debitage

john martone

samuddo / ocean
You ought to use this final chance here to keep
walking until knowing the heart that is naturally pure,
which is something like the heart of the Arahant.
--Buddhadasa

debitage — waste materials from the production/

flaking of stone tools.
 this isn’t home—
where then—
walking

This dream — agèd man on a space flight the rest of yr

life & beyond in a transparent capsule cozy as twin
bed (just yr body?) you’ve sailed past lunar & martian
orbits already, asteroids & transcended outer planets.
Here are no red-spot panoramas, no Hubble splendors,
just yr own eyes, stars remote as ever. Impossible even
to sense your movement, good as still all eternity, a
particle of bright void dust. Earth long gone, the last
talk ending decades ago, after those ultimate ones from
earth, you find it hard to remember that life, how
could it have been different from this, you voyager?
And the loneliness both cosmic and terminal. Are
those eyes closed or open?

talk about
loneliness—
lost that notebook
may’s full moon
lost in fog
you land on the rock

beads of light
in the fog—
here you are
Yr daybreak walking auspicious Bonaventure Road
(St. Francis, Bob Lax ) . Then turn into woods — a river-
path behind houses —

riverside
rivershape
stove-wood

piano from
house above
this river

Ragged green parka, sixty years uncombed unshaved—

stands halfway across bridge he slept under and waves at
cars. First think he’s waiting for someone or trying hitch a
ride, but getting closer, no, just toothless lunatic, you
slap/clasp hands passing, he saying good day like anyone
else.

high tension lines

& you follow
river to sea
ah here’s where
you stop a while—
brown-stripe snail

you ease a fossil from living roots

climbing climbing
both hands full
ordovician life

a light rain
falling on
fossil leaves

thru fog on yr glasses fog on the mountains

same slope — seagulls

wooden stairs
then cliff
brown-stripe snails also climbing signal hill

upright spine
also climbing
ammonite — trilobite—
VO1AA

All that way almost three hours walking & climbing,

you’d put it out of mind. Only when you reach the
fog-shrouded tower w/ its bronze plaque –where the
signal crackled across. And helpless childhood comes
crashing in — on that homemade instrument, feeble
vacuum tube kit radio & red-covered log-book, you
were listening to all the secrets of life in the seagull
haunted darkness, who’s there, who’s there — so the
tragedy begins.

fossils all over

this skull shape stone—
leave it
gray ship green ship white ship youre lost

in a used bookstore
looking for nothing
when she asks what

you open a book

medical forms
spill out

fountain
pen ink

on yr
fingers

gulls cry
at dusk
a cinderblock room helpless in fog

life
alone—
food

on
a cold
sill

night sea wind

girl out there
speaking chinese
square
by square —

spider
ling

on new
found

land
window
screen—

trees
beyond

leafing
out
above

the surf
the rooms

mistaken point precambrian ramah chert ordovician

cephalopod gastropod brachiopod

shuldhan island avayalik island groswater people

microblade debitage

whalebone snowknife pendants & plummets —

driftwood snowgoggles fishbone needles

shanawelithat is no more

his poem
an effigy
bird
 hawser
thick as
it sounds

foliose lichen
skin is too smooth

north
atlantic—

those (my)
human

garden rows
absurd
north atlantic
in his face
whose is it

north atlantic

(need yr
snail shell)

if even
north

atlantic
breaks

into spume
then
you—
sandstone
snail youre
no fossil

a perfect
inhuman

thumbprint
in stone

half inch tall

fossil—
man!
fossil
leaf

finer
braille

this white
feather’s
not fog

thru you
the fog’s

texture
turning

telling
late nights
build

yr
model

sailing
ship

evry
syl
la
ble
what good
all

those
model

ships if
just

a
model
life—
a
model
ship

but
that sea’s
not
yr eyes are closed
suddenly the room
fills w/ light

so much sky
you pull on
a blue sweater

leave
yr room

clean
tidy
not

like
other
times —
cape spear

Signs say don’t walk off path & into north atlantic
thunder – you hardly could – the wind in which youre
a krumholz tangle shoves you back. Even megaliths
heaved up w/ all earth’s force wear down to
slumbering forms from the age of giants.

And when you step off the path — no help for you! —
sinking past ankles in moss you only wish it still
deeper. Look around — all other human forms
distant minims that hardly break the light. Soon, soon
they & you won’t break the light at all.
so many
million years
syllables

—may 2011