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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets A World Inhabited WILLIAM KEENER _______________________ The Blue Vow There's no telling what can happen when a sixteen year old gets a gun, the rifle for a birthday from a father who knows how to pull the trigger. We drove up the wooded hill behind our house, loaded my brand new .22 and after plinking all the rusty tin cans on the ground, I aimed at a glint in one of the trees, a bird I thought I could not hit. But I did. My marksman's pride was gone by the time I walked the ridge, knelt to lift the body of that elegant jay from its bed of acorns and leaves, the first time I had a bird in the hand, felt its warmth release, its beak gape, neck relaxed, black eyes unblinking as I looked and tried to find the stain of blood on its breast, not knowing how in the softest feathers a bullet hole can hide, wanting to understand what light through pale blue wings might mean, so many years before I heard what Karen Blixen was told [609]
by her old Somali servant when she put her book of African tales for the first time in his hands, Ah yes, Baroness, but you cannot make it blue, knowing only Allah has the power to color bird and lake and sky. With the jay still in my hands, its spine broken, the blue feathers coming loose like pages from the seam, I learned to read this one slim book of being, and took a vow on the hill. Yet the story would not end because my father said in the softest voice he could, Good shot, but let's not tell your mother. I never did. [610]
California Basmati Sunlight on a flooded field of rice— the sheet of water so serene, it seems designed to mirror splendors of a shrine, though a monumental oak is all we see. This pastoral reflecting pool is smooth enough to deepen sky, to double clouds and float them, dome by marble dome, on the hundred acres shining at our feet. Swans, she says, pointing to the bright sails amid the migrant geese, their black beaks streaking the air on soft lances, their fatted bodies flapping to catch up. Listen. Their wings, white above white, are whistling toward the aromatic rice, leaving us with the sight of ourselves like oaks in a valley of water and light. [611]
The Pebble Clock We gather round the basket every month, and one of us lifts out a little stone. Cool and smooth its weight lies in his hand. He takes it as a gift to carry in his pocket, leave atop a distant peak, or set on temple steps. His to place upon a grave, or throw into the sea. One man chooses for all eight, one rock a month to mark the bond of friends. Given time, only one will survive to hold the final stone. The basket we have filled with wave worn pebbles is a slow impassive clock, an hour glass to measure lives, reminding us that everything we love tick, tock, rocks away. [612]
After the Move The house lies awake at night, floorboards unsettled by the weight of boxes stacked in every room, an unpacked still life of books and papers, dishes and photos, of keys and clothes that do not fit. I should be sleeping easier on the empty mattress, less burdened by dreams, but I can hear whispering. Breaking the tape that seals a box, I bring each belonging under the light of a lamp, and ask it again, until I know what is worth keeping, what must be thrown or given away. As if I could do this with every box, every day. [613]
William Keener is a lawyer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. His chapbook, Three Crows Yelling (Pudding House Publications, 2000), was written with poets Bill Noble and Michael Day. He is the recipient of a 2005 poetry grant from the Marin Arts Council. His poems have appeared in various magazines and literary journals. "The Blue Vow" was first published in Cloud View Poets (Arctos Press, 2005)(edited by David St. John & Morley Clark), "California Basmati" first appeared in Drumvoices Revue, and "The Pebble Clock" was first published in Maril Crabtree's anthology, Sacred Stones (Adams Media, 2005). |
