Painted Paris Pumpkin

photo by Jean O'Neil

                                                                              

A grocer on Rue du Commerce

honors Halloween by painting

a clown face on a pumpkin.

No jack o’ lantern to scald

the minds of tiny children,

this creature’s winsome black gaze,

red blob nose, lolling tongue

look harmless as if lounging

in a textured suburban garden.

The grocer wants twenty Euros

for his artwork. The day inclines

toward the west, the overcast

thick as old-fashioned topcoats.

I crossed the Atlantic in one stride

to visit on your native soil,

but the pumpkin has locked my gaze,

so I have to buy and tote it

like the head of the headless horseman

to a rendezvous with horror

France hasn’t seen since the Forties.

It won’t perform that American

jack o’ lantern act, but maybe

the red tongue will lap and slobber

on some gray woman rushing home

with a string bag of fresh vegetables.

This freshest vegetable of all

will kindle her like puberty;

and if she steadies herself enough,

stifles the urge to call the police,

she’ll rush home to her family

and jolt them with slathers of kisses.

I hope you also will endure

the pumpkin’s friendly drooling                                 

and inspire yourself to respond

with earthen passion ripe enough

to brace us both through winter.

Mud Bottom

Drained to expose the mud that lies

beneath all sensitive membranes,

the pond looks ashamed to occupy

so much acreage for nothing.

On the shore the latest mushrooms

are skulls in memory of skulls

of creatures who’ve died of drought.

Their secrets aren’t available

anymore, although they understand

that draining the pond and drowning

fish in the pitiless air

meant something to someone elsewhere,

in another dimension, distance

the leer of mountains can’t explain.

I bag the edible boletus

for dinner, avoid the death-caps

standing aloof in the deepest shade.

Sometimes in the feverish light

of October I escape myself

and stalk naked but transparent

in falling woods, leaving no tracks

and calming the deer still browsing

the salad of this year’s growth.

Then my slack old skin-bag puddles

on the ground, an empty jump-suit.

If someone came along and found it

they’d mistake it for the rubble

of someone who drowned in the pond.

Today, though, there’s no drowning,

no escape from the body,

only a line of tracks that ventures

a dozen yards into the mud

and returns, tripping little bubbles

of swamp gas. I pack my mushrooms

in my hunter orange knapsack

and turn my back on the pond,

hoping my absence will heal it.

All Saints

A stone church tough as a knuckle.

Squat in the eloquent sunlight,

its tower thumbs the ether

with insolence. The transept

hunkers like a big-shouldered toad,

the slate roof shines with confidence,

the apse is the rump of a dwarf.

The famous architect enlisted

to plan this monument suffered

over drawings, and coughed a cough

that blazed with a rapt blue flame.

Now in the late summer glare

the intersecting lines hurt me,

hurt my disbelief the way shame

hurts the average child, the one

who’s halfway dutiful at school

but skimps on his chores at home.

Walking around the church,

beginning on the shady north side

where an abstract garden sculpture

prods and deflates the humid air,

I keep a safe distance from the faux

medieval bulk, more Romanesque

than Gothic. The colonnade loggia

shelters two rectangular windows.

Elsewhere, narrow pointed tracery

stained-glass lights, heavily framed,

rebut the slightest glimpse inside.

The curved but featureless rear

offers no grip on the cosmos,

so I proceed to the sunny view

from the south. Now the whole church

looks feline, crouched and alert

for curious, faithless souls like me.

I won’t tempt its great appetite                           

by stepping into the gloomy nave.                                      

 

With a wave and hello to the priest,

or priestess, trim in blue linen,

I dodge past the buttressed façade

with its tomblike entry and skip

down the walk, across the highway.

But I still feel the breath of hymnals

breezing after me, brown tones

eager to enlist my scratchy tenor

in homage to the grave unknown.