{"id":18,"date":"2025-06-13T18:32:50","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T22:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/?page_id=18"},"modified":"2025-06-13T20:35:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:35:59","slug":"mundane-emergencies","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/contents\/mundane-emergencies\/","title":{"rendered":"Mundane Emergencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Periodically Published Poems<\/h3>\n

Kevin Cawley<\/h4>\n

Acknowledgements<\/a><\/h5>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

TRAIN<\/p>\n

Even the ravenous water shrew
\nsnatching a bite to stay alive
\nhas time to pause a moment or two.<\/p>\n

Indentured mind, a drone of striving,
\nbusiness, busyness, steams ahead —
\nalways departing, never arriving.<\/p>\n

Its engine might as well go dead
\nfor all the good it does to rush
\nfrom here to here, boiler fed,<\/p>\n

water and wood drafted to push
\nthe void away, to cleave the air,
\nto bend the tendrils of clutching brush,<\/p>\n

from here to here, never quite there,
\nto catch the occasional torpid cow,
\nsacred, not going anywhere,<\/p>\n

to urge it off the track and now
\nto build up steam again, to go
\nas fast as natural laws allow,<\/p>\n

leaving behind the hush, the moo,
\nthe moment of the water shrew.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WEEDS<\/p>\n

Tiger lily
\nchicory
\nornamental thorn:
\ndaffodil
\nmere trickery,
\nan early virtue born<\/p>\n

and gone before
\nthe weeds can yield
\nmeek democracy —
\nmorning-glory
\nlily field,
\nthorn and chicory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BACKBONE<\/p>\n

Good progress towards transparency:
\nmy giving everyone the air
\nwill no doubt mean the end of me.<\/p>\n

Climbing leaves you up a tree.
\nPedestrians can’t find you there.
\nGood progress towards transparency!<\/p>\n

What does a lucid eyeball see?
\nMy retina’s becoming clear
\nwill no doubt mean the end of me.<\/p>\n

The bare behind the barest we,
\nthe bare beyond where bones make their
\ngood progress towards transparency<\/p>\n

evaporates integrity,
\nimplies the dissolute. The bare
\nwill no doubt mean the end of me.<\/p>\n

Jellyfish melt in the kindly sea.
\nWhen clouds dissolve we call skies fair.
\nGood progress towards transparency
\nwill no doubt mean the end of me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DRAGONS<\/p>\n

What dragons do
\namazes you.
\nThey close
\ntheir noses,
\nkeep their fire
\nin, acquire
\nquite a knack
\nfor holding back
\ntheir molten
\nemotion.
\nYou cannot but
\nadmire what
\nthe magazines
\ncall quite machine-
\nlike cool.
\nThey fool
\ntheir fellow snakes,
\nas one mistakes
\ncontainment for
\ncontrol. The more
\nthey eat
\ntheir heat
\nthe more their bellies
\nburn and swell.
\nTheir ears explode
\nbecause the load
\nof acid
\ngas
\nand melted gut
\nrespects no shut
\nno twisted lid.
\nSo let them kid
\nyou not.
\nThe hot
\ninternal leech
\ninhabits each.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HOMEMADE BOOKMARK<\/p>\n

Don’t care what you say
\nabout Vincent Millay.
\nBy me she’s OK.<\/p>\n

Whatever you do
\nwith the modernist crew
\nwon’t trouble me, Hugh.<\/p>\n

Explain what you see.
\nBut let Vincent be.
\nShe’s OK by me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HARD CORE ELEGANCE<\/p>\n

James Joyce, the novelist,
\nbragged about his minor feet,
\nwanted every dinner guest
\nto think them marvelously neat.<\/p>\n

Samuel Beckett also wrote.
\nAdmiring the master’s wit
\nhe forced each great foot down a boot
\nseveral sizes small for it.<\/p>\n

He hobbled like a cripple. Corns
\nand blisters blossomed in his heart.
\nHe hid behind the potted ferns.
\nWork in Progress! Modern Art!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THREE SEASONS<\/p>\n

Here in the forest city
\nbelow a hill of trees
\nthree seasons of the year the leaves
\ncan censor what one sees.<\/p>\n

Death has this advantage:
\nit opens up the view.
\nThe time I’ve wasted going round
\nand now the stair shows through!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

