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This is to certify that the thesis entitled PROTOSUN presented by Stuart Birkby has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Master Of Arts degree in English 2.4 a Major professor d [Aw If 30; / € 78 0-7639 LIPMDY l , _....n"-"h.-:1 14...“... ‘3... £4.--” 1" ._..‘_._4-_~.2'. 39.0. 3:. ~;_..M. wet-.0991! -~."-"~’ an (C) Copyright by STUART JOHN BIRKBY 1978 PROTOSUN BY Stuart John Birkby A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of English 1978 Something on the horizon rising. Another world building, blowing up in me like a bubble ready to burst. Red lava seas melt the rocks, bubbling, breaking, dissolving. My world is a great bloody bubble rising in the middle of the molten sea trying TABLE OF CONTENTS INT RODUCT ION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I. II. III. SINGING HOW THE CLOUDS COME OUT The Sun Lasts . . . . . . . . . . . Power Drain . . . . . . . . . . . . Naturally Untitled . . . . . . . . . Just Take Me Home . . . . . . . . . Vacation Paradise: Mid Winter . . . Brink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don't Tell Me I've Lost Again . . . Tranquility Revisited . . . . . . . "This Wasn't My Time“ . . . . . . . A Poem for the Next Three Years . . SHATTERED GLASS Spring Dream Challenge . . . . . . . After Walking with Wordsworth . . . Momentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Detroit is a Point of View . . . . . Declaration of Non-Pacification . . Tae Kwon Do is Cheaper than Cocaine (But the Buzz Isn't as Great) . . Second Asteroid Belt . . . . . . . . TO THE BEARER OF MY NON-EXISTENT CHILD Bus Station . . . . . . . . . . . . Texas Dream (An Aborted Love Poem) . Another Try Toward a Love Poem . . . Broken Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . Encore O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 iii omqmmpw 10 ll 13 15 16 l7 l8 19 20 21 23 25 26 27 28 IV. Warning: Do Not Touch Feelings Under Penalty of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . Dischord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lost Connections & Spring Rains . . . . . Since No One's Asking . . . . . . . . . . Shifting Sands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Churchyard of St. John . . . . . . . . . . There is No Lighthouse . . . . . . . . . . Crossing the Channel at Midnight (Written on a ship slowly chopping the water between France and England) . . . Loneliness Ten Times Over . . . . . . . . State of the Empire . . . . . . . . . . . On Nearing Keats' Grove . . . . . . . . . East from Camelot . . . . . . . . . . . . Starvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wrong Side of the World . . . . . . . . . People with Paralysis Should be in Hospitals Stagnant Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . Atlantic Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To the Bearer of my Non-Existent Child . . WARM NIGHTS AND OLD WORLDS Traveling through Nirvana (Michigan) . . . Sporting Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Afternoon Nap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer Ethnic Festival in a Small Midwest Town 0 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O Cruising Through Rouge Park on Outer Drive Same Old Winter Song . . . . . . . . . . . January 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Passing Midwest Scene . . . . . . . . . . Listen to Winter . . . . . . . . . . . . . On Coming to the Clean Sun of Morning éJUlia? o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0 Tomato Paste and Scrap Paper . . . . . . . iv 29 31 32 33 35 36 38 39 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 65 V. Upon Noticing His Voice Above a Whisper Neuro-Surgery Recovery . FOREVER SUMMER RAINBOWS (An Afterword) Cravings . Anti—Prayer 66 67 68 70 71 INTRODUCT ION This collection of poems was written over a period of eighteen months when I lived, at various times, in Detroit, East Lansing, London (England), and, finally, Calumet in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Although these poems were not written with a preconceived plan or theme in mind, I believe that, when structured together, these words give a feeling of physical movement and mental wandering. Being of independent thought and action, this work has been mostly my own from first creation to final organization. I do, however, want to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Linda Wagner who revived my creative spirit when it lay near a permanently dormant state and for continuing to be a most helpful guide with her extremely tactful criticisms and beneficial suggestions. I hope that this collection is a starting point from