Lee Rossi: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Lee Rossi

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Lee Rossi

Four Poems

Wanderung

That morning we set out as prepared as we could be

with thousands of calories in each of our knapsacks

and an autographed edition of Heine’s “Journey

in the Harz Mountains.” For the first dozen miles

we goose-footed it along the autobahn enjoying

the whizz and counter-wind of Beamers and Mercs.

To our right the smokestacks of the now defunct

People’s Glorious Steel Works reached for the sky,

the fingers of some giant hand, while across the roadway

sugar beets, piled like cannon balls, blazed in the bright autumn

sun. As our thoughts turned from weißwurst to sauerkraut,

we left the autobahn and entered a thick woods

that rose like a forest of pipe organs along

the suddenly steep grade. So musical was the wind

through this mixed deciduous biome and so fragrant—

the scent of balsam and pine—that we almost halted

before we had truly entered the place, what seemed

even to our agnostic eyes, a shrine. But we

strode on, our purpose as sturdy as the thick

leather soles of our boots, past food carts

manned by werewolves and flights of vampire

bats. We knew we could expect anything

on a walk like this, even the brilliant telegraphy

of tracer rounds streaking past our heads and

the green fog of mustard gas settling in the

tranquil hollows between hills. None of us

had forgotten our gas masks and protective

clothing, and we were steeled by Heine’s

admonitions against laziness and self-absorption.

Heine is an interesting case, because although

he himself was a victim of laziness and self-

absorption, he never ceased to rail against

these vices. As such, he is a model for all

of us who have been raised in an atmosphere

of permissiveness and ease, and yet must

master a world in which evil and violence

are the norms. From a ridge overlooking

a deep glacial tarn we saw a mountain village,

beautiful, and suspect, in the way of all things

beautiful. We crept to within five hundred yards

of the village before loosing a barrage

of mortar and rocket fire, and then going from

house to blazing house we machine-gunned

the surviving inhabitants, the way we had been

schooled in our arithmetic and entomology classes.

Tumult in Cobalt

                        “let be be finale of seem”

As if I had been walking, suddenly

tripped and was about to fall,

scraping wrists and knees,

I steadied myself in my chair. 

This mental emergency

came, it seemed, from nowhere.

A cool wind was blowing

the lemon tree's sparse green.

Trumpet flowers stirred.

It was summer, its arrogant

height, but all I could do was sit,

sovereign of a small kingdom

and watch the jaded fanfare,

swaggering green,

the plush purple and lime,

and wish there was more of me

in this brilliant, jostling scene,

less seem and more be.

A Jar

Grandma lived in a tarpaper shack on the outskirts of Memphis. Grandma was sixty, and then she was 92. She died when she was 92. Before that she picked cotton and birthed five children. Dad was Number Four. The other ones came out dead. She worked in the fields with grandpa. She picked cotton and pole beans. She shucked pole beans and cooked them in water she pumped from the well. The pump was hot in summer, icy in winter. The water was always cool, although sometimes it tasted like soap or kerosene. Grandma had a wood stove and would cook the children, one at a time, in a big washtub. Or else she would wash them in a big cook tub. Tootsie, the baby, before any of the rest. Grandma liked her vino. When she died she only had three teeth left in her head, maybe four. (You didn’t want to look too close.) She kept the rest in a jar under her bed except for the gold ones which she kept with her ring. Tootsie got the ring. Don’t ask who got the jar.

Author Bio:

Lee Rossi is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Say Anything, from Plain View Press, and has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Don’t Leave Hungry: 50 Years of Southern Poetry Review and Grand Passion: the Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond.

His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, The Harvard Review, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Poet Lore. His has published reviews in, among others, Poetry Flash, The Los Angeles Review, Rain Taxi, and Pedestal. He is a winner of The Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, as well as the Steve Kowit Prize. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a Contributing Editor at Poetry Flash. He is currently Poetry Moderator at Portside.org, “Materials of Interest to People on the Left.”

More information about Lee can be found on his website: www.leerossisez.com.