Off Owl’s Heada poem

Thorpe Moeckel

Off Owl’s Heada poem

Thorpe Moeckel

Editor-in-ChiefLeslie Jill Patterson

Nonfiction EditorDennis Covington

Poetry EditorCarrie Jerrell

Fiction EditorKatie Cortese

Managing EditorsChase DearingerMichael Palmer

Associate Editors:Kathleen Blackburn, Erin Castle, Allison Donahue, Joseph Dornich, Rachel Furey, Jo Anna Gaona,Micah Heatwole, Christine Kitano, Beth McKinney, Scott Morris, Brent Newsom, Dominic Russ,Jerry Staley, Robby Taylor, and Sarah Viren.

Copyright © 2014 Iron Horse Literary Review. All rights reserved.Iron Horse Literary Review is a national journal of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. It is pub-lished six times a year at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, through the support of the TTU Presi-dent’s Office, Provost’s Office, Graduate College, College of Arts & Sciences, and English Department.For more information: www.ironhorsereview.com.

Cover Art: Arthur Lerner, Coastscape III, 60 x 72, oil on canvas (1985-1986)

Literary Review

The Trifecta June 2014

Off Owl’s Head

Otter & Dix Islands, Mussel Ridge, West Penobscot Bay

With thanks to John, Marielynn, Curtis, Joel, Walt, Sharon;and to the Simmons family for the work, the barn to build.

—May 2005, flood rains

Being on an island doesn’t focus you.

Where. I meanwho said.

The sea.The night out there talking to itself.

Thorpe Moeckel 1

Another seal,whiskered periscope.

Like the rockweed, the knotted wrack.

The way the mussel shells—little saucers of rain—contain every cloud.

2 Off Owl’s Head

Spruce wherein the morning if I wake

or not warblers will percolate through gapsin branches

that always know their place.

Thorpe Moeckel 3

The way it snaps you in pieces,the way it tears you new little toes.

I’m feeling glorious, thank you. No stars in a week.

Very forever.

4 Off Owl’s Head

A jagged landscape.But not

the roots.

Or say the spruce are ghostsof a taller race.

Thorpe Moeckel 5

Two and a half miles offshore & easily

eight weeks of workthe weather won’t let us have any part of.

A barn needs built—the money, the wood, it changed hands.

6 Off Owl’s Head

Talk’s cheaper even than talk.

I like the puddles.They callthose ruts,

but they are puddles.

Thorpe Moeckel 7

Guillemot, eider, gull. Slow fluttering of kelp.

Againthe again.

And then the kelp.

8 Off Owl’s Head

Once.

Someday I will say once

because something will be different.Until then.

Thorpe Moeckel 9

Storm-orphaned,the mind is a bait basket.There’s no homesickness quite

as sweet,

quite as at home.

10 Off Owl’s Head

Walt finds a pipestem, not too tide-scoured,

Glasgow still legible. Probably 150 years old, Walt says.

But tell me I want to know how old is now.

Chop onions, says Walt. They’ll say.

Thorpe Moeckel 11

Because spring’s a dirty bomb. Because every morning

idles higher. Push the choke.

Wonder it.

12 Off Owl’s Head

Some matter nowof letting matter

matter, even

if everything elsenever stopped.

Thorpe Moeckel 13

Or this: yellow warbler

like a scrap of brush firefrom spruce to lichen and then back

to the mist from which it nursed its voice.

14 Off Owl’s Head

The light has turned to waterand turned distance

to a shrinkage. What to do

but wear it, another skinthat feathers in.

Thorpe Moeckel 15

The names for things are no longer their names.There are too many whitecaps for that.

The whitecaps are no longer that many.The names for many are white names.

There are too many.

16 Off Owl’s Head

I’m trawled from sleep’s bottomby the slap of fetch or the granite’s cold response.

World’s breathing hard.

The clouds are gilled.They are gills. They run their nets.

Thorpe Moeckel 17

We check moorings.We check the haul off.

The eyes whitecaps,the fingers a cold spray.

Eiders, now, in every vein.

18 Off Owl’s Head

Don’t know anything more

except there’s a bird on a limb,and the rain is birchbark,

the sky is birchbark,

and so are the stones.

Thorpe Moeckel 19

Always felt

younger than this. Always

felt oldereither.

20 Off Owl’s Head

Another seal,

all torso & opal stare. The moon’s full.

The sublime can go suck an egg,

just leave me the shell.

Thorpe Moeckel 21

What

I would giveto lash the shore of you,to run your keel,

my love far away.