which I will further develop my ideas and my writing. But if events should occur that will cause this to be my only crea- tive effort, then I present Protosun as a summary of my poetic endeavors. For those who want, I give. SJB I Singing How the Clouds Come Out THE SUN LASTS Daylight glows but I'm sure you'll mention clouds. I see warmth, you see shadows, long cold sadness across drying sidewalks. I see clouds but I don't call them by name. I like to pet clouds gently, listen to them purr a low cheerful moan. But I reserve my call for the sun. POWER DRAIN Tell me, does this happen often or am I just lucky to be here? I'm staring at dead radiators, a quiet stereo, no lights all the way to the Paradise Ballroom. If I'm a moving target why am I always being hit? Julia would know what to do. We'd sleep through the dark feeling out the black. Maybe this is death, the pain of waiting. NATURALLY UNTITLED I don't know I can't think. The Grand Coulee closed the floodgates. The Point Reyes Peninsula is taped to the wall but the waves are motionless and across the way the sun never rises finally over San Francisco. JUST TAKE ME HOME Taxi to Toledo, tread across my vision, rolling. Morning dew clings to barn roofs, glistens in late morning sun stabbing into my scattered brain. Unsatiated hunger. No worldly satisfaction. The Maumee becomes River Styx. VACATION PARADISE: MID WINTER Somebody tell me. I use old poems for grocery lists, replay a song twenty times, in town six months still feeling the first day. Fan belt squeals break the sun rises. If I spread my living on the floor my dog wouldn't piss on it. BRINK I feel so helpless because I'm being pulled toward total order. No guessing, hoping. Flow along with a stagnant stream. Drown in clinging mud. DON'T TELL ME I'VE LOST AGAIN Riding with waves, a windblown meadow splashes red wine drowning in clouds. I think I am at the apogee of my intelligence and I am being thrown away by the gravitational pull of my Sun. TRANQUILITY REVISITED It's almost funny. A battle here? Oceans of dandelions bow to the breeze, gold from the sun contaminates the land. A battle here? A frightened brook swaths through tranquil weed-fields. Choking, strangling roots clenched in combat, the ruling sun smiling. 10 "THIS WASN'T MY TIME" All ended nowhere to go. Blinking black,/white DETOUR signs everywhere he looked finding a life going 9 to 5 ( a break for lunch ) curling with poetry collecting dust in the attic. His name never appeared anywhere except on pay-checks, but his calendar was full: 13th: Groceries 15th: Fill-up car 16th: Bank business 19th: Church let: Tell Miss Duffy her linens out if it rains Friends would come, the way friends go. Nothing happens in-between. One Bright May Morning, tulips waved to loving clouds, ll 12 his casket kissed the bottom of the grave and settled like his body after the rope snapped. A POEM FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS I have my fan humming to taut nerves, strung like a kite string in a room so small I don't have a place to vomit. I can only look up when I'm on my back because Richard lives with Jeannie and Burton just keeps beckoning from T.O. because Kenda always looks up from her typing and now there's Lee and Karin and maybe tomorrow there will be more because good smack is so hard to find and a jet out is so easy. 13 II Shattered Glass SPRING DREAM CHALLENGE Clouds blown away, no stars now but a cold night coming. Roving the open field with my new National Geographic, so tired I have to turn to the sunset and see the sky split. Hear me, aliens! Meet me, entice me Away from Greenfield Village carriage rides and Mackinac Island bicycling. Incessant waves strike Carolina sandbars. Polished pebbles will keep the time. 15 AFTER WALKING WITH WORDSWORTH I should be ashamed, an English major falling asleep reading The Prelude. I can't even get through one book. No excuses. I dislike It. I detest a lot of creativity. I despise my poetry. I hate . . . Wordsworth, hear me! I loathe you and all the thoughts that cross your mind. I never could understand him or any of his kind. It wasn't any fault of his yet I won't take the blame either. He was just another man of history like Jesus Christ except I don't think he was ever nailed to any cross. 