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"Lewis Ashman has a bachelor's
degree in Philosophy from
Purdue University. He has
studied philosophy at Wright
State and University of
Dayton. He has studied
Business and Paralegal at
Sinclair College. He presently
teaches Middle School in the
Kettering Ohio school system.
He plays jazz bass guitar,
unprofessionally, in a band
with his sons Benjamin and
Samuel. He enjoys hiking and
camping and kayaking with his
lovely wife Diane. His poems
have been published in
numerous small magazines and
he has had a chapbook Forty
Days published by New Song
Press."
Lewis Ashman
The Silence Unending
Winter in a pocket of storm, the yellow lights
in the darkness and blowing, and out on the lake
the crackle of ice, the rising white,
while the home burns in the dry blue air, signal
brilliance in the mastering weather.
She winks and closes tight
the gesture of another
quiet evening hidden away under the waving maple
and oak, hidden away in the wind and snow.
A dying sound.
The rustle of dry
white snow, crackle and hiss of the fire.
It is a thousand miles to spring
and another thousand miles
to hope and celebration.
They were out together on the boat of chance,
riding the waves higher and higher, brimming
and laughing and cutting loose the long mourning
weeks like curses laid on wishes, the feathery
blemished tangle. And the oar was in his hand.
And she was pointing
to the jut of the stone into
the rushing and falling water, while birds circled
keeping time at the evening blessing and evidence, a cloud
spooked from the white surround. Now it is fall—
of a sort—and the wishful long hours of drift to left,
drift to right, constructing
a frame of black mental iron
and the dangling harsh sounds crack
the desperate green air making way to the lower
basin, the concrete with its harsh liquid and biting.
The frogs sing in the darkness. The frogs quiver and mate
and leap in the darkness, and a snake
that is the darkest of daring wishes slides
over the broken October leaves, pulling apart the world.
Pieces of pieces dribble in the chaos heart.
His mildest being was pleasant enough, standing in the yard
and looking up at the stars,
tracing in his mind’s eye
the constellations of care and concern, and there was room enough
for her to find her own opinion
about the matter
of the world, or the concern of their miniature world:
how they fit together or didn’t, how they loved
or didn’t love just enough to maintain being as one.
And then she was singing and clapping
and making time with the time
that remained, startled words
in an arrangement of nonsense (not actually an arrangement
at all…random as gusts of stars…the twisting
red and golden metal)
or only the singsong scat jazz
of notes like vocal exempla…torn leaves broken down
from a handsome tree…. But who could say (and who can
say…) how it would matter in the longer years
that these afternoons,
these mornings, were given away
to such slight (yet robust) figures: the strong demarcations
of a landscape entirely composed of wanting and loss.
And they were at peace with that.
He was a black and worried
hat, tipped right, jaunty except for the wear.
He was a jacket, and tight
pants (saying it all), and scuffed boots with their heels worn
to a slant and each toe
like a nose of iron. (He was a belt
and the hanging keys.) And she was the order of a rocking
and deep hilarious song:
the answer to both prayer and fear.
The Heart In Its Wreckage
This long it will last
and no longer. Two wrestling
in the sunlight of winter
on an afternoon of cold and wind,
squares of light and dark
on the living room carpet,
and outside the whistling air and the movement
of small branches while they push and pull, pink bare
arms grappling,
and laughter…and the movement…
and memory like a chain of sorrow, the dangling
white medallion.
How softly wishes
are taken to pieces. A bare sycamore stands
on the brown winter grass and the bare gray concrete
walk edges down
to the road, broken metal
clinging to the pieces of old concrete, the small stones
and bits of glass, and the huge tree
is like a room of light placed in the awkward awakened sky,
and the diving bright
sparrows evade the gestures
of shadow and longing, the tired slim fence.
Only to be mentioned
would be enough, that and
the light going out of the attic and the rough outline
of morning taking stock of the black plain noon, and this
as the laughter increases and the policy
of silence is given the blessing hand of gentleness
only, gentleness.
You watch and you forget
and all of it is put together into a cardboard box
pushed back under the bed, and she would let go of all of it—
a woman of the moment—but who else would regret?
The warm voice tells its tale;
the warm voices
in the kitchen are explaining what else
it is that is so empty of meaning, and a small boy
is at the foot of the stairs sorting and arranging
the soldiers of his
small will: it is a storybook sort
of life, complete with the anxiety of a ship, the tension
of a train in the darkness, the departure and wave to heaven.
So the last things would be said.
Painless fire burnishes the setting air
and he remembers a blue road across the ice
and snow, the setting orange sun, and the birds
that fell frozen dead from the wires, a wind as wicked as that.