22 Off Owl’s Head

Wind-snapped spruce, waves lapping its crown.

One gull and then another,quick as motes and as quiet.

Warblers, too, maybenesting, maybe heading north come night.

Thorpe Moeckel 23

The word is rote, but rote is notwhat the waves are saying

as we move boats on a floatthat rocks harder than the rocks

are hard. It’s night,

24 Off Owl’s Head

not still, far from it.

Chafe’s from two directions, John shouts.Tearing up the wood, tearing up the chine.

So fast, sure notes with rope—No,

let’s run the damn thing aground.

Thorpe Moeckel 25

Too wet for work, too much of a blow.

Rain for the ninth day in a row and rain, they say, for another five.

The seals don’t do anything different.

26 Off Owl’s Head

Time grows invalid.

The island doesn’t sink; the water covers it.

Low tide or not, the ledge wears the rain as rugosawears the wind, winnowing

the spray, mist—a droplet, another.

Thorpe Moeckel 27

Brushstrokes of alder in an old foundation.

Once more, the cloud lace.Once more, evening to send out its flares.

Somewhere we might come back to ourselves.

Here or smear, not likely here.

28 Off Owl’s Head

To the knees in ferns, to the nipples in cowslip.Leeward, the eider clumsy as they burstfrom nest. Pea blossom, clover.Kelp in torn strands, vagrant bacon.

Thorpe Moeckel 29

Somebody groans.

The sleeping bags make their synthetic noise.

Diesel chug of lobsterboat. With luck,Walt’s up. There, yes,

there’s the smell of coffee.

30 Off Owl’s Head

Barnacles like the stone’s wool,

surface tension holding the rainunder limb, grass.

Blossoms closed but bright.

Gulls spelling out the original language.

Thorpe Moeckel 31

Outer islands mute in the fog,formalwear of the eider drake,

a hen bursting from her nest in the cowslip,knocking a snailto another path of slither.

32 Off Owl’s Head

The urchins turned to currency.Amazement was on the house.

How the light went bloodwhere it was juiced,

lemon.

Thorpe Moeckel 33

First sun in a week

and now it’s nearly under.

The gulls, vocal as erosionand as pale, run their errands.

They drift.

34 Off Owl’s Head

These days I’m closer to the birchthan my own life,

and every tree’s further, green gauze & all, from the sky than the tide. So what

if I’ve never loved the way I’m losing it now.

Thorpe Moeckel 35

Thanks guts me.Distance grinds my spruce.For days I praise the murk, disarrayof needles on moss.

First bunchberry, first lady’s slipper.

36 Off Owl’s Head

Morning gathers & rolls. A kind of skin.

Islands visible then gone.Lobsterboats in the where.

No grass for the rain.A little grass for the rain.

Thorpe Moeckel 37

Blue iris shiver, blue iris shivering.

Move a little, the edge changes.Playing follow the food.In the duff, the duff,

and a few eider eggs sucked clean.

38 Off Owl’s Head

Another driftwood keepsake.Leave it there.

Let the rollers have iton the flood, satin in their approach,satin & moon-based in their going back.

Thorpe Moeckel 39

Cormorant, pot warp, squall—it’s not the names but the twitch in the throat.

And to think the bottom is trap after trap, granite & ledgeand eel grass & sand & kelp. Coasts, countries.

The sea an island, the island a cloud.

40 Off Owl’s Head

Author’s Note

Thorpe Moeckel teaches in the writing program at Hollins University. He’sthe author of three books of poems—Odd Botany (Silverfish Review Press,2002), Making a Map of the River (Iris Press, 2008), and Venison: a poem (Etr-uscan Press, 2010). Chapbooks include Meltlines and The Guessing Land. Hiswork has been the recipient of NEA, Javits, Hoyns, and Kenan Fellowships.His next book of poetry, Arcadia Road: A Trilogy, will be published in 2015 byEtruscan Press.

Artist’s Note

Arthur Lerner received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Instituteof Chicago in 1951 and 1952, respectively. He also studied in Europe at theAcademie de la Grand Chaumiere, Paris. Among his many grants and awardsare a Fulbright Grant for Study in Italy, an Award for Drawing from theChicago Festival of the Arts, and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow-ship. Lerner’s work is in many museums and public collections, including theArt Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of American Art (Washington,DC), and the U.S. State Department Cultural Division. Distinguished Pro-fessor Emeritus from Chicago City Colleges, Lerner also spent many sum-mers in Maine, painting the coastal landscape.