16 MOMENT UM "Do ya think the Yankees can do it?" Grocery store echoes a man near lettuce. I squeezed (careful now) cherries that once were pendulums in Lake Michigan breezes. What's left that isn't poison? or causes cancer? I glanced at the time accidently. Timex watch is still ticking, a letter bomb in a Belfast post office but going slow. l7 DETROIT IS A POINT OF VIEW The Ambassador Bridge stretches its graceful gray span across the border while the river is winning, finally, its battle against ice clogging its life. And I'm standing in the early April breeze of the lakes in a line a few years long coiled tight around the hall. "This concert'd better be good for all this shit," screams some spaced girl with tangled dirty hair, while nervous pigs just smile inwardly hoping '67 (the summer) doesn't make a repeat. I can still dream of shattered glass littering Woodward Avenue and we chant through the skyscrapers' canyons to the Grand Circus Park chasing pigeons from the statues before they die from the droppings. 18 DECLARATION OF NON-PACIFICATION "There's no replacement," screamed in my eyes but I wiped the ache away. "We'll see what develops," and I steadied, sub-machine gun to my side spraying images- people in my past rising at me over the hill deserved it. All the universities, cities and garbage porn movie shops melted with the hiss and stink of liquid plastic. I smiled with blood running from my ears and kept firing holed in Fort Knox. l9 TAE KWON DO IS CHEAPER THAN COCAINE (But the Buzz isn't as Great) Muscles snapped, taut body tuned to perfect pitch. Breathe in, Breathe out. Banshee cry to the roof. Rigid tendons. Rushing blood geyser erupting, forcing me to ride the lifestream into my ozone. Eardrums beating in unison to the hammer heart pounding stronger until the chest-wall gently tears away releasing the gushing contents. Wipe up my feelings all over the floor. 20 SECOND ASTEROID BELT North America flew by me. Warm and cold my saucer rocked gently, isotopes humming lullabies. I thought I could see pieces of Philadelphia. L.A. flew to Mars. Maybe this is a signal for two-headed intellects living near Orion to change their theories before the galaxy burns like raisin bread drawn to the sun. 21 III To the Bearer of My Non-Existent Child BUS STATION 1. The bus driver turned the destination sign above his head to GRAND RAPIDS and started that way probably leaving you in the station stranded (in East Lansing, of all places) on a late Friday night with no place to go and everywhere to be. Winter's still saying its last good-byes and Michigan's no place for long farewells especially in old pinball galleries (free game if the last two digits match) next to boarded down ice cream parlors. Detroit is a thousand years away when you're out in 23 24 the late midwest winter for the night. 2. It's not hard clinging to a habit when the cold drizzle begins to snow and street-side lakes ice over. Misplaced yearnings can send you to corners of the Earth looking toward every sound but hearing the dull shudder of the distant Chicago-bound freight. A lonely wait with gentle tears is always centuries long. TEXAS DREAM (An Aborted Love Poem) Christmas card snow, gentle/(thoughtful, I don't even notice I like the sun, the expanse of warmth--I like her accent (an affinity for dialects) and I don't like poetry when my mind pulls away. 25 ANOTHER TRY TOWARD A LOVE POEM I feel like a placid pond, silent mirror of the mountains and their dominance in a lazy morning. I need a pebble to break my glass surface, ripple through my body slowly, soothingly, changing reflected peaks to un-natural forms that are 26 BROKEN L INES Blonde hair and a hot fudge sundae confessing to me about her poems, brittle, broken rhymes. "But I don't want to be a poet," staring bleakly at her work. "I want a career." And the delicate blonde no-pref goes on with her routine leaving me sitting silent, cursing an English major and no words to command a general and his army, the marching troops frightened the poor peasant girl away. 27 ENCORE Massachusetts Turnpike winds slowly eastward to big city noisy lights and the hall with Julia strumming chords, voice settling down like snow singing of revolt cooing of love watching for me front row again. Julia, another job is gone. It's hard to live on folk music chords. It's hard to survive on the tail of a comet. My painted smile at autograph signings doesn't show how I'm hating being led by the nose, a dog following the scent of your "good luck" bouquet. 28 WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH FEELINGS UNDER PENALTY OF LOVE Ever since I studied white whales in high school lit I was told, "Look beneath the surface to the depth." But girl if you go under with me I'll have to hold my breath too long. Besides the salt water hurts my eyes especially when they're tearing. Deeper the crushing pressure pounds harder at my temples, the coral reefs don't interest me, they cut, scratch, infect my thoughts for you, for living. 