Three Poems by Shane McCrae

The Many Hundreds of the Scent

Friend, I have turned     the brambles back. I used

An instrument, a weapon, though it wasn’t

A weapon, it was an instrument, an oar

To which I had affixed a sheet of plywood

Three feet by three feet,     earlier, an instrument

A weapon,     something like a sword with

A large square tip, but like a sign

A protester might wave.     I leaned the plywood

Against the brambles as I walked the path

This morning, leaning     all my weight against the plywood

Repeatedly, so that I must have looked

Like a pro wrestler as I turned the brambles

This morning, bouncing off the ropes,     but end-

less ropes at the single boundary of an endless

Ring,     though it isn’t endless, the path ends

But who was watching me     this morning as I walked the clotted

Path, breaking sorrows from the path

Follow the path. I’ve yet to sweep the wreckage

Of the brambles from its edges.     You will find

The tower we have often built together

You from imagination, I from memory

As beams of the last sunlight blurri-

ly flared across the wall, the last     of the day, shaped by the blinds

Each glowing on the wall as if each beam were

A ghost beam     of wood floating from the wall

Burning.     And we have watched as slowly

They flew away     into the dark

And though we know it’s an illusion made by

The sunlight through the blinds, the slats are shaped

Like beams of wood, the spaces where they don’t fit

Together, shaped like beams of wood

Through which the sunlight enters, still we

Have watched the beams that hold the house together flee the wall

Like ashes flying     upward, burning

Didn’t you once confide in me

You stumbled chasing ashes with your eyes as

The ashes fled a fire you couldn’t yet

See clearly     raging in the heart of the copse you

Had been approaching,     as they rose above the tops

Of the tallest of the band of ever-

greens, and the ashes     might have been pine needles flying from

The pines, but     none of the trees, no pine, no cedar

No fir tree burned, you heard no noise

Of burning,     but you felt the heat, and you had

Seen light?     No telling what had called

You to the window. Was it     merely that you wanted

To see the snow?     You saw the distant light

Of the fire burning in the copse beyond the barn, and

You realized you might not ever have

Another chance to see the trees up close whose

Provenance and continued health, exposed

To storms     of black exhaust and storms of gravel

Kicked from the gravel road by pickup trucks

As the trucks fishtail past the gate     and the copse marking

The limit of my property

Had, from the day    you first appeared and spoke to

Me, seemed incomprehensible to you

What did you say then,     not your first words

To me, but those you whispered as I turned the locks

Curious who had struck the door so fiercely

So frantically had rung the doorbell? It

Had been,     but I was young,     a child still

Ten years since any visitor had come unasked

And you so calm on the porch, not even

Facing the door.     I thought for sure you were

Watching whoever had knocked,     had rung,     was running

Away,     but there was no one there but you

And as you neared the copse, when you were twenty

Ten feet away, the trees seemed suddenly

To huddle closer to the burning center

As if they were protecting it

And just as suddenly you turned and ran back

To the house.     No strangeness mars the path

Now, friend.     I’ve turned back even

The strangeness that once made the path

Familiar, and the trees by standing still,     by moving

Only with the wind, will answer your old fear

And curiosity,     and at the end of the path you

Will see the tower,     distant still, but rising, at

First by itself against the sky, but soon you

Will see the fruiting orange grove, the leaves

Of the tallest trees obscuring from your vision

The tower’s lowest windows. You

Will know at once it is no fearful

And burning heart, the tower,     the low-

est windows of which you do not yet see. Amidst the orange

Trees, their suspended     flames, you’ll find

A peaceful place,     my memories of which I’ve

Until now guarded by allowing dense

Brambles to overgrow the only path to the orange

Grove.     But I’ve turned them back, the brambles, with

An instrument,     a weapon.     Take the path.     Before you

Can see the grove you will     smell it, a ghost

Of oranges in the air. One ghost     of oranges is

Hundreds of ghosts, a lifetime each, of each

The many hundreds of the scent     of oranges you’ve tasted

Newborn each time you tasted it, that hung

Like rain on the air, that for so long as

It hangs on the air makes air the purest form of rain

The tower will seem to rise from the scent it-

self, from the scent of oranges

In the midst of the     undifferentiated view, as

If scent, like touch     were place,     a home not made

Of memories, but the next, searching inhalation

Always the next, with which the scent returns

As If Its Prison

It’s going up and coming down most often

I think I’ll die.     When the machine

Shakes like a fishhook shakes both as and after

The fish shakes     itself loose and after in-

to the lake again. The fishhook     shakes at the end

Of the shaking line; I watch the shaking hook

Don’t watch the leaping     splash. But sometimes even when

The plane has leveled and seems stable.     My mistake

Is ever thinking calm and safety are

The same thing. Music     shakes the air as if

It wants to escape the air

As if its prison were not keeping it alive

I Have Mixed My Labor with the Soil

Back at the old house the woods no entry now

How much remains if any of my blood

And skin in the forest up the hill     unend-

ing the humiliations so small you

Can’t talk about them or they stop being true

Such as sound loyal in your head

And do betray you on your tongue     it is my bod-

y still     more mine than when how long ago

I bled at war in the woods with boys I wanted

To like me so I let them hurt me there

I wore a helmet from the army surplus store

Hoping I would be hunted

And shot in the head     hoping I’d hear the BB strike

To squeeze through brambles my own blood made thick

Shane McCrae’s most recent books are Sometimes I Never Suffered, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and The Gilded Auction Block, both published by Corsair. He has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.