COMMITTED<\/p>\n

Committed to a life
\nwith a person called Love,
\nshe bought herself a loom
\nand whistled as she wove.<\/p>\n

Love called her his Wife
\nand Screwy in the Head.
\nHe locked her in his room
\nand in the extra bed<\/p>\n

committed what they used
\nto call Adultery.
\nAfterwards his Wife
\nconfronted him, so he<\/p>\n

declared himself Abused
\nand citing social norms
\ncommitted her for life
\nby filling out some forms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOVEMBER SNOW<\/p>\n

I like a grey sky on a winter morning:
\nsnow four inches deep and not a rabbit
\nmaking tracks, not a citizen
\nin sight. Without technology to warn
\nme, and to rouse me for that matter, habit
\nwould have kept me guessing. But the window
\nproved the weatherman correct. Now lights
\ncome on in other buildings too. My neighbors
\nsoon emerge and try to start their cars.
\nI have mine half dug out already. Whiteness
\nmakes me giddy, makes me grin — the way
\nI did when I came out and saw the stars.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CAREER ADVICE<\/p>\n

Mistake the pointing finger for the moon.
\nSuccess in criticism comes from learning
\nnot to take the flaming fact to heart.
\nDescribe the finger. Tell us how it rose<\/p>\n

from flippers of the mutant fish, explain
\nhow knuckles work, compare the nail to rhino
\nhorn, investigate the skin. But under
\nno conditions look the way it points.<\/p>\n

Otherwise you melt your eye in milk.
\nYou lose your marbles and your better judgment
\nknows better than to go along with that.<\/p>\n

Intelligent sugar stays away from tea.
\nWhere every wave has its own bag of wind
\nthe sea will never level with a moon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CATSKILL<\/p>\n

The cat’s kill occurs
\non account of the cat skill.
\nUp in the Catskill
\nMountains, cats kill
\nexactly as elsewhere
\nin places less aptly
\nnamed. However
\nthe term itself
\nhas nothing to do
\nwith killing: it means
\ncat’s creek
\ncat’s channel
\ncat’s burn
\ncat’s brook.
\nThe common denominator
\nof this catalog
\nlikely indicates
\nthe cat-o’-mountain,
\nsometimes called
\nthe catamount:
\nbobcat, wildcat,
\ncooncat, lynx.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ELECTED SILENCE<\/p>\n

Stumbling among the commonplaces
\nHieronymous Bosch discovered eggs
\nwith legs. How do you do, he said.
\nThey bowed back rather stiffly but<\/p>\n

no words came from their cracks. He took
\ntheir inarticulate courtesy
\nto indicate compliance with
\nEconomy, the country’s moral code.<\/p>\n

But in the mouth of one a message
\nlingered on the yellow tongue,
\na slogan for a leaky yolk:
\nBoycott Syntax, Gradual Anarchy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ERUDITION<\/p>\n

I sent a painting to Monsieur Le Choc,
\nthe prominent art critic, to get his opinion.
\nIt had a yellow sun in the middle
\nsurrounded by intoxicating night
\nwith a tree in silhouette on the lefthand side.
\nMonsieur Le Choc corrected it with orange
\nhouse paint, enlarging the light to a cross.
\nI told his secretary He’s
\ndefaced it, but she only said:
\nLucky he didn’t fix the tree up also.
\nIt don’t look nothing like
\na tree from where I sit. More like
\nfingers reaching for a strangle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HABITUATION<\/p>\n

By living in a place a while you learn
\nwhat noises you can safely disregard.
\nThe country dog his first day in the city
\nkeeps his ears perked up, about to startle
\nevery time a stick-shift changes gear.
\nMyself no better than a dog at moving,
\nI had a hard time growing hard of hearing.
\nBut in the city, to survive, you have to.
\nI notice the same dog lately — nonchalant,
\ntrotting across Main Street with a branch
\nclamped tightly in his teeth, like some professor
\npiping a smoke and pondering to work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE LAST HIGHWAY ROBBER<\/p>\n