29 30 Let's stay ignorant of the ocean's secret. I hate everytime you get serious. DISCHORD Are you sure you want to hear more? I'm the song in tune tonight but tomorrow harmonies will shatter the delicate glass that props Hollywood Bowl concerts and Carnegie recitals. I can't believe in melodies encircling my heart like a cobra. I can't be played, I cry with the strain of violins. I'm a scream in the silent summer night. It's lonely never to be in harmony. 31 CHECK Telephone hung another weekend flown but not on my shoulders anymore. Now it's your turn: do the guessing. I'm tired of picking up bad vibes everytime I make connections. I think it's time to see your strategy. So I've forced the move on you, no way out but to spell the situation so I can finally read it. 32 LOST CONNECTIONS & SPRING RAINS Down today. Usual things. I don't like the story I'm working on. I'm growing older yet I couldn't ask the E.R. nurse out (even after she said she wanted a hot fudge sundae but didn't want to go alone). If she said "no" I'd be trying at least. Kenda talks to me at parties. She likes to tell me about her years in France near Normandy. She does this between petting the small scruffy dog and cooing to it in French. She says she lived in Paris, too, with some guy from some where and now she hates to travel crosstown. 33 34 Creative writing course was a waste. Julia and another student got in a fight over a poem. I went shopping. Bought a record album. It rained this morning. Tonight I see shooting stars out the window, blue moonlight reflecting the open ice-coated country. I make quick wishes, none for a friend. My breath freezes on the window. Kenda smiles but she's still in France. SINCE NO ONE'S ASKING I've burned all my notes and a worthless Michigan diploma. While stocking pills in rural Canadian hospitals I show more than anyone could give. There'll be Valentine flowers, birthday music boxes, anniversary plays, no lonely afternoon and dying embers and a horizon always beyond. 35 SHIFTING SANDS Gray finite sky doesn't tell me, only the greasy signboard: PADDINGTON--ONE MILE. London post office tower shrinks back chased by houses and trees scurrying by my rainy window. "I never rode trains much in Michigan," I whisper. Julia smiles. "It won't be far." Regent's Park is down the road but I can't see green open space. "I hope I'll like your parents," I say. I can see my mother in Julia's stare on the porch in Detroit when I told her: 36 37 wild horses in clover fields, a house on the heath, a school near Wembley. I never knew America could just fall through my outstretched palm. My family cried at the airport as I walked away. "I'll be back," I said with an emptiness that fooled no one. Holding Julia tighter I turned from memories of meaning and a passing storm. CHURCHYARD OF ST. JOHN Formless cloud beats the sun I can never see setting. Night hesitates, scared back by city lights. Small child cries. Westminster tombstones stand guard. 38 THERE IS NO LIGHTHOUSE Stumbling on pebbly shore, staring at a distant broken ferris wheel, the decaying coast of Brighton watches as I sight the pier dead in the water. I walk in a fish 'n' chip shop humming an Al Stewart tune, drowned by the barking of the German shepherd on the unswept floor. "What ya want, lad?" puffy lady in white apron asks. Cod sounds good. I sit and watch street life like rain in constant damp salty spray while the pier stands dead in the water. 39 40 I see too much in the oncoming fog to avoid. I can't speak a word to stop it. CROSSING THE CHANNEL AT MIDNIGHT (Written on a ship slowly chopping the water between France and England) Moonlight paves a white kaleidoscopic path toward me, buoyed on waves, welcoming me away to stars. I've never lived so close to the horizon. 41 LONELINESS TEN TIMES OVER Placid puddles reflect glowing dock lights, a table-top waxed, silver polished. I see little power in cold dampness penetrating my mind, wreathed around my bones. I hear feeble distant Anglesey trawlers, dead men beckoning from their graves. 42 STATE OF THE EMPIRE Teasing "End is Near" man, climbing trees near the Serpentine, chasing Hamlet into Soho, wave to prostitutes-- the one on the right doesn't have much make up. Tooting Bec beggar strums in the underground under half-torn posters saluting twenty-five years of the Queen. And I have twenty-five p enough for Green Park one way. Washed out star strains to shine over Nelson's shoulder reflecting markers for buildings gone. They didn't have much character. 