I do believe in the weird synchronicity of the universe. For a few years I'd been thinking idly of this poet William Carpenter, who had a poem in one of the Best American Poetry volumes years back now--it was about a girl in a painting come to life and pulling off a heist. I had also seen some collaborations he did with an artist in the Beloit Poetry Journal. His second book was published by Northeastern University Press (they did my first book a few years later--so this seemed synchronous as well,) but when I called the press to obtain a copy they said is was out of print; no copies left. I looked on the Alibris site, and Amazon, but nothing.



So it was rather magical last week when I did my customary sweep of the used book store down the street to see what was new in the poetry section. On a low shelf was Carpenter's book, Rain, which I'd been looking for all these years! Supernormal forces must have drawn me into the book store that night:I don't know if Carpenter is still alive even, as I have not seen his poems for some years now and fear the cause of his silence. I suppose I could try to find him through his academic affiliation, but now he and I have the kind of paranormal connection I suspect I should just leave alone.



His work is characterized by parables told in plain speech, usually about doing something in the woods of New England, though the narratives are also illustrative of/run parallel with meditations on various sorts of human connections, mainly love in all its prickly forms. I thought I'd type out a copy of his poem "The Ice House." My blog won't do italics so you will have to envision them as needed.



THE ICE HOUSE



On Lincoln's Birthday we walk counterclockwise

around Mink Lake, watching the ice retreat,

though one ice-fishing shack is still out there,

which a man with a blue truck and a hat that

says International Harvester is trying to push

to shore, but his tires keep skidding, so he

ties a rope to the house with the idea

that he might pull it if it will not push.

We clap when the ice house moves, fall silent

when the rope breaks and he stands there crushed.

You ask what I am doing with myself these days.

I say writing, which is not exactly what you meant.

You ask, who do I see? By now the man is on

a cracked island of ice, he is pushing again

with the blue truck against the ice house, which

begins to slide. We clap again. It echoes off

Dog Mountain as if thousands of couples stood

watching like trees around the lake. I don't see

anyone. I have been stone blind for a year.

Oh, has it been a year? We ought to celebrate.

Out on the ice, the truck makes a sharp lunge

that thrusts the ice floe backward, opening

a black space so that the shack falls through

and a tidal wave travels beneath the ice,

a wave the size and shape of a small house

which breaks over our feet. The man stares

into the hole where his house was. He lies flat

on his stomach with his face in the cold lake,

trying to understand. On our way back, two

or three crows fly from a limb, so you, also,

begin flapping your arms like crow wings

and run over the snowy road, shrieking caw

caw and in your black jacket, black feathery hair,

as you run faster you transform into a crow,

sweetheart, you rise right off the ground and fly

through a cluster of white pines, over Mink Lake

where a man slowly pilots his blue truck across

the ice, where he looks up to feel the wind shifting

and a woman flying around and around his head

who is still beautiful, but the man thinks

only of the lost ice house, sinking in dark

water, in the deepest part of the lake, how

he will never retrieve it, how it had a stove,

two candles and a rocking chair, and on the wall

a calendar of twelve girls in their bathing suits,

one girl for each month, who are even now being

swallowed by deep pickerel, by huge rainbow trout.