Cynthia Hogue

Five Poems

 

From the Book of Dust

Lines Drawn with You

The Ecology of the Disappeared

After a Hurricane There’s Nowhere to Go

Now Politically the U.S.

 



From the Book of Dust
after Agnes Denes

 

On the whole
earth human
history a herd
of sheep needing
to change course racing,
hurtling in apparently this
direction, from the lamb
of St. Agnes to recent
cloning, the concerns
to include loss
of cropland, the disastrous
to sublime becoming
one with our interests
and problems. Understand
when I see in
the future I mention
the military in order
to propose building windmills
and a Fort I call Crystal. I utter-

ly ac-

knowledge the present
use of forts
was an interim solution
but let’s talk
for the moment about
access not just
to rejuvenate that sense,
almost forgotten,
is not stranger to this phenomenon
of uniting long-alienated
disciplines by touching
on issues of individual
creation and social
conscience. As in a garden the edges
of stones were carved
in a non-ego-based
legacy as if hardy
plants in peace took root.

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Lines Drawn with You

after an exhibit of the same title
in the Center Art Gallery, Lewisburg, PA (USA)

 

Where You are
now you're not
Noting how some
things matter
more than others
think they do
. . .
. o .

like notes

. . .
. o .

align

A complete ellipsis may not be drawn.
Three or more fragments are drawn
in the position of the ellipsis.
What is an ellipsis
if not made of pieces apart

. . .
. o .

from its parts

. . .
. o .

You're written
up On all counts,Meaning
your meaning counts for
little since you’renowhere
near the hero
they make you
out to be in
these parts . . . :a line (lines of
writing (SHApes)
soNgs sung when (elliptically)
in humor, so fully
human, a veritable Tabula
recta: cipher to (figure)
also null to nought

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The Ecology of the Disappeared

 

After months of study and debris
leaders inebriate with the findings
lose faith. They criss-cross the land like pollen, hovering,
wavering: Are we rooted yet? Are we grown?
Everyone sighs as the possible sweeps past the clutter.

It’s tragic, carrying seeds of hope when whole forests
wilt cacophonously
and drought reigns. Tensions rise like welts, red black and blue
reasons bobbing about like parti-colored helium balloons.

We found the gash right away.
The Colonel wept: his wife had called
demanding he tell the truth or she'd jump with their child.
Once I, too, rushed from a plane believing
I'd meet my love resplendent in furs, with open, rendez-vous arms.

But truly he could not speak.
She stood on the brink, impractical, needless
as exterminating nature because the white-tailed deer
breed ticks and taxpayers
protest. For a time, so deft at denying,

he convinced her the chasm a ditch and the road long
since overgrown with red oak and sweet gum.
Gummy saplings edged with sticky broomstick pine.
The wide blue air of the wild blue sky.

 

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After a Hurricane There’s Nowhere to Go

adapted from a 2004 issue of St. Petersburg Times

 

Saturday evening the tempest passed, but the bay still rose, its shoreline invisible, lost. On Sunday, the waters withdrew. People saw dry land. On Monday, those waters roared back, crashing over balustrades onto the boulevard. Meteorologists warned of winds causing a storm surge, which, during the night, snuck in like a cat and crept toward Cynthia Hogue's house on Ballast Point. Her sandbags, placed against all doors, slept on as the water inched closer, then seeped in through cracks and crevices. Cynthia Hogue, 69, woke to stand knee-deep in water and was not sanguine. Glancing out the window as a boatload of teenagers rowed by sending havoc in their wake, she said, "I wish they'd get stuck." Water rippled inside her home.

"I have fought this for years and years," Cynthia Hogue said. “Don’t drain the wetlands,” I argued. “Birds need them. We need them. We do not need resorts. We do not need casinos.”

Elements lay strewn across her bed. Among the gold, the copper, the seaborgium, the tungsten, were notebooks from Hogue's ongoing fight with officials about coastal marshlands and hurricanes. "The storms come and no one listens to me. I feel like dancing in them," she said. "What else can I do? I've tried everything else depending on truth."

But as she waded through her home on Ballast Point, Hogue decided not to count on truth anymore.

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Now Politically the U.S.

 

aliens steadily
withering their way
into the only

forest . . .
W.S. Merwin

The activist felt certain
the light she saw
round her car
was a message.
I am writing this to ask you to do something
to prevent
it
though that would help (not to send a check).
Senator Inouye, Hawaii State Governor John
Waihee say Aloha Wao Kele O Puna.
At first herself
disorganized she
hadn't noticed.
Then she knew why
each night after work
everything was intact
but out of place.
Part of the "ceded lands" legally dedicated,
it was "swapped" for a disturbed
and non-native.
Nothing taken,
no one seen
but the stockbroker her
husband felt an abyss
open up and saw
the consequences. One client
after another
disappeared.
In business one keeps
thoughts not ideas
(which mean money)
to oneself.
When they take you,
he phoned, I'll send funds.
Then the distant
tapping noise signalled
wings of meditation
turning the FBI agent
listening into an attentive
being recording dis-
consolate and cautionary
words, a recipe,
entertainment
for the medically
bored. Sometimes a life.
Which, if you participate,
you are not a part
of the solution but the problem.
No traditional.
Sustains the appalling war.
Is finally declared legal.
Mind over.
Will cannot access.
If someone touched you would you
be touched?
Would you feel fine?
We specifically allowed
the invasion that will destroy
everywhere else.
And the part of the adjoining
medicinal plants and rare birds
that in the lowlands
have developed immunity.
Far from the sacred
grounds we soon cease.
The forest itself.
In a circle we.

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