43 ON NEARING KEATS' GROVE I thought I heard nightingales in Hampstead. I listened: Leaves applauding the wind. I tried to mimic but the silent heath rejected my echo. I'm not sure what I heard was a song. 44 EAST FROM CAMELOT Enroute to Bristol we watched the Taunton trains struggling away, I wiped rain from my nose. I think she had tears. "It's only warm water," she said struggling with psychology notes and an Oxford exam. "Good luck forever" is all I thought Silence was said. "If I come back . . . ." I started. "No. Don't," she whispered. I heard the whistle. I walked away. 45 to say. STARVATION Inter-City 125 lumbers down glistening rails the sun melts in the dust of a Glasgow evening. I hear no singing. I see no choirs except the thistles waving silent in the fields. Lonely tarnished sky follows. No comfort. The train rumbles. I want to go farther than I'm going. I want to sit on a deep green wool carpet soaked in the scent of incense and pick guitar chords during humid August nights with Julia's sweaty body beckoning along with crickets in Nebraska corn. Scotland is no place to be if it doesn't reach your eyes with its castles perched on hills like vultures and a gray sky backdrop unwelcoming, coloring my journey with boredom. 46 WRONG SIDE OF THE WORLD I sit sweaty on a bed-edge in Britain. My mind weaves like a looming machine (over and under over and under) combing for scarce gold thread. Dickens, Wordsworth, Byron, Swift, you took them all! Or the thread's back home in a Detroit alley after stadium lights die, confused crickets chirp with running feet rhythm, fading police car wails sing hymns for the dying day just like the rest. 47 PEOPLE WITH PARALYSIS SHOULD BE IN HOSPITALS -to Diane (who is well but doesn't know it) I had a friend. He was leaving, never coming back. I wouldn't say "See you later," "So long," "good bye." I couldn't shake his hand. I guess I shouldn't have read her book. She wasn't satisfied with hand-in-hand farewells. I remember avoiding her like Black Plague on Easter Sunday. Once she sat next to me at a poetry reading about black camels (or something equally complex). I felt heat. I wouldn't take warmth. I'd like to see her now, tell her, "At least he shook hands. That's more than I would do." That's more than I can do. I had a friend. He left. 48 STAGNANT GARDEN Paralyzed with years of frost, I can't grow flowers even for high school girls who bounce basketballs in time to their gum chewing. What happened Julia? You're the expert or was it I that drew the curtain in the middle of your lines? My scene has changed, my acts have shifted to abandoned copper mines and Keweenaw ghost towns where I'm digging bare handed into the dirt, starving, not knowing what to eat. 49 ATLANTIC CROSS Wake me but how can I give you signals sleeping? Now that we're divided by years of ocean what do you have to say for yourself? Will my name trip through your wintertime images? or my words echo between empty minutes? The Detroit drive takes a lifetime and still I'm nowhere near to you. I'm tired of living. 50 TO THE BEARER OF MY NON-EXISTENT CHILD Street light glimmers. Venetian blinds break the dampness of an April night while all is still but our breathing and I swear, our heart beats. And You lying between my reason, riding along for the thrill of seeing colliding comets, supernovas and alien battles, tear at my back for comfort through worlds unexplored. Then like a branding iron pressed against my brain, burning into my eyes, the million unborn suns cry at me, tell me to pull away before my seed sprouts a monster so ugly 51 52 I will have no choice but to face it and turn to stone. In horror I rush back to the brittle Michigan evening where a silent rain wells up in the clouds and in your eyes. I'll weep tears for the burning of a miracle I could not conceive. IV Warm Nights and Old Worlds TRAVELING THROUGH N IRVANA (Michigan) The rain wouldn't muster better than drizzle. "Welcome" sign hung by one rusted bolt. Single railroad missed the town: gas station (paint peeling), renovated farmhouse, now a bar. I sighed as I floored the pedal. Ludington has to be better. 54 SPORTING EVENT Opening day of August. The world champs were in town. Upper deck right field. I could see the batter perfectly if I upset the old lady in front. Slow game. Pitchers' battle. We watch the stadium guards and pass B-grade Columbian. A high flying spectator is out after coming to Earth, rolling down the aisle, dazed at the bottom. Chocolate mesc probably. Leftover July 4th firecrackers planted under seats of the old folks' section bring the riot squad. Rumble in the lower deck. I think we lost. 55 AFTERNOON NAP Curled fetal position at the foot of my bed, kitten hypnotized to the song of summer fans stirring life from dead heat of a Midwest summer I don't notice. 