John Gurney lives in Stockton, California and writes poems about the Sacramento River Delta.
You may access John Gurney's web page at the following URL: http://www.planchette.com/poetry.htm, or send e-mail to Mr. Gurney at: mailto:jgurney@planchette.com
Out on the Delta
You certainly couldn’t call it a pretty fish
For a moment I wish I had a camera
I don’t seek possession
In my boat
At night I would dream about those waters
What had it been 150, 200 pounds?
nor the sun escaping
In the kitchen of the blacksmith
His hand pauses to examine the sky
Beyond this room
Sometimes
Her hands were the paint
Wonder has a voice
We talk about paint
Her hands too,
I can see that courage
The glory she sees
a sturgeon rises to the surface
it could have been a prehistoric God
this magnificent fish
enormous as dolphins
twisting and boiling
the surface of the water
and all the time me
looking on in amazement
in awe
as one who has seen a vision
or rather a creature
restored from antiquity
and reanimated here
for disappearing seconds.
strange sculptured shape
with bones and cartilage pressed against skin
black, leathery
head sloped and angular
stretching out to small dark eyes
the tentacles that dangle
about the curious mouth.
a hook
a way to possess the great fish
to make it my own
but that is not why I came.
but rather communion
a plea for forgiveness
an understanding of extinctions
and vertebrae
the movement of fish
water and time.
I'm still drinking beer
and thinking about caviar
the eggs we steal from her belly
eating the salty children
before they are even conceived
and I wish I had her caviar now
and champagne
and a beautiful woman
to share them with
to make love here
on the water
to spawn like fish on the surface of the night
water lapping bodies
like the caress of a lovers mouth
and all the while
dreaming of that enormous fish
that dark ghastly form
body tossed in eddies and currents
flotsam and jetsam
debris
washed in from a passing summers storm
and again
I try to recall
the size of that fish
the majesty of its girth
the amazing stretch of spine
the force of serrated tail
and twisting fins.
It doesn’t matter
I will never know
or understand
where it is that a sturgeon travels
liquid as mercury
into the darkened water
of the patient Delta.
WOODEN SPOONS
there are only wooden spoons.
silverware falters, tumbles from the clouds
and rains across the cindered floor.
the world remains
flat or not ...
he questions physics
alchemy
the ability of butterflies
to consume entire forests
free of remorse
their wings forming like red clay pots.
a ballad he hears
beside the patient shores, tules, cattails
the slow laborious flight of a crane
lifting from muddy stumps
this too he carries to his hearth
sheltered in a basket
fine woven, silken as the breast of a goose
whose body he will consume
roasted with tubers
and tasting like a prayer.
Talking To A Woman About Columbia
colors dancing across the page
so firm and gentle
guiding my own.
the tamber she speaks
the color she paints .
and stencils
the proper way to handle a brush.
speak a language of strong women
and stout hearts
the strength to stand with out fear
the coldest of winters
the love of their children
dead and ascended
while their own depths remain
small pox, measles
the young men killed in the mines...
lingering still
In the colors of that pallet
changing with the light of the day
the change of the strokes
the wonder she speaks.
in my hands nervous tremble
the comfort of her touch.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1997. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their
original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author.
Copyright © John Gurney, 1997.
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