Tony Kendrew
Tony Kendrew keeps trying to use words to express the inexpressible. Much of his inspiration, which tends to come irregularly and slowly, is found in places and events in the natural world. He lives and works in a remote and beautiful part of Northern California.

Night Bird

I cannot say
I was not expecting you

Sometimes we can smell the rain
In a cloudless sky

And there are so many paths
Through these woods

That your approach
Drifted in and out of my windows

With the birdsong
And the lilacs

So I was never sure
It was not the fickle breeze

Turning my head
And touching my heart

But when you did appear
Silently bearing gifts

Like a night bird
Come with snow

Beauty and abundance
Fell from your wings

And covered the land

Mojave

Sometime in the night
the flapping of the tent
and sand whispering close,
and wide awake
through the opening in the roof
stars shudder
and fall,
illuminating the silence.

Are you here again?

The wind dies
and love wells up
and overflows
out of the tent
and across the sand
down the dirt road
between the clicking ocatillos
where the owls hunt
past the boulders of granite
campfires smoldering
and up onto the freeway
where a string of lights heads for Long Beach,
spreads out across the Valley,
in and out of rest stops and gas stations,
pulls off for an ice cream at Buttonwillow,
takes a county road for a meal at a Mexican place it knows,
and visits a thousand places all the long way back
to where it came from,
leaving the tent shimmering
on the sand.

It's Not Your Life

It's not your life you said
And I remember exactly where we were
Not the time of year
Or even the weather
But the place on the levee
With the river on the right
As we walked back
And the rusty pump
Down the bank
Among the rocks
And the kingfisher
Cackling in the cottonwoods

And you were fierce
The way you said it
Not detached and indifferent
Like the night before in Forestville
But frustrated almost
Wanting me to get it
Urging me to catch up
So we can play together
On the same court

And I felt so ashamed
For complaining
For having the selfishness
To claim this series of events
As my own
To doubt the authorship
Of this particular short story
And the meanness
To question
The hand I was dealt
When it was not even mine
And I knew it

But mainly I was ashamed
For showing you my ugliness
For letting you see
My limbs bleeding with the pain
Of not getting it

But we played big stick with Honey
And walked on
Back to the car
Between the vineyards
Watching the evening settle over Healdsburg
And slowly my life became a memory
A series of shots
Like this one
With no place left to ask the question
Then whose life is it

For it's not that it's not my life
Over the hills and down the river
Houses friends and harpsichords
Whose life could it be
But mine
No we're not disputing that

(Distracted for a moment
By the cry of an osprey
From the redwood
Looking back
At the place
Where the pain and the pleasure
Were mine
To avoid or pursue)

What we're saying
Back at the car now
Honey climbing in
Doors closing
Click of seat belts
Engine starting
The sudden contentment
Of nothing left to talk about
Is that
This simple crunch
Of tires on gravel
This hum of happiness
This wet dog smell
Is life
Delivered
But unaddressed

Coyote

coyote pauses
in his crossing of the meadow
and looks back at me
over his shoulder
like a passage of music heard
for the first time
not something familiar
that lopes along the driveway everyday
but an event
which brings with it
a message from the other side
from a time
before the collar and the cupboard love
a backward look
from a place beyond the rational
towards our domesticity
urging us to return
or catch up
the way Mozart looks back
not with any knowledge
but asking a question we cannot answer

later
sitting in my armchair
I listen to something wild and perfect
that knocks at the same door
and reports
that this is not what was meant at all
that this is not about growing old and making tea
but is much stranger than that
and all the more compelling
because this is not Serengeti
where we might expect the numinous
but a glimpse
seen and heard in comfort
across a coffee table
with its coasters and magazines
across a carpet
across the meadow
where fences and phone lines
draw imaginary borders
around the rattlesnake grass

Tony has recently produced a CD of his poems. You can read them all and order a copy at BeastsandBeloveds.com.

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