THE CHAMBER WHERE HEAT IS TRAPPED
Walking hard on a stone beach, both of us
(as we joked) literally around the bend,
we came to where once upon a time a cliff
collapsed-- the wreckage of what had been
a cottage with a view-- and you began
naming what there was to see, recalling
old brands and invalidated functions
with a doer’s, a maker’s, a lover’s
nostalgia, while I stumbled on, hypnotized
by the forked flickering in my mind
of old emotion, cold event. “This was
part of a wood-burning stove,” you said. “Here,
at the heart, is the chamber where heat was trapped.”
You showed me where smoke had parted company
with itself, becoming as circular and
lazy as recrimination— “Oh, and look,”
you said. “That two-horse Little Giant motor!
I think it could still be hooked up, and made
to run.” “Right,” I agreed. “If only
the garage, the cottage, and the cliff it stood on
weren’t gone.” You tried to hold me then, but
I had read the writing on a crumbled wall,
and asked again what time your plane would leave.
GOD SPEAKS TO US
God speaks to us in schoolmaster claps,
erasers of thunder, parabolas of shock.
Chinese kites high over cliffs no one
has fallen off of yet are first of all
swooping birds that skim the sea of
childhood, then the “all-at-once I’m 17
and old enough to ride the roller coaster”
sign…. Don’t watch or read or listen to
the news any more unless you want to
feel grim and ghostly: try the winding
tunnel of love or wander through
the Victorian haunted house of gabled
intentions and dilapidated desire.
At this appalling hour, our representative
is a chrysalis waiting for rebirth in a white
nightgown— resurrected as a young
Bette Davis, she will descend the curving
staircase with a candle that pins our
shadows to the wall. We in the audience
must do more than pray must rebel must
be violently unviolent must speak out
-Then and only then we’ll know- that
when she falls as fall we all must,
she won’t injure herself, she won’t be
the center in a petaling of corpses or
anyone’s house of cards on fire—we know
she will establish herself as mistress of
the brief collapse, and make it to a gentle
decrescendo, not a Hollywood cheat
but an ending we can all embrace as
far in the future, and wildly happy.
Lyn Coffin's nineteen published books include The First Honeymoon (Iron Twine Press, 2015), and A Taste of Cascadia (Whale Road Books, 2015). Her verse translation of Shota Rustsveli’s 12th Century epic, The Knight In the Panther Skin, will be published in Tbilisi, Georgia. Lyn lectures at University of Washington (Continuing and Professional) and has lectured at University of Michigan, Ilia University (Tbilisi, Georgia), and University of Wisconsin. In 1965, Lyn was the recipient of the Hopwood Award in every category for drama, short fiction, long fiction, poetry, and essay.