The badman beats his sword
\nagainst a thicket in the bog
\nand bleats for help,
\nquivering like the carpenter
\nwhose silver watch he pocketed this morning:
\nmockery took heart
\nfor other kinds of woodwork
\nand filled his skin by exploits
\nineffectual where
\neyes among the trees
\nencounter icicles along bare branches only,
\nno roof
\nno chimney breathing peat
\nno straw to stretch the body on inside:
\nwhere fingers
\nyearn to trade their stolen stones
\nfor matches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TO AN ACTOR<\/p>\n

Sharpen the point.
\nWhittle the pencil-end.
\nDon’t worry about making
\nyour candle less impressive.<\/p>\n

Light and heat
\ncan’t stand conservatism.
\nMoney in a mattress
\nnever sweetens dreams.<\/p>\n

Fallow blubber
\ngold-brick calories
\nhardened arteries
\nno channel to the heart<\/p>\n

tallow harbor
\nenergy incarnate
\nburn your crusty water
\nwarm the stranded poor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

REFRACTION<\/p>\n

Crow twisted through
\nthe pane of wrinkled glass
\ndrinking snow
\non the bend bough:
\nwhen I get up to see
\nthe perfect plainness
\nof another pane
\nlets the bird observe me
\nand it flees.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TUB<\/p>\n

The costume of philosophers
\nwill vary from the norm.
\nOne may wear a makintosh
\nall winter (dreadful form)<\/p>\n

another sharkskin overalls
\nanother doubleknit
\nanother a tuxedo with
\na toga under it.<\/p>\n

Philosophers of every school
\ngive up and join the club,
\naccept the normal dressing down
\nbefore they try the tub.<\/p>\n

And all but old Diogenes
\nuse water when they soak:
\nhe alone prefers the fluid
\nmedium of a joke.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BATTLE OX<\/p>\n

At first the ox resembled other oxen.
\nA heavy sort of beast. We made him work
\nthe counter at the deli serving lox
\nand bagels. After hours he would lurk<\/p>\n

along the alley in the back, his horns
\nat ready waiting for a rumble. Gangs
\nof motorcycle chain-swingers torn
\nbetween scorn and admiration rang<\/p>\n

their changes on his scarless hide.
\nThe ox would gore them and enjoy the gore
\nuntil the old offender in him died<\/p>\n

releasing the brighter ox within, more
\nplacidly to snort and as he sighed
\nmore calmly conscious minding at the store.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MAD SCIENTIST<\/p>\n

If I could husband what I have
\nwhat breed of ox might I be getting?
\nHybrid cattle armadillo
\nbrawny, metal plated backs
\non which no flies alight or vampire
\nbats bother to try for blood.
\nNo openings. The predator
\nmay advertise in vain to place
\nincisors in a promising
\nposition. On the energy
\nthat made them one by one without
\nparthenogenesis or sex
\nthey carry on and only I
\ncan slaughter them. I rather like
\ntheir animated statuary
\nlivening up the lawn and plan
\nno butchery this afternoon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

REPLICATION STUDY<\/p>\n

Food provides a measure
\nof the ordinary: light,
\nthe commonest of all
\nthe things we have in common,
\nimplicit in the least
\nprepossessing meal,
\nin fallen fruit or hazel
\nnuts collected from
\nan untouched tree, in greens
\ngathered from a highway
\nmedian, in roots
\nof dandelion or bark
\nof sassafras. Light
\ncaters every wedding,
\nevery make-do dinner
\nof oatmeal cake with cheese:
\nthe most extraordinary
\nsnacks of candied apple
\nquince and plum — as plain
\nas boiled potato in
\ntheir origin and their end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LIONS<\/p>\n

Lions mean less to us
\nnow that we know them:
\nonce in a dream they came
\npacing from cloud cover;
\neven their purring could
\nshake up our bookkeeping.
\nNow they may threaten
\nor keep a sane distance,
\ncome through the compound
\nor lounge in savannas —
\nbored with their mythos
\nwe chart their behavior:
\nprim in our pith helmets,
\nwary, unwilling
\nto tremble in worship,
\nwe notice how seldom
\nthey even eat babies;
\noiling our rifles
\nwe feel almost peaceful
\nand sleep imperturbably,
\nvisions of prowling
\ncarnivorous cats
\npleasing as sheep
\nin the mind of a Sheltie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WAKA<\/p>\n

A trickle
\namong mountains,
\nit receives<\/p>\n

impressions
\nof the failing
\nmaple-leaves.<\/p>\n

They foil the flow.
\nThey keep the stream
\nfrom leaving.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DISTINGUISH<\/p>\n

