Issue 6: Robert Lietz

by Paula Lietz

The Understanding

     What     if there'd been     no railroad     / radio     -- and

would not     -- for a long time     -- be     -- no     tarmac    

     maybe     / or     strip-mine      a half-mile     walk     uphill    

through thorn-tangles     -- where   

     the capguns     cracked     -- and     crabapple     arsenals    

taught     bad kids     what     kids could --

     what     would     the same words     seem     -- played down    

to     scarcely     measureable     proportions     -- or   

     the children seem     -- who would grow up     -- afterward

and     well     -- and     leave us     ( I suppose )    

     what     wishing     now     -- as     easily     ruled     / ruled     out --

as     easily lost     maybe     -- as     block-dances     were    

     and     summer     socials    -- as     old     occasions     were --

for     public music     and     odd costumes     -- when

     the disgust     itself     / the village-wide     fatigue     assumed

the stairs     and     wreaths     and     ribbons     / the scripts    

     and     instruction manuals     -- and the square itself     -- where    

one lopped thing stands     -- the acres     where set flames    

     or dozers     feed themselves     -- on skeletal trees and stumps --

where      once     they     shaded     families?   Even   

     the mind clears out     -- after     twenty     say     / thirty years

remembering.  And     grandeur     the cruel outdoors     

     exaggerates     / plays down      -- to     say     what     a poplar    

meant     -- or     groomings     made the planet     -- this

     poplar say     -- dropped headlong     into skinned water     -- but    

greening     / greening still     -- after     the cousins     / aunts    

     / after     the uncles     say     and    the oldest spooks     dance

their unwindings     -- while wilder     and     scarier dozens    

     doze     and     flame     and     redevelop     -- since     spectacle    

must     count     -- since     leather     must count     -- and

     mission     pine     -- initials     reminiscent     of hill causes --

since     all they had said     of     pleasure then    

     or of awaiting     -- of avoiding monasteries     -- overbooked    

with     penitents      or     outlaws     in disguises     -- must    

     ( after all )    seem     belliesful     -- when     we have asked    

what gives     / examined     the last cliches    

     and the old name-plates     --  having practiced     we thought    

to speak     the names     and    origins     and     textures --

     which     must have mattered     once     -- when the wines   

( varietal )     -- and     the goat cheeses   

     / the stone roads     -- reminiscent     of     the tastings    

and     lawn-bowling     -- left us   

     the wonder     and     the understanding     

          nature of.

Robert Lietz has over 700 poems in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems.

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