When There Were Trees

There are two people who should not walk around with an arm in a sling: Yo-Yo Ma and Michele Burgess. She has a dog, Decoy, rescued from the Cedar fire. Both greeted me when I walked into Brighton Press yesterday before noon.

A day so easy to make happen, once the words were in place. I came without introduction or appointment. The dog barked and is “completely harmless.” Michele was seated at a desk by the open door, her arm in a sling; Jim Renner approached to help. I patted the dog and called him “puppy,” my title for all new dogs. I was invited through the office studio to a library room alcove where Bill Kelly collects first editions. Jim too is kind, harmless. His work is on display on the walls of the open exhibit room. He offered to show me anything the press had created that he could find. I asked for broadsides and told him my favorite art book is Swimming Lessons (poem by Nancy Willard, etchings by Michele Burgess) and was led to the only table in the open room. He pulled up another chair.

He brought the actual to the table and told me about each. (Books and broadsides are online.) I started with Repair, Kelly and Burgess’ latest work. A substantial size and page count and the quality of rust throughout. We went through Jim’s current creation of woodcuts and Kelly’s poetry, The Outline of Reparation. Smaller, horizontal, spare interior on all counts save the woodcuts and color. And we were off. Sandra Alcosser’s poem The Blue Vein with hand colored etchings by Burgess; Figures Made Visible in the Sadness of Time, poems by Peter Everwine and etchings by Bill Kelly. Broadsides of The Blue Vein, Drought, Elegiac Fragments, Flame. Swimming Lessons and Sleeping Inside the Glacier are both out of print. I have seen them at UCSD Mandeville Special Collections and at The Athenaum.

I met Bill when he arrived after teaching his letterpress class at SDSU. He greeted me warmly. Each of the troop is genuine and welcoming and interested. An attempt to connect image and word. I am on the mailing list. Michele’s parting words: bring in something you’ve done. I ordered a sandwich at Waters after two o’clock.


Swimming Lessons
Nancy Willard

A mile across the lake, the horizon bare
or nearly so: a broken sentence of birches.
No sand. No voices calling me back.
Waves small and polite as your newly washed hair
push the slime-furred pebbles like pawns,
an inch here. Or there.

You threaded five balsa blocks on a strap
and buckled them to my waist, a crazy life
vest for your lazy little daughter.
Under me, green deepened to black.
You said, “Swim out to the deep water.”
I was seven years old. I paddled forth

and the water held me. Sunday you took away
one block, the front one. I stared down
at my legs, so small, so nervous and pale,
not fit for a place without roads.
Nothing in these depths had legs or need of them
except the toeless foot of the snail.

Tuesday you took away two more blocks.
Now I could somersault and stretch.
I could scratch myself against trees like a cat.
I even made peace with the weeds that fetch
swimmers in the noose of their stems
while the cold lake puckers and preens.

Friday the fourth block broke free. “Let it go,”
you said. When I asked you to take
out the block that kept jabbing my heart,
I felt strong. This was the sixth day.
For a week I wore the only part
of the vest that bothered to stay:

a canvas strap with nothing to carry.
The day I swam away from our safe shore,
you followed from far off, your stealthy oar
raised, ready to ferry me home
if the lake tried to keep me.
Now I watch the tides of your body

pull back from the hospital sheets.
“Let it go,” you said. “Let it go.”
My heart is not afraid of deep water.
It is wearing its life vest,
that invisible garment of love
and trust, and it tells you this story.