This afternoon I wait for you. And wait.
\nI wander a bit. At first I speculate —
\nmaybe you have pneumonia, maybe a cold,
\nwet wires or an exhausted manifold.
\nBut pretty soon I start to take offense.
\nSelf-pity has nothing to do with common sense.
\nHowever, in telling myself how little you care
\nI notice how entirely unfair
\nthis judgment would appear to an outsider.
\nSuddenly my tongue comes out of hiding,
\nsalutes my image in the window glass,
\nand I address myself as follows: Ass!
\nYou’d better define your terms. Your so-called friend
\nhas more than a friendly power to offend.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

QUEEN OF CATS<\/p>\n

Needy though not by any standard poor
\nthe Queen of Cats requires more affection.
\nShe takes and yells and takes and calls for more.
\nNo courtly good will do. She craves destruction.
\nSolvent though not by any measure rich
\nher underlings supply her favorite foods.
\nShe tries her claws out on their loving flesh
\nrecalling the kill, a lust beyond all goods.
\nAt large though not by any token free
\nlocal mice avoid the Queen’s environs.
\nThey guess her policy by smell and see
\nno reason to cooperate with tyrants.
\nFit prey would show her tension at its best —
\nat home though not by any means at rest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UNCOOL<\/p>\n

Old and unimproved, I have no claim
\nto virtues most in vogue now: still the same
\ninhabitant of an unprogressive creed,
\nput off by novelty, put off my feed
\nby better fodder, chronically suspicious
\nof any pottage touted as delicious,
\nI ruminate on how to make a start —
\ncan stodginess cause a quiver in her heart
\ncomparable to palpitations felt
\nby elders when their young Susannas melt
\nthe dignity of ages known for ice
\nand thaw their metaphors of paradise?
\nProbably not. The cool progress to cold
\ncontent to leave hot flashes to the old.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

COLD<\/p>\n

Landscape once could offer solace —
\nfields of snow where no one walked
\nseen from an upper room by night
\nmade sorrow almost a thing to savor.<\/p>\n

No more. The snow keeps lying there
\nunintended memorandum
\nof a better kind of grief.<\/p>\n

All week loose windows seep and rattle.
\nA gallon jug in the vestibule
\nfull of frozen anti-freeze
\nmakes a career of standing still.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WALKING<\/p>\n

Walking tames the wilderness
\nof an unfamiliar city, brings
\nwise correction to a strange
\nperspective: distance once thought great’s
\nmore accurately reckoned after
\npacing it. The hill that seemed
\naccessible by car subsides
\nso any nanny goat could make it
\nambling toward an uphill graze,
\nany human halfway fit
\na fitness program on the way
\nto work. And once the leaves come down
\nthose buildings lost beyond the trees
\njoin other local furniture —
\na living-room set, the conversational
\ncluster of a neighborhood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE WALK<\/p>\n

Flame in the tree-top:
\nlame on the tongue
\ntalk never touches what
\nwalking discovers.<\/p>\n

Leaves gone to red-orange
\ngrieve at the frost:
\nwords only fracture what
\nbirds fly away from.<\/p>\n

Ice on the ditch-water:
\nnice cloud of vapor
\nflies from the mouth as it
\ntries to describe it.<\/p>\n

Crow in the tree-top
\nknows not to bother:
\ncaws to the walker what
\nlaws please a lizard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RARE BOOKS<\/p>\n

Laid paper laid to rest
\nholds up better than the best
\npreoccupied newsprint.
\nHowever fine the document
\nwoodpulp acid, culpable
\nconvenience, leads to jaundice, illness,
\nyellow journalism, while
\nrag-heavy, out of style,
\npoetry survives the purge,
\nits alkalai a desert urge
\namong the mills of industry,
\nits libertine economy
\nan outward range of blank space,
\nan inward chemistry of grace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Periodically Published Poems Kevin Cawley Acknowledgements   TRAIN Even the ravenous water shrew snatching a bite to stay alive has time to pause a moment or two. Indentured mind, a drone of striving, business, busyness, steams ahead — always departing, never arriving. Its engine might as well go dead for all the good it does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5084,"featured_media":0,"parent":10,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-18","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions\/39"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}