Four Poems
Donald Mace Williams

A Flood

We never heard it coming, never saw or felt it,
but woke up with it everywhere, inside, outside.
No point getting on the roof, there was no top
or bottom to this, no dimension, only presence,
made known as total, instant, flooding numbness. What
was there before last night? Have we lost all of it?
Now this is all of it. How did we get along
before the thick tree trunks of what we thought was thought
became these splintered stems, around which, every day,
the newness slaloms silently, bringing our lunch?

- - -

Two About Mars

1. After Landing

I take a minute to consider where
I stand. Of course outside the vehicle,
on hard red soil, but otherwise: without
communication, power, any chance
of rescue, not before my food supply
gives out, and water, too, unless the hike
I’m almost set to start on shows there is
a spring here, potable of course, because
what, here, could taint it, or the air, if there
were air? This is pure solitude at last,
unbounded and for now at least unthreatened.
I stretch with pleasure and begin my walk.
Bow low, red nothing, your king has arrived.

2. A Martian Dig

Its kind now having neutralized all life
on Earth, an astrorobot, newly come,
is bent on seeing if this bare, red planet
holds any hint of former flesh-and-blood
inhabitants. It digitally digs,
a sensor for its spade, and what is this?
“Astonishment and thrill,” it registers.
Deep down the time-tiers of this empty land
is the clear imprint of a robot’s foot.

- - -

[For a Granddaughter’s Tenth Birthday, Back When]

At night in the lit-up city sky
Stars are pale and far between.
Now, three in the morning, summer, no moon,
Dark in the mountains like farm-child nights,
The Milky Way is as white
As a row of cotton on deep black land,
Ready for picking. You grasp and pull
Star after star, each from its boll,
A Velcro sound. Into the bag
On your shoulder they go.
Then you gin, and mill, and spin, and weave,
And make a dress that’s bright as gold—
But only when it’s worn at night
A long way from a clashing light.

- - -

