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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Three Kentucky Poets DAVID LEIGHTTY ________________________ By the Colorado An ancient flow through the deep heart. Each step made here in desert sun Could be a life's experience. Up endless switchbacks on cliff rock Then crumbling slopes, then back to cliff- We pass time's epochs stowed in earth. The metamorphic riverbed Yields to these sedimentary strates We lug up hour by plodding hour, Craving, each step, with such a thirst It seems like this must take forever. [375]
Loons on Lac La Croix Half moon-a-shimmer on La Croix, now, first calm four bad days in- a loon's cry. Silent, we enter the tent, bed down. The call rings out again to silence back. We know. But then: an answer-farther, from across; and again, waxing, and back again, again; filling, delirious with union, all the night-and us. [376]
Cumulonimbus The lawn's span: wide and regular; well-kept, with house, garden, and pond; tomatoes staked in careful rows and tubers thriving under soil. Small fish flashed dimly in the pool. The household cat roamed free, a pet indulged. Inside were private nooks. Over all, an azure deep held calm. Once in deep summer, heat nagged disturbance- thunderheads, dark on the periphery, mounted in apprehensive quiet, at length, until the palpable electric air could hold no more. Revelation flashed to a swelling voice! Limbs heaved in histrionic mime! The storm held sway a time, then settled to steady outpouring. It left, the place a wreck: power dead, vine stakes down and awry, the garden littered, and everything drenched; the whole yard sprouting like crazy. [377]
The Classics - for Doctor Hubert M. Martin The centuries' accumulated store Of reverent study bides in these dense books; Dense with millennia. In lifting these The hand lifts time itself. Who were those men? No telling. Legend vested them obscures; The gist of long tradition shifts their mien. So too their works. A reading bends beneath Words massive with the increment of years. [378]
A Public Narrative - from reports in the Louisville Courier Journal He stopped his useless pickup, center strip, And clambered out-a small child on his hip, The twelve-gauge in his free hand waved to stop A random car. Forty yards off, a cop Followed with crosshairs fixed in steadied fear, Poised for the instant one shot would stand clear. The boy had fired twice: vaguely toward his ex, Shrieking he'd never leave his daughter; next Past crouching officers. His blasts (sprayed wild) Touched not a soul, but terrified the child. When he veered past their blocking cars they shot His tires and chased him, wobbling, to this spot. The marksman watched now, holding steady aim. The boy stopped one car, thrust his shotgun claim; The woman driver braced then answered No -The boy paused-And you let that baby go. The twelve-gauge wavered toward clear atmosphere. One rifle shot transfigured every year That cop had served and never fired his gun. The boy lurched, dropped the baby, sprawled and spun. The woman scrambled out, stepped where they lay, Took the dazed child, and kicked the gun away. This time, the child came home; the boy survived- An end better than most ends we've contrived. Men, women, children, guns-ever it goes; Ancient roles cast in timeless juxtapose, Shaming the trace of human sanity With outrage, an abiding lunacy Wrenching our daily calm with disbelief, A marksman's steady hand trembling in grief. [379]
Off the Record - young attorney at a multi-party deposition Witness, that small wraith of the air. Deponents sworn to solemn truth Authenticated what and whom. But questions, answers dimmed; his stare meandered the appointed room. Then he divined a finer proof- Perched an arm's length outside the glaze Thirty floors up, a sparrow hawk: Bright copper mantle; robin size But with the fierce square raptor face; Alert through bold, dark facial marks. Call it out? Not in that sober forum, Good judgment swayed by sheer decorum. [380]
The Courthouse Starlings "The poisoning approach became moot last monthFlocks darken in our loathing; immigrants. They overwhelm shy first inhabitants With squalid numbers, breeding vast extent In garrulous hordes across the continent. Each autumn night a huddled, mass descent Defiles the local seat of government. Oration and debate. Decreed at last- Death; bread crumbs laced with lethal aftermath. But then, respite in predatory guise: A savage, noble breed, edged on demise. And we're reminded-the connectedness Of things surpasses knowing. We acquiesce- The aliens we sowed here, and despise, Spared that the natives we have plagued survive. [381]
