A Sweet Unrest

Chances dance off your wrists

I reread this book during a recent clearout/reorganizing of one of my bookshelves.  It landed most definitely in the keep pile.  Here is the lead-off track, if you will.  

The Young by Roddy Lumsden

You bastards!  It's all sherbet, and folly
makes you laugh like mules.  Chances
dance off your wrists, each day ready,

sprites in your bones and spite not yet
swollen, not yet set.  You gather handful
after miracle handful, seeing straight,

reaching the lighthouse in record time,
pockets brim with scimitar things.  Now
is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick
twins, carried on your backs, each vow
new to touch and each mistake a broken

biscuit.  I was you.  Sea robber boarding
the won galleon.  Roaring trees.  Machine
without levers, easy in bowel and lung.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve
of Tuesday to Tuesday and you're gone,
summering, a ship on the farthest wave. 

Each Of Us In Tatters

We've had some very long sleepless nights and some even longer bleary days as my baby toddler welcomes a few new pearly whites.  In addition to grappling with old WW I was reading Roddy Lumsden's latest collection, Third Wish Wasted, before it all went south (again).  I don't understand everything in his poems but I like his way with words, his 'linguistic antics' as the back cover puts it.  In many of them though the playfulness seems to almost careen its way to a payoff so raw it is stunning.

Against Complaint by Roddy Lumsden

Though the amaryllis sags and spills
so do those my wishes serve, all along the town.
And yes, the new moon, kinked there in the night's patch,
tugs me so - yet I can't reach to right the slant.
And though our cat pads past without a tail, some
with slinking tails peer one-eyed at the dawn, some
with eyes are clawless, some with sparking claws
contain no voice with which to sing
of foxes gassing in the lane.
                                  Round-shouldered pals
parade smart shirts, while my broad back supports
a scrubby jumper, fawn or taupe.
                                  The balding English
air their stubble, while some headless hero sports
a feathered hat.  I know a man whose thoroughbred
grazes in his porch for want of livery.
There are scholars of Kant who can't find Kent
on the map, and men of Kent who cannot
fathom Kant.
            We who would polish off a feast have lain
late in our beds, our bellies groaning, throats on fire.
We who'd drain a vat of wine have drunk
our own blood for its sting.
                                Each of us in tatters flaunts
one treasured garment flapping in the wind.