Louis Stettner, Les Alpilles No. 3, 2013 (Website)
Black and white photography, 30 x 40 cm
©The Estate of Louis Stettner, 2019
Bird-dung-seeded weed-tree growing
unwatered, I climbed
you often, crouched high
over the concrete patio—
be careful!
they said, so next time
I climbed higher, into
attic branches—your berries’
ink-&-paper smell, black stain, and small
long-haired me, eating.
I was looking for the right time
to run away, and how many years
later, in my busted-up
Cavalier, did I go
into the river-roaded back
of a small town,
sleeping on the tilt
of the seat, smelling you but never finding
the source, the seed
before now, on the corner where they tore down
the old house I called haunted, because
it sagged, boarded, pigeons or bats
stealing through upper rooms
—or else—what? I don’t say
ghost anymore—too
Victorian, something
I talked about at odd hours to ex-
lovers, lipsticked by red wine,
combat-booted, ready
to pick a fight for the ash
things I was sure brushed by, memories
staining our pre-war rooms,
dim bars and rinky-dink
carnival rides we trusted
when they pitched
nearby—me, gripping the seat,
sure a bolt would pop and I’d fly
headwise out—but they
had arms to warm me, shirts I wore, funny tastes, bodies
I didn’t love but needed
to hold me a time.
It’s gone now—
the house—tangle
of joints and beams, wallpaper leaf
flat near the fence, where you stand.
As long as my
grandmother was alive
in California, she kept you.
She’s been gone a long time.
And you crop up
at peripheries, bird-dropped, and I remember now
this morning two women in flowered headwraps leaned
over the fence, intimately into you, harvesting
your fruit—but as I come back
late, you loom
alone. How many times
have I run away by now? I’m through.
It’s midnight.
Witching hour,
I think without meaning to.
They will root
you up
before they’re done,
love. You’re mine
for now, though. Knock-kneed and solid, you’re here
for now.