small lessons from the dream book
When a message arrives from a friend who died
two years ago
In the middle of an article on how to replace a bad habit
Beneath Led Zeppelin playing on the radio
At the end of a dawn dream falling
In the voice of a patron eating scrambled eggs
half way down the counter
Or by email: lurching me to check the sender’s address
for recognized or new?
Regardless, most comforting to assume that this is true
Checking for cc’s and other addressees
I may not be alone
Accepting, either way, there is no one to help
Sent today, they are they and you are you
Pause.
I open my heart
I compose my response
I release it
Sent more than a week ago, I read carefully
I compose my response
I consider it will take
at least a week to reach them
I release it
Sent a year ago, I read carefully knowing
that the technology may have failed me
I open my heart
I compose my response
knowing that they may by now be gone
It’s okay to assume I know what I think I know
It’s okay to assume that I do not know what I do not know
I release it.
Robin Eichele
February 2019
caudillo (kô-dēlˈyō, -dēˈyō, kou-) n. A leader or chief, especially a military dictator. n. A political boss; an overlord. ne·science|\ ˈne-sh(ē-)ən(t)s, ˈnē-, -sē-ən(t)s\ n. Lack of knowledge or awareness : ignorance dirigiste us /dɪrəˈʒiːst/ adj. relating to a system in which a government has a lot of control over a country's economy: a dirigiste government/model/state
i
moving to the back of the train
how long-ago answers
from when history was not designed
to record the same way as say
a color or a pain today
become much more essential
now that the memory bombs
drop in clusters
of vague sensations –
blended reconstructions
balled up
in before and later
or smoothed in the blur of
sometime on or about
like summer flowers
flattened in a book without a date
brought to light by a random visit
to Pound’s ABC of Reading
finding a violet pressed
against his instructions
for charging language with meaning:
phanopoeia, melopoeia, logopoeia
the violet pressed there why
in such a slim volume except
it would be preserved
by its neighbors – the Guide
to Kulchur on the one side and
The Cantos on the other
how could I have imagined
in 1963 or 4 that I would have
positioned the charge of images
sounds and mingled words
in such a frail subconsciousness
moved by where those flowers grew
and I was plucking them – returning to
check the publication –
second printing of the 1960 first edition –
and the primal question of that season:
does the word dictate
the experience we articulate?
as in,
do the words find it for us
or do we find the words for it?
oh, dear violet, oh, dear Ezra, where
was I and what feelings are these
that now grace this retrograde
illumination?
Robin Eichele
February 2019
the dog and his master rotate
to create their own equator
the leash invokes centrifugal
hand to collar forces
first one and then the other
plays the superior gravity
gifting their partner with
the thrill of the planetary orbit
they bark and yelp
in the delight of emotions’ atmospheres
stretching the mandates of physics to prove
they have in their personal cosmos
the laws of trust and love
and moist noses
they dance as if the stars
and the warm summer night
are who they are and all they need
their constellation to define
Robin Eichele
July 2015
“In Edo Sashimono, the elaborate technical mastery
of the craftwork is concealed.”
check your bag
you’ve got what you’ve got –
no more plans for ten-year apprenticeships
no becoming an Edo Sashimono master
with a cured Mulberry inventory
and the finest collection of heirloom chisels and planes
your story must save for the next time around
the preternatural precision of the full blind
mitered dovetail
those laser-handed tenons and mortices
those seamless panel-to-panel integrations
of hair-strand grain
words are all the wood you’ll get now
so take care to fit them as best you can
rub them with your love of what nature brings
bathe them in layers of urushi to move them
from hidden to spontaneously arranged
in the practical simplicity of iki
Robin Eichele
July 2015
fear unfurls off the lake with the fury
of January ice
chainsaw chatter
boney-jawed defiance of fist and cudgel
pain and mortality in an envelope
on the mantel
to be opened only if and when
taking on the heights without a net or a rope
or a parachute
four fingertips wrapped on a half-inch perch
converting three thousand feet of gravity
into an inevitability not taken
the video has one million views within the week
and then the wannabes
sporting imitation’s shortcomings
posting their final mimicries
absorbed by the sponge of error
or is it mediocrity?
to the uninitiated
the measure is in what
gets thrown away
not kept
they dressed him in a too-small suit and half shoes
more polished than he ever was
the package obviously not a priority
in the rush of pools of adrenaline
demanding to be drained
Robin Eichele
July 2015
it’s the post-birthday sloughing of delusions
as slippery as cut-out mythologies popping up
in a children’s book
pretending to be as hard as nuts falling
into the metal pockets punched by hail
in the tops of cars mere days ago before the bright sun
rode the pure blue of the high pressure bulge
into the clear night and sub-normal dawn
that drilled the chill past the comforter and sheet
into the ribs of the passengers
ears intoxicated on percussive fulminations
bellies borne on the giddy skiffs of percolating suds
faces cured peach-red by the cloudless sky
eyes glazed as if no need to make any more sense of it –
yesterday’s somnambulant patriots return
from the fireworks downtown to
put the car in the garage
finish the dishes and tuck in the kids and lock the doors
and check the thermostat
before turning out the lights
Amelia disappeared today
The words are bigger on the page now
about the size of a black bear
squeezing in for the winter
versus that peaked coming out in spring
scrawny yawn and terrible hunger
Now the words have got more grit
leather straps and ligaments
a medium conflagration looking out
for a decent reason
chafing at arbitrary imprisonment
Now the words have taken an ironic turn
and then turned again
big toothy grins sprinkled with laughter
challenged to get at the meaning
at the marrow of the nagging dissonance
Robin Eichele
July 2, 2015
Robin Eichele's Poetry 