First Frost & Other Poems
ISFAHAN, IRAN
How beckoning wide is a Saturday
afternoon when the dishes have
been washed and the floors are
swept and there is little left to do
but open the windows and let the
sun come into the house and run
its bright little feet into every corner
like a child looking for a penny that
it has lost? You never know where
memory will take you when the day
is empty of everything but weather
and the last thing to do has already
been done. There was a time when
the sweet smell of fallen leaves on
the forest floor was exciting and the
decay of summer made you feel
even more alive than when the leaves
were green. A long trodden dirt path
winds through the wooded bluffs of
Massachusetts and over the old rock
bridges from the farming days, walls
covered in sharp, triangular stones.
A boy in rough khaki you played in
woods like this for hours finding
sticks to become swords. Who to
fight now but the memory of those
days a lost moment. Sometimes these
memories are not so sweet as the
fallen leaves, and you find yourself
unable to move from your spot in
whatever chair you find yourself like
a statue carved of torn and beaten
flesh. You laughed with him as a man
who was a cat shat backwards from
a small bush into his ass and screamed
as he realized time flowed one way and
consciousness another way. Nights
together as four cackling over some
terrible joke. Now when a Saturday
is wide you fill it with things to do so
you don’t have to think of the happy
things you cannot ever have again.
Did you think you were stronger than
your own mind? When the sun marks
a spot on the path in front of the two
of you, you step into it and laugh at the
warmth that has broken through the
naked branches. A rustle knocks a last
leaf from its place in the canopy and its
strength has finally been conquered by
the wind. There are places you would
like to go before the wind carries you
away like a leaf, degraded by old grey
age and anal sores from sitting too
long in a wheelchair one size smaller
than it should be. Isfahan, Iran, tan
landscape spread over Persian desert
calls to you like Monument Valley does in
Utah. And you wonder if the intricate blue
tile inlaid ceiling of the Shah Mosque will
be the sky and the columned arches will
be the red sandy buttes.
You may have lost yourself for
a brief moment in the music of your
daydreams but the wood is cold under
your feet still because you forgot to
turn on the heat today and it is never
summer anymore. You let it slip away
and the frost is here to stay. Soil your
memories like an art restoration gone
wrong just to be the owner for a moment
of your own reckless deceitful mind. In
summer you saw Isfahan in false dreams
and in the winter that never leaves you
felt the rustle of your own branches begin
too early, the fledgling feathers of your
mind falling out at the roots. So twist
carefully into the cork and press the lip
of metal to the neck of the bottle and
perhaps in red wine the colors of the
leaves will mix.
ROPE SWING
Falling must be something like
dying. The moment before you
let go of the rope and fall, a free
body into the black cocoon of lake
water, the moment of last breath
when all you have is exhalation
like the last stroke of an organ
pipe at Mass. Once you took her to
the Morgan Library and between
gilded leaves of the Gutenberg
Bible were the same Beatitudes
printed on the skin-thin sheets of
a dollar store new testament, and
her brown eyes told the whole sad
story. A little bit of God left her with
each breath she drew and in the
House of Morgan blessed be the
poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. The water is warmer
closer to the surface of the lake
but you’re drawn down to colder
realms where the rays of the day’s
sun couldn’t reach. Even now in the
twilight that warmer world grows a
little bit colder. Need money for
weed, hoes, and pizza he wrote on
brown boxboard outside of Morgan’s
gates and it is cold water, cold
cold water. She saw him, too, and
when you glanced forward she will
have remembered that blessed are
the pure of heart for they will see
God, and known that you had fallen
too, the cold lake water of unbelief
darkening your lungs.
There’s sand
beneath your toes at the bottom of
the pond and you feel the round stones
with your feet and imagine yourself
a penguin for a moment before bending
your knees and rising like a bullet
into the air of sunset. Between the
great black shadows of spruce and
tamarack it’s easy enough to remember
why you hate God for not drawing
breath himself. Smile when she stands
on the sandy log and tests the rope
by yanking on its knots and watching for
a crack in the branch above before
bending her knees and falling, falling
further than you could bring yourself
to fall into the darkening surface of
the lake under the long pine shadow
and the empty swinging knotted rope.
FIRST FROST
The first frost that draws fractals
on your window each September
never fails to draw tears from your
eye for the death of the long light
of summer and the coming of the
darkening days before the coldest
solstice. On the Gran Vía a young
kid asks in Spanish for a cigarette
just because you’re leaning against
the wall and the smell of sugar on
the air is mixed with smoke. There’s
no frost at all in January Spain, only
revelry, cases of clear liquor poured
into Dasani bottles and smuggled
past policía to the Puerta del Sol in
the shirtsleeves of twenty thousand
Americans. You remember the old
tale of Golgotha, of time travelers
learned in Hebrew, wearing sandals
on their soft urban feet, under brown
Jewish broadcloth. The real believers
huddled around old wooden tables in
dirt-floored houses won’t even hear
when Pilate passes judgment and these
imposters come to be history on a
whim, their own bottles full of a
different form of liquor. Lights in the
square are yellow and red and white
and the stink of American sweat and
sick floats with the nicotine, the policía
in their blue checker coats laughing
under the burst of fireworks. Maybe
you wish you weren’t alone among
imposters just like you, and that she
could hold your hand and watch the
starbursts cross the sky in arcs like
she did on the beaches of the North
Shore, pilots in F-15 joint strike fighters
plunging through cobalt skies, arrows
from a celestial bow tearing ragged
holes in the low white clouds and you
squeeze her hand tighter as they nose
the water leaving tattered waves behind
before bending upwards again into the
summer sky. If there was anything to
love about the old city in this night you
would believe it was the street washers
who moved their giant brooms with the
grace of the ballet pushing discarded
empties into towers, and the only sounds
through the empty calles were the crunch
and hum of the compactor trucks taking
the last evidence of the old year away
like the clang of the cathedral bells at
midnight. Maybe you’ll stop for a while in
the Plaza Mayor and sit under the stars
on a cold iron café chair and cry anyway,
even though there is no frost this year.
Contributor
Tys Sweeney
Tys Sweeney is a graduate of Tufts University, where he studied political theory and economics. He lives in Manhattan with his girlfriend and two cats, and writes poetry and fiction when he’s not working or wandering in Central Park.