Michael Tod Edgerton

1 poem

It the Hum

 

  

1.

 

On the beach on the Gulf

in Sarasota in 

2015. In the sand staring

at the waves listening

looking for the calm they can bring the sound their breathing rings         

in and in to

chase the unwavering

hum it thrums out 

an unending movement out 

of which the rythmós:

more than just matter 

moving, more than pulse of 

blood: the air the light:

the waves the distance: 

flesh and world awash in 

sensation streaming to hush

the unceasing hum 

 in and in

and buzzing out about my cranium          this thrum

                 not the drone hovering over  

 

the post-Katrina Gulf, Deep Horizon, Long Island 

after Sandy, the ricochets of Sandy Hook or Charleston 

(my father, Charles Edgerton,

only months 

deceased), nor the scream of men 

dead from their blackness

lit up 

by blue fire,

 nor the whir 

over the discounted in Baghdad, 

in Fallujah, fleeing Syria (incalculable), no, at this tick 

it only my small monotone it 

my sharp Theremin whine it 

only my unrelenting regret, a lung ever emptied out, 

only my petty, anxious, welling need, my dislocated it  

 id-itch 

always for more 

or less than

 

fullness or negation

ever rivering

 

( Ocean ) 

 

( Ocean )

 

( Ocean ) 

 

 






2.

 

The beach for the waves for the calm.

But nothing 

 

but distraction—screeching 

children, tourists 

 

splashing, walking 

     the wet edge (the dry sand 

so hot it hurts), feet 

 

submerge in, emerge from

over and over in 

 

measure, bag and book and 

chair in hand—chasing 

 

an impossible isolation          

insulation from the hum

it pulling. Turning

 

from the voices, the aureate water, 

my head I try to sink in

 

a book just slides off as if

frozen. 

 

And so I give in 

and swipe on

my phone to window shop 

 

on Grindr for the 

impoverished consolations

 

of an improvised encounter 

in which to escape

 

it can’t escape it

it buzzes—

Looking? 

 

So tired

of my diminishing need to be 

 

wanted, my taunting desire

for more and more than

 

( Ocean )

 

( Ocean )

 

( Ocean ) 

 

for less and less than

 

the Gulf 

 

  *

              

warm rhythm laps against 

skin muscle          tissue and sinew

extending compressing      promising

to release you

 

to the shore you beat are beaten against: 

that line you cannot pass to reach for:

that horizon beyond beach beyond city and

sea:

sometimes to be 

only body, any mere part, eye  

or ear, cock or hole—push and pulse—and so

                                                        ocean

                           so sex so

   music               

the resonance of your singing 

you wholly the sound the force: 

rythmós rippling face   throat   chest

nothing more, nothing less:  the music

you forge with words, your mind 

the body

of the letter shaping page forming sound         vibrating through 

 

your head only the poem

for a time it satiated it satiates it it

needs need it wants want it-it more It 

                                                                    saved my life

 a poet once told me 

after a reading in New Orleans

 

Poetry saved my life said the same poet’s

poet brother in Providence,

dead despite it          

 

or from it                                   it-it will cross it 

  

( As I write this )

 

( another poet ) 

 

out  )

 

 






3.

 

And in bursts Creeley, 

his memorial at St. Mark’s, 2005, his poem, that line, her reading 

she struck me 

a wall crashing over the pews 

again and again over

the years, the decade since, that sentence

in that poem of his I feared 

to ask her to name to show

my ignorant ass I should

just read 

every last one to see them

lining up to break 

in my head

again and again

that they not be

my deathbed words

 I want to 

 be in 

 my life          

 

C.D. at the podium, her grain

a flintish fiddlefunk of quartz against

the steel of the blank 

sparking, as singular

as her tone,

echoing in my head now

as I write this 

in the fledging sun

of 2016, 

she only two weeks gone.

 

I want )

 

I want )

 

I want )

 

  

 

I poetry

she wrote 

and I wonder 

at every inflection of it striking against

our depleted eyes, our slighted ears, our dumbed flesh 

can’t help but wonder (if only I could unmind) if 

I am                          I do                         I will 

be, myself, or unbeknownst already am

                                                                                           in my want in

                                                                                                                                           my life: my poetry: cannot

correspond 

one to one in the sand. 

 I wonder 

                             how poetry

happened in 

to this poem, how C.D.,

how memories of poets 

only memory and their poems now. 

And their poems, too, will one day cede.

 

  

 

I remember her reading my New Orleans sequence 

so generously

outside of class, talking work with me, my struggle: 

how to write 

about Katrina,

transplanted only a year when it hit,

she sharing her own 

with her current project (2005)

about her mentor, “V” (honor of my life

to know her, she said), 

not knowing

where it would lead her, how it would hew the page, hitting up 

against uncooperative elements, it was a fight it was

relief and liberation for a young poet to see, and then to see her 

win with One with Others and now

 

                                                 ShallCross )

 

                             ShallCross ) 

 

 ShallCross

 

  






4.

 

People packing up the last bits of day: their sand-clotted 

clothes and wet towels: draining out 

the exit: their umbrellas and coolers and

 

kids in tow: abandoning (but how)

the rubied water: the burning gulf: sky (so close now)

then the one

 

remaining incarnadine

streak sinks 

beyond final or first,

 

and for one unsplit sunless instant: water-lit sky.

 

 

Then sudden night.

 

Almost nothing.

 

A knotted cloth.

 

 

No moon. 

 

No stars. 

 

No exit

 

 

sign no emergency 

 

lights only wind. 

 

Only soft sand 

 

 

and sharp shells, my feet 

 

wet flopping look 

 

to look past

 

 


the wall of infinite-dense 

 

space I bang against 

 

for a door

 

 

and seeing 

 

I’m alone, 

 

unknowing 

 

which way the street which way the car which way

 

unending shore. 

 

Surge of 

 

fear. 

 

Then one un-split stillness opens inside the roar:

 

one faceless expanse

 

of voices ambling, aiming, 

 

casting off:                         

 

all 

 

 ( Wave Lilt ) 

 

 ( Pitch True )

 

 ( Hum Hush )

 

 spar

 

  spar 

 sparking          against

                                                                                                                  the muted sharp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dedicated to the memories of Robert Creeley, Michael Gizzi, and C.D. Wright, with gratitude for their teaching and writing. And to the memory of my father, with love.

 

Michael Tod Edgerton is the author of Vitreous Hide (Lavender Ink 2013). His poems have appeared previously in Interim, as well as in Boston Review, Coconut, Denver Quarterly, EOAGH, New American Writing, New Orleans Review, Posit, and Sonora Review, among other journals. He holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. A native of Lexington, KY, Tod teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University and lives with his husband in the city that used to be San Francisco.