First Night Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, Mt. St. Francis, Indiana The wind-ruff has died, and the glare; the lake is a still, dark glass at dusk. A nighthawk passes, silent, prowling the air for the lace-winged multitude rising from the grass. An owl calls-distant, subdued, heard only for the stillness. Through my reflection I see the lake's dark sanctity. Then it is wholly night; I spot, far up the hill, my room's small, welcome light. Named for a saint who spoke with beasts, these civil grounds are a careful sanctum, devised for the white-tail and ruby-throat, for sung and spoken sounds- for whatever may arise in safely husbanded bounds. So husbandry of art will thrive. Here, sleep and wake- small wildness civilizes; become the still pane of the lake; be clear and deep and dark. Let loose what will not stir by day, the forager of what in quiet rises. [382]
Constitutionals Strict Constructionalist This man of letters holds, deep-delved in books- His purpose firm, his quest the law that's there; Bound by the page's height and breadth, he looks And finds it plain, direct, precise-and bare. Situationalist Confidence lies in his certitude. Vaulting from page to clause construed. Interpretations Meanings arise here like the green of trees- Staying, then scattered with the Sibyl's leaves. Still bearing this rank season's tangling yield, The trunk stands rooted in a tangled field. ■ ■ In the Office of an Attorney Specializing in Accident Cases Ranked on his shelf are lawbooks-poised, replete. Below, there blares the racket of the street. [383]
For My Stepson - Kenton Wooden Many times what I took for love has turned My most well-wrought intent, the choosing blind. Love with your mother was no purpose, earned- It came, like the year's seasons, in good time. If I've encountered loss, so I have gifts No one could reckon for-like your good heart: As if I made way through a wilderness, Worn out, bewildered in a mid-day dark; Came unexpectedly to open glade And found a sapling, shimmering with young leaves, Bright in a stippled mix of light and shade: Strong, straight, and supple in the forest breeze- I, who did nothing that you came to be, Blessed beyond reason in your life with me. [384]
Shaolin - at the Jeffersontown Karate Club On Shao Shih Mountain, in its bamboo glades, Air sweet with cinnamon and cedar trees, Murmured instruction measured by the fall Of water, cadenced, to still pools, And the recurrent clack of wooden staves, The mind focused on an empty room... Through epochs-shifting dynasties- The temple stayed, as history jostled past. But discontent at length seeped in: The kingdom rankling at the Manchu rule, Intrigue made hidden entrance to the calm. Intrigue and politics. The secret forms Disclosed to hopeless insurrectionists, The Empire judged and acted, ponderous- Its army crushed the empty-handed monks Fouling the pools and gardens with the corpse Of innocent and rebel, fired the ancient Halls, and left the initiates broken, dead, Or-some few-fleeing death in hiding. The forms survived, as human wisdom may- Suppressed, covert, eking in secret rites Passage to an unknown century. Times turned again: new students seek the forms In places unforeseen those eras past. Here in the basement of an urban church A white-robed adolescent rises and bows. [385]
On the Nolin - for Beverly Derrington Moore Casting to deep, clear green, the flow a steady press, he works down river. Upstream- some catches, some regrets. Miles distant, and more hours, near the source of tiny rills, a storm-now history-scoured red clay from knobby hills. A swollen freshet, roiled with aftermath, here spills into this undisturbed clear-running current, soiled. Two waters, calm and turbid, flow abreast, unmerged. Two shades of consequence. What husbandries preserve one watershed in clear descent? What negligence or outrage bared the earth dark water carries here? Thus they come, till at last one eddying flow imbues the other, where he casts. Beyond-dark tinging light- the moot enwoven hues pass downstream, out of sight. [386]
David Leightty is a lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Cumbered Shapes (Robert L. Barth, 1998) and Civility at the Flood Wall (Robert L. Barth, 2002) and founder and editor-in-chief of Scienter Press, "a small press for poetry of meaning . . . focusing primarily on poems having measure or form, and exclusively on poems indicating the presence of something in mind." "A Public Narrative," "Off the Record," "The Courthouse Starlings," and "First Night" appeared previously in Leightty's chapbook Civility at the Floodwall (Robert L. Earth, 2002). "Constitutionals," "In the Office of an Attorney Specializing in Accident Cases," "For My Stepson," "Shaolin," and "On the Nolin" appeared in an earlier chapbook, Cumbered Shapes (Robert L. Earth, 1998). "For My Stepson" first appeared in Sparrow, "On the Nolin" was first published in Riverrun. One of the epigrams in "Constitutionals" ("Interpretations") first appeared in New Press Literary Quarterly. |
