Lampman

 

 

 

The horror we call Lampman

prowls along a gravel road

where last spring’s anemones failed.

 

Forest crowds the dark. Houses

spaced a quarter mile apart

close as tightly as oysters

 

against his gray phosphorescence.

We’re not certain that he’s dead

but his fitful glow suggests

 

at least the notion of decay.

He walks this road every night

and no one challenges him.

 

As we pass in our car we imagine

he waves, but his glow occludes

his vestigial form and gestures.

 

He isn’t much. Hardly a presence.

But we mustn’t stop to talk.

We might become pillars of salt

 

the rain would erode and erase.

Lampman creeps from point to point,

never returning along this road.

 

Where does he go in daylight?

Is he present but unseen because

his glow is too vague to compete

 

with the honest November sun?

People blame him for the deaths

that frequent the nearby houses,

 

but cancer and old age apply.

No murders, no violent accidents,

no screams from vacant bedrooms,

 

no skulls grinning after midnight.

Lampman shuffles along the road

in his self-sparked illumination,                         

 

an idea of a person rather

than a soul on its own. When

we see him, we feel depleted

 

although he has never troubled us

except by exposing to starlight

a dream life we’d rather hide.

 

One Morel

 

 

One morel thrust from a patch

of processed mulch on Grove Street.

What mushroom thinking fruited

beside this busy sidewalk where

the post office crosswalk tempts

pedestrians to risk their lives?

 

We’ve just collected our mail,

a trash of advertisements. You note

the mushroom’s grave immodesty

and demand that I photograph it

before some greedy dog eats it

with a clumsy tongue-dangling smile.

 

In the cloudy light its colors

perfect themselves. The angle

of its attack looks slightly awry,

but its motive seems clear enough.

We’ll email the photo to friends

who appreciate mushroom-thoughts

 

in autumn, when so much nature

seems in retreat. We’ve never

seen a morel downtown where

lawyers and realtors conspire

to bare the local landscapes

and build shabby houses for gain.

 

Maybe the planted river birch

nearby will shed enough leaves

to safely conceal this fungus

until it has finished spreading

spores unlikely to flourish

in this busy little downtown.

 

You hope the mushroom’s aware

that we wish it well. At least

we’ve captured its portrait, posed

in thick but flattering light,

looking as we hope we would look

deep in the grip of reason.

 

Origami Attack

 You trimmed your shop window

with a thousand origami cranes

folded in blue, red, and yellow.

You expect this flock to suggest

that peace might break out sooner

than later, the flickering wars

on three continents snuffing

and their ashes blowing away.

 

I try a photo but reflections

of the bank across the street

and passing cars and pickups

muddle the crisp flight of birds.

The bank looks officious today,

responding to your frankly

socialist vision with a sneer

of brick and peeling wood trim.

 

The bustling vehicles ignore

your display because running

the stop sign requires focus.

Once I counted for a few minutes

the drivers who stopped and those

who blasted right through without

owning the right of way: five

scofflaws for each one that stopped.

 

You think your floodlit aviary

can discipline the human race?

The cranes beat against the tide

of indifference, their colors blazing,

but their living figures droop

with a thousand years of exhaustion

imported from Japan before

atomic warfare began.