Don Roberts
TO THE RESIDENT ORCAS
I
If the seas grow quiet, what, then, of our hearts?
II
Distribution of pods is charted.
Records are kept of changing species numbers.
On the beach, we hand children sandy pails.
They scurry like birds at water’s edge.
III
You ease through waves that toss our craft,
you harassed by commercial hunting for entertainers,
you who irk some fishers enough they wish your death.
Internal storms can sweep man’s brain,
blur his perception,
rend him from his place among species.
IV
If the seas stagnate, what, then, of our salty blood?
V
Do you hear summer songs of insects?
Do you hear our children’s ahs,
you suspended in black-and-white moment,
feathering air with spray?
VI
I would honor your dancing and your poetry.
I would sing you willows.
I would sing you grassland and oak woodland.
I would sing you cedar groves and redwood stands.
I would sing you red-winged blackbird and blue jay,
nests of hummingbird and eagle.
VII
What joys are caroled beneath the waves, I do not know.
What poems echo
of fans in tidal wash,
of moon jelly floating
in carved ivory sky.
—Don Roberts
from Midden
SUMMER NIGHT FERRY FROM FRIDAY HARBOR
Ahead of lighted deck there’s only black
until moon sows a path like silver leaves
across this slack toe of sea.
Rounded beak of ferry sleds the surface
with sweet psalm of steady splash and hiss.
Behind the rope, wind of passage chilling,
I shiver now and then in sync
with the throbbing metal beneath my feet.
I wait to go up to join you,
your family, and my own.
We cannot know, on this vacation
—even you—about the cancer’s grab.
To this inter-island ferry waft the smells
of kelp and mudflats, of forest and fish,
of flotsam and vacation home development.
A friend’s laugh of joy is a toss of spray
across waves. A door shuts with each breath.
Silence surrounds each sound.
The bow swings east
toward trembling earwigs of light.
—Don Roberts
from Midden
Preventive Mutilation
To keep from losing his son
to men who draft boys
a father prunes young hand
a finger or two
before the guns return.
Hardened to deeds
as one who stewards
beasts for his living must be
while his wife tends
gasping son, father sharing what
boy suffers takes
blade to one or two
meaty digits of his own.
Evening gloom absorbs
light as soil soaks up
rain, sunlight, blood
as if sacrificed to crops
to peace from echoes of war.
—Don Roberts
MANGOSTEEN
Years later, he finds he had it wrong.
In memory, the inner fruit, too foul to eat,
must be daggered away from the sweet rind.
Later recognition: it’s rugged outside,
pure as lotus within.
Earth-moving, from herbicides to ’dozers to shovels.
He watches Seuss-like insects fly by his post.
He describes snowflakes to a six-year-old.
He trades cigarettes for a can of pound cake.
He rides shotgun on the colonel’s night trip.
Charmed by smooth-skinned bar girls,
he remembers a kiss beneath a Monterey cypress.
He sees the planting of boot on landmine.
Lift of butterfly wings from the pin of a grenade.
A child’s foot introduced to a trip wire.
He longs for ice safe to put in his Lipton’s tea.
It’s not a question of smarts: survival is no science.
He knows he’s sane—the Army says so.
Back in “the real world,”
he samples a topless show,
eats spaghetti in North Beach.
He stands stunned in supermarket aisle:
diversity of boxes, cans, and jars,
what looks like the ripest fruit
—no heads of sow, but packaged meats
—no disturbance of squirming eels,
but diet ices and frozen desserts
—ten thousand shelves without fault.
Ammo is endlessly crated, loaded, and sent.
He stares at the page till it glows with opal light.
Years later, he finds he had it wrong.
—Don Roberts
from Midden
