AUGUST KLEINZHALER

The Swimmer

The japonica and laurels tremble
as the wind picks up
out the west-facing wall of the old natatorium,
made wholly of glass.
The swimmer takes her laps,
steady and sure through a blur of turquoise
and importunings of chlorine.
The large room itself now darkens,
lit as it is by natural light,
as the storm clouds press closer to land.

Back and forth, the solitary swimmer,
now on her second mile,
is caught up, held almost,
in that one element she finds her ease;
and in moving through it
the very edges of her strength are engaged,
until, on a turn, her breathing stretched,
health pours into her.

The great glass wall, first pilloried by drops,
their dull, pellet-like clack,
is now streaming with rain:
and from this hill,
where, half-hidden, the old rec center sits,
across the sixty rolling blocks to the sea,
all that is material and solid,
the houses, the cars, the trees,
diminish into shadow
and continue to recede till there is nothing,
nothing at all in the world,
but water.

Spring Trances

Two snails have found the inside of a Granny Goose
Hawaiian-style potato chips,
the clipper ship on its wrapper
headed out from the islands

on a wind-swept main.
The last storms passed now, turning
to snow in the High Sierra:
they baste in their ointments deep in the tall grass,

cool among shadows and cellophane.
The sparrows and linnets have gone mad at dawn,
Trilling and swooping in the branches
and ditchweed, flashing a plume

then diving; a racket
we've woken to for weeks, far too long
before the sun turns Scotch broom and the poppies to flame.
We drift through these days

half in trance from fatigue.
At evening, as the streaks of light dissolve,
we watch the boy walk home,
hatband and uniform wet from the game.

The smell of dust and sweat and the oil in his mitt
Burns deep into the tissue of him.
Buffeted, drunk, wounded--
his pretty nerves bloom,

a school of minnows just under the skin.
The wind carries music up from the street,
a skewer running through him
that he slowly turns on in the scented dark.

West

An apocalyptic crack spreads like thunder
over sintered gorges and alkali flats.
The junco is knocked sideways then drops
as if shot onto a granite bed, turning
slowly mahogany there - wild peony.
Somewhere in the bleached sky and cirrus a Phantom
is at play, singeing cattle, lifting shingles
off farmhouse roofs. An enormous ball
Of phosphorus bounds across the Carson Sink.

--'Christ it was hot out there on Jackass Flats
after that big wave of wire, sagebrush
and rattlesnakes broke over us.'

The Paiute flint augur fairly hummed
with chromium when they pulled it out of Stillwater Marsh.
You could listen to it like a conch shell,
an impossibly busy, serial music
that compounds, and accelerates, on and on.

Where Souls Go

No telling where: down the hill
and out of sight –
soapbox derby heroes in a new dimension.
Don’t bother to resurrect them
unless some old newsreel clip
catches them shocked
with a butter knife in the toaster.
Countless snaps and episodes in space
once you’ve hit the viewfinder that fits.
It’s a lie anyway, all Hollywood –
the Mind is a too much thing
cleansing itself like a great salt sea.
Rather, imagine them in the eaves

among pidgeons
or clustered round the D train’s fan
as we cross the bridge to Brooklyn.
And make that a Friday night
July say. We are walking past
the liquor store to visit our love.
Two black boys are eating Corn Doodles
in the most flamboyant manner possible.
She waits, trying
to have the best song on as we arrive.
The moon is blurred.
Our helicopters are shooting at fieldworkers.
The mets are down 3-1 in the 6th

Poetics

I have loved the air outside Shop-Rite Liquor
on summer evenings
better than the Marin hills at dusk
lavender and gold
stretching miles to the sea.

At the junction, up from the synagogue
a weeknight, neccesarily
and with my father –
a sale on German beer.

Air full of living dust:
bus exhaust, airborne grains of pizza crust
wounded crystals
appearing, dissapearing
amng the streetlights and unsuccessful neon.

from the Faber & Faber volume Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club