Knute Skinner: Four Poems

Logs

Carrying logs from the back garden,

I walk over blackened leaves

stuck hard to the ground.

 

These logs, no longer frozen together,

still manage to produce a chill

that penetrates my gloves

and my wax jacket.

 

A hot whiskey, I think,

will be just the thing.

 

Behind me, a massive limb, having lost

its annual battle with winter wind,

retains but a thin hold

on the cypress tree.

 

It will stay that way until John Murphy

arrives with his chain saw.

 

In the kitchen, I feel almost warm

as I sip hot whiskey and think

that we will have logs a plenty

for winters to come.

 

         Today

It is written that this would happen,

but heedless, people attended

to their usual affairs—

business affairs, family affairs, affairs—

as if there were no today

but always tomorrow.

 

When today did dawn,

nothing much happened at first.

Late risers, we slid into slippers.

We saw through the bedroom window

a delivery van, on schedule, stop

at the shop across the road.

We saw the barber at the corner,

his scissors no doubt in order,

throw open his door and shutters,

ready for a head of hair.

 

Then we shuffled, stretching and yawning,

into the kitchen to start coffee,

half hearing a weather report.

We intended to go back to bed

and into each other’s arms.

 

Now, among the few that God spared,

our regrets include not being able to finish

even our first cup of coffee.

Knute Skinner

 

 

Coffee with Mme De Vaux: a Reminiscence

                            Paris 1960

 

From my third-floor walk-up

I make my way down narrow, dusty steps

to the first floor.

I am calling on Mme De Vaux

to pay her my first month’s rent.

 

Just old enough to be my mother

or possibly an older lover,

she greets me in English

and offers to make me coffee.

Then, grinding her coffee beans, she says,

“You must study French.

If you don’t speak better French,” she adds,

“you are nothing here, nothing.”

She sighs and shrugs her shoulders.

 

“I’m not here to learn French,” I reply

as she pours boiling water on the beans.

“I am writing poetry.”

 

“Oh yes,” she replies, “but you must get a job,

or else you are nothing here, nothing.”

 

When we sit drinking our coffee,

she tells me I must meet the daughter

of a French family she knows.

The daughter will help me speak French

and will also make use of her English.

 

“They are a very good family,” she adds,

breaking my silence.

“They will have you to dinner.”

 

“But I have a girlfriend,” I remind her,

and she pushes aside her cup.

“Oh yes, the one you brought here,” she says,

“that Hollandaise.”

She stands up and shrugs her shoulders.

 

When I rise and thank her for coffee,

she reminds me that I must have my post

addressed to her care.

“Otherwise,” she tells me once again,

“you are nothing here, nothing.”

 

For the Love of God!

“Above all things God requires our fear.”

—Daniel Tobin, “Of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations”

 

“For the love of God,” some may say

simply to convey their astonishment

or—much more likely, perhaps—

to express their distress.

 

For an instance of the latter, recall

“For the love of God, Montresor!”

blurted out by the unfortunate

Fortunato.

 

Then take a moment to imagine

the altered impact if—

instead of “love”—Poe had written,

“For the fear of God.”

 

But recalling “A Cask of Amontillado”

simply side-steps the disturbing force

of Hildegard von Bingen’s vision

as Tobin presents it.

 

For if the saint is correct,

if God does require our fear,

how can anyone think of the Gospel,

ever again, as good news?