Brother with Cat

This is my brother Robert William Hopper (1945-1997)

He was good with animals, good with little kids, good with his students.

He was a teacher and student of words and the way we speak to one another.

And he liked my poems!

I still think of him all the time.

The Dwelling of the Past

This poem believes in the work

ethic, believes you fashion

your own route through memory

and wilderness, blazing low

trails that dissolve overnight,

the wilderness rebuilding itself

on footprints and the bones

of travellers.

                      But for guide

we have only the horseshoe bends

of pages --- to the bottom and then

the perilous turn to the next,

adding lines, scattering the inky

gravel, the road fading behind us,

losing its way without our will

tamping it in place between

the shoulders.

                       That gravel is these

broken syllables, the last we have

of words, their residue, the squawks

and grunts, their rock-language

baby talk.

                 Yet with them we build

the dwelling of the past, word

by word, our flashcard house rising

like a tower in spite of winter

wind, in spite of darkness.

Without these words night will

enter bringing all its casualties.

Tonight they hang back, and all

things meet now on the round table

mixing like the grain of oak.

But the early light dims

                                       goes dirty

toward darkness, a murk descending

and water muddy where I dredge.

And now I find only the muddy

boot of cliche, the dump

                                         of stereotype,

They swarm our countryside, fleeing

from the burning hills of our

neighbors' dreams.

                               But this poem believes

in the work ethic, I want

the crackpot plan, my perpetual motion

machine in a bottle, my yacht

in the cellar. I'm sick

                                   of the medieval

walls of junk our cities grow,

sick of how we're forced to tug our

forelocks until we're bald, sick

of how our masters permit some

pleasure now and then, some bread ---

a fleabag circus under the banner:

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.

Which is why I travel toward my

private beefsteak mine, my

shadow home of memory. I have

the shares, I own fifty-one percent.

Vern Rutsala  (1934-2014)

Backtracking, Story Line Press, 1985, pages 45-46.

(My copy was used when I got it and has the author's signature 

and inscription in tiny, tiny, tiny writing. This is what it says:

                                                    To Sandy --

                                                         With all good wishes on

                                                          a good night in 

                                                          Tacoma --

                                                                              Vern Rutsala

I am thinking now that

                                        "On a Good Night in Tacoma"

would be an interesting title or poem prompt. I think Vern left it here for me.

I like the way that this poem travels down the page: making something like a stanza-break

at the ends of some sentences and in the middle of others, causing our attention to focus

on the word after the break. Another strategy to try. Good Night!