It was never entirely true
that we belonged here, or that eventually
a sense would open into welcome and the strange
locals would claim us as a people…it never was promised
or assured that anything good
would happen at all. And yet this shifting weather
and the perfectly round buds of a warm February, and yet
these continuing half portions of each day,
and the linking gaze
of an attractive woman, attractive
man, sweat in the hothouse wonder of love.
The tired water drains down. Gray eyes look back
at the mirror silver and all the shards
are gathered and assembled, at least for a thought,
and yet it is still these hills and this river and the streets
between the bright gold buildings…
the snow and ice and wind.
The wife of the people has coupled in darkness
with a strange man of longing and distance, and now
the children are like insects on the land, terrible and clean.
The Official Of Peace In His Urgent Need
His standing in the wreckage and the assembly around him
of small events in their dawning—
his belief and the belief of others, the desire
and forgotten wisdom—
the plain urgency of the usual weather coming undone
and the trees gesturing with the vague inventions of the wind—
…but it had always
been like this and would always be so.
Longer minutes were spent contemplating a history
of kind moments, and yet where was the reality? A committee?
Not so easily.
Redwing blackbirds sang from the long strands
over the marsh and the slapping water
eased over the flat white stones. Further off, orange
and white fish as large as small boys hovered in the deep green water
and a black dog wore a smooth path
around the lake, running and running, pausing to look.
And folks took pictures of their beautiful children
dressed for a dance in spring.
And the dream meant something indecipherable that lingered
in the life of day like a flavor or smell at the edge
sweetly a part of what it was not…still the light
breaking in the white and green clouds
and the winning fish
in their back and forth
and the dog that wouldn’t stop running and running
while the world unwound from the spool of hope and longing.
The official has himself to explain.
These days the rocky silence is cold and the long
look toward green and ambivalence
gives itself the chance of endless continuation, debate,
insistence and surrender
without surrender, only the gesture. He wanted finally
just to be in love, just that much…to be allowed
to love and to give over-generously in a spirit
of extinguishing himself in the average but lovely surrounding—
but so much was beyond him. He paces
in his black uniform, boots and a whistle. He looks
with the hard decisiveness
of a harsh official. And yet the gentleness
of spring has won him forever and he is charmed
by the swimming turtles in their bump and glide, by the blackbirds
whistling in the marsh grass and the frogs
with their belligerent croaks and whistles and the splash—
it is a characteristic of the hopeful
and lost to believe that they will never die, not
with so much yet to find. He stamps his feet
on the white concrete, trying to get warm, getting himself
started on a cold morning, and the passing
crowd seems all of one person
bundled to the wind, reflected in the steel and glass
of anonymous cold towers, the life in the city
as we know it has been given to us. Far off, a bright silver jet
leaves a pure white trail against the infinitely deep blue and the
least
slight cloud is edged in a pink flare of flame: the sun rising.
Winter in a pocket of storm, the yellow lights
in the darkness and blowing, and out on the lake
the crackle of ice, the rising white,
while the home burns in the dry blue air, signal
brilliance in the mastering weather.
She winks and closes tight
the gesture of another
quiet evening hidden away under the waving maple
and oak, hidden away in the wind and snow.
A dying sound.
The rustle of dry
white snow, crackle and hiss of the fire.
It is a thousand miles to spring
and another thousand miles
to hope and celebration.
They were out together on the boat of chance,
riding the waves higher and higher, brimming
and laughing and cutting loose the long mourning
weeks like curses laid on wishes, the feathery
blemished tangle. And the oar was in his hand.
And she was pointing
to the jut of the stone into
the rushing and falling water, while birds circled
keeping time at the evening blessing and evidence, a cloud
spooked from the white surround. Now it is fall—
of a sort—and the wishful long hours of drift to left,
drift to right, constructing
a frame of black mental iron
and the dangling harsh sounds crack
the desperate green air making way to the lower
basin, the concrete with its harsh liquid and biting.
The frogs sing in the darkness. The frogs quiver and mate
and leap in the darkness, and a snake
that is the darkest of daring wishes slides
over the broken October leaves, pulling apart the world.
Pieces of pieces dribble in the chaos heart.
His mildest being was pleasant enough, standing in the yard
and looking up at the stars,
tracing in his mind’s eye
the constellations of care and concern, and there was room enough
for her to find her own opinion
about the matter
of the world, or the concern of their miniature world:
how they fit together or didn’t, how they loved
or didn’t love just enough to maintain being as one.
And then she was singing and clapping
and making time with the time
that remained, startled words
in an arrangement of nonsense (not actually an arrangement
at all…random as gusts of stars…the twisting
red and golden metal)
or only the singsong scat jazz
of notes like vocal exempla…torn leaves broken down
from a handsome tree…. But who could say (and who can
say…) how it would matter in the longer years
that these afternoons,
these mornings, were given away
to such slight (yet robust) figures: the strong demarcations
of a landscape entirely composed of wanting and loss.
