wind warm, we imagine
Exotics driven in the evening clouds over unknown trees.
Then the wind backing around to the northwest, with the wood-rot scent
Of snow late in the season, I will hear the geese
Overhead in the morning, again, as though they had lost their place,
Circling in the heavy falling snow, the lake below eclipsed
By steam, the trees falling into their shadows,
The news always arriving, to be turned over as a relic
Even though it seemed to be still happening, a voice coming to us
Accounting the burst of azalea, while here, the geese
No longer of the numbers once recounted, continue to remember
As they recompose their flight, the snow sliding
From their bodies, following their one call, the slate
Water glints, at the same time things moving together and apart.

top of page