56 SUMMER ETHNIC FESTIVAL IN A SMALL MIDWEST TOWN Not here! Capital City, U.S.A.: home of righteous government and decent living. Now see what hot summers can do! All the time I look into the weather: sweat and dust, a city like placid sewer puddles but for one grassy corner where life is bubbling out--air from a slow leak. 57 CRUISING THROUGH ROUGE PARK ON OUTER DRIVE Even gray autumn days when leaves turn colorless, wilting in cold soil, see me driving this road because it curves to and fro, rocking lullaby, a talent all other roads have for some reason forgotten. (Straight grid work constricts me. Lord knows, I don't need constriction when the cold autumn rains.) Hypnotized I am a pendulum swinging as I cross the Joy Street overpass. 58 SAME OLD WINTER SONG Steamy, dripping windows protect from the smothering cold outside by blocking the view out to the street. False warmth seems real. I wrap myself in the cocoon, soothe my aches, calm my spasmodic body. 59 JANUARY 19 I wonder if it gets warm here, if the heart of the great white blanket beats or lies cold, forgotten? Revive stiffened air with outsprouting life. Break the cold, melt it with vigor. 60 PASSING MIDWEST SCENE "Thank you," said the graying farmer's wife as she put picked tomatoes on the backseat when we were at an Indiana vegetable stand five summers ago. Passing it yesterday with the snow I saw it crouched in the drifts, boarded by the roadside waiting for new tomatoes. 61 LI STEN TO WINTER Search is over. I've found bare trees and they were right out my window but I thought they were out of mind while I walked through tourist towns in January, souvenir shop closed for the week with summer T-shirts shouting Mackinac Island ferry rides through the snow drifts. Trees whistle and sing. I've found their key. 62 ON COMING TO THE CLEAN SUN OF MORNING éJulia? An apartment that echoes, a place to breathe and lie spread-eagle, sunken in a plushy carpet. No windows that I remember, but I don't remember wanting to look out. No lights either, just a glow, an illumination. And it was big enough for five. Two guys. Two girls. And me. Just going our own way, not much dialogue as I recall. Just going. One girl had been a Real Life Attraction now reduced to the fake and finite of my sleep. Yet in that world she'd wake from the floor and 63 64 when I fell into her embrace I was falling so softly I knew I'd never reach bottom. TOMATO PASTE AND SCRAP PAPER Late afternoon snow waves outside the window. "Can't you raise the temperature in this room?" I've asked each day. Students walk in and plop in a chair with one armrest. "How's my paper?" eyes ask. "Readable," I say it makes sense like my grocery list and hoping for springtime when Lake Superior water is deeper blue. 65 UPON NOTICING HIS VOICE ABOVE A WHISPER Ringing phone, Dad's sleepy murmurs, it's harder to believe I can remember a neighbor rushed over, my sister watching tail-lights fade in fog from a February thaw. Next day Dad brought home his picture. He looked ugly one hour old nothing like me his only brother now twice as far, twice as old, telling students their participles dangle, cursing Copper Country snow, a future summer as bleak. But I'll never be double his age again. When the river narrows it's easier to hear him on the opposite bank. 66 NEURO-SURGERY My cerebral mass has been felt, poked, sliced. I need a balm for my bleeding brain. I feel blood running behind my eyes, dripping in my throat, burning all the way down, searing my intestines. Nothing found. Am I to blame? What the hell are you looking for? (It's like those B—grade sci-fi shows where the spaceship can't detect the aliens-- being neither matter nor energy.) Your instruments can't detect genius anymore than I can detect creeping insanity. 67 RECOVERY Wet ugly snowstorm descends, a vulture with its talons out. I wonder how I got nestled in east Idaho mountains with the caribou and how Julia's doing in London. Thinking east I imagine another stormy fall stirring Superior's waters and see Calumet shivering in another early winter, numbing cold, cutting feelings I can only begin to touch and know even ROW. 68 V Forever Summer Rainbows (An Afterword) CRAVINGS Peanut buttered pickles never thrilled me much but, in the warm living room colored with blue off the TV screen, my young lady sat staring over her swollen belly. The electric evening transmitted the urges from her womb to the emptiness in my stomach And I've yearned for candied apples in Idaho county fairs, for the rodeo with the midway lights a distant memory, for the mountains disappearing from view, for the sun preparing to rise again. 70 ANTI-PRAYER Nobody tell me I am an atheist because I don't see inside stained-glass looking out. I see better when I am out. I can never get too much Sun. 71 413 3 030 InuImamtulmmtiimummww(Imiflluflm'