And they were at peace with that.
He was a black and worried
hat, tipped right, jaunty except for the wear.
He was a jacket, and tight
pants (saying it all), and scuffed boots with their heels worn
to a slant and each toe
like a nose of iron. (He was a belt
and the hanging keys.) And she was the order of a rocking
and deep hilarious song:
the answer to both prayer and fear.
The Heart In Its Wreckage
This long it will last
and no longer. Two wrestling
in the sunlight of winter
on an afternoon of cold and wind,
squares of light and dark
on the living room carpet,
and outside the whistling air and the movement
of small branches while they push and pull, pink bare
arms grappling,
and laughter…and the movement…
and memory like a chain of sorrow, the dangling
white medallion.
How softly wishes
are taken to pieces. A bare sycamore stands
on the brown winter grass and the bare gray concrete
walk edges down
to the road, broken metal
clinging to the pieces of old concrete, the small stones
and bits of glass, and the huge tree
is like a room of light placed in the awkward awakened sky,
and the diving bright
sparrows evade the gestures
of shadow and longing, the tired slim fence.
Only to be mentioned
would be enough, that and
the light going out of the attic and the rough outline
of morning taking stock of the black plain noon, and this
as the laughter increases and the policy
of silence is given the blessing hand of gentleness
only, gentleness.
You watch and you forget
and all of it is put together into a cardboard box
pushed back under the bed, and she would let go of all of it—
a woman of the moment—but who else would regret?
The warm voice tells its tale;
the warm voices
in the kitchen are explaining what else
it is that is so empty of meaning, and a small boy
is at the foot of the stairs sorting and arranging
the soldiers of his
small will: it is a storybook sort
of life, complete with the anxiety of a ship, the tension
of a train in the darkness, the departure and wave to heaven.
So the last things would be said.
Painless fire burnishes the setting air
and he remembers a blue road across the ice
and snow, the setting orange sun, and the birds
that fell frozen dead from the wires, a wind as wicked as that.
It was never entirely true
that we belonged here, or that eventually
a sense would open into welcome and the strange
locals would claim us as a people…it never was promised
or assured that anything good
would happen at all. And yet this shifting weather
and the perfectly round buds of a warm February, and yet
these continuing half portions of each day,
and the linking gaze
of an attractive woman, attractive
man, sweat in the hothouse wonder of love.
The tired water drains down. Gray eyes look back
at the mirror silver and all the shards
are gathered and assembled, at least for a thought,
and yet it is still these hills and this river and the streets
between the bright gold buildings…
the snow and ice and wind.
The wife of the people has coupled in darkness
with a strange man of longing and distance, and now
the children are like insects on the land, terrible and clean.
The Official Of Peace In His Urgent Need
His standing in the wreckage and the assembly around him
of small events in their dawning—
his belief and the belief of others, the desire
and forgotten wisdom—
the plain urgency of the usual weather coming undone
and the trees gesturing with the vague inventions of the wind—
…but it had always
been like this and would always be so.
Longer minutes were spent contemplating a history
of kind moments, and yet where was the reality? A committee?
Not so easily.
Redwing blackbirds sang from the long strands
over the marsh and the slapping water
eased over the flat white stones. Further off, orange
and white fish as large as small boys hovered in the deep green water
and a black dog wore a smooth path
around the lake, running and running, pausing to look.
And folks took pictures of their beautiful children
dressed for a dance in spring.
And the dream meant something indecipherable that lingered
in the life of day like a flavor or smell at the edge
sweetly a part of what it was not…still the light
breaking in the white and green clouds
and the winning fish
in their back and forth
and the dog that wouldn’t stop running and running
while the world unwound from the spool of hope and longing.
The official has himself to explain.
These days the rocky silence is cold and the long
look toward green and ambivalence
gives itself the chance of endless continuation, debate,
insistence and surrender
without surrender, only the gesture. He wanted finally
just to be in love, just that much…to be allowed
to love and to give over-generously in a spirit
of extinguishing himself in the average but lovely surrounding—
but so much was beyond him. He paces
in his black uniform, boots and a whistle. He looks
with the hard decisiveness
of a harsh official. And yet the gentleness
of spring has won him forever and he is charmed
by the swimming turtles in their bump and glide, by the blackbirds
whistling in the marsh grass and the frogs
with their belligerent croaks and whistles and the splash—
it is a characteristic of the hopeful
and lost to believe that they will never die, not
with so much yet to find. He stamps his feet
on the white concrete, trying to get warm, getting himself
started on a cold morning, and the passing
crowd seems all of one person
bundled to the wind, reflected in the steel and glass
of anonymous cold towers, the life in the city
as we know it has been given to us. Far off, a bright silver jet
leaves a pure white trail against the infinitely deep blue and the
least
slight cloud is edged in a pink flare of flame: the sun rising.
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