Eliot Schain: California Poets Part 8, Three Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Eliot Schain
Three Poems
WILL
The 49er nearly died pushing himself up over Donner Pass
one thick shoe after another through giving snow.
When he finally crested and smelled the West
he invented me and all the diggers who’ve come since.
One wants to give a name, like Bill or Sam—
think of armpits reeking despite the freezing cold.
We’re so small and yet we’ve changed the world
nearly as much as God.
It took him another two weeks to get down
and build his cabin near the river.
He was sweet no longer but stuck around
and now a noisy freeway passes close to where he died.
But what of those he sired? scattered up and down the state,
burning up their rubber.
It all began with putrid sweat and hardship like a brother.
THE LINGERING
In the seventies Shane loved Dexter Gordon
the cool jazz player whose sound was like warm sand
after swimming a broad cold river.
The world needed steadying
and his horn was steadying
which is why Shane asked his nearly mute but undeniably cool friend
to play saxophone at the going-away party
when Shane, along with everything else, was going away.
The friend agreed but never showed
so midway through the outdoor event
rich with artists and ex-lovers
Shane moved a shabby lawn chair into the thicket of high anise
to sit with a lit joint between his quivering fingers...
it’s still there today, as if his friend had made it,
as if he’s still out there bellowing under the eternally western sky
as we all keep disappearing, as everything keeps disappearing.
BRIEF THAW
Everett was in the parking lot of a big supermarket
in one of those corners of America that drive him crazy
just minding his own business
when some woman wearing a ridiculous t-shirt over an unruly body
pointed and called for him to look to the sky
which he did to witness a bald eagle overhead
and traced with his forefinger the rest of the bird’s flight
through its vast arc
as if he were teaching the young to understand how the white crown
white tail feathers, a black body how such a bird plying the wind
is proof that most of us can too
if risen above the pain of being American
then Everett said Thank you Ma’am instinctively, genuinely
as if joining her for a moment in some beautiful and faraway place.
Author Bio:
Eliot Schain’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review and Santa Monica Review, among others, as well as in a number of anthologies including America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed. His newest collection The Distant Sound was published by Sixteen Rivers Press, and selections have been released as an album in collaboration with guitarist Harrison Flynn, available on Apple Music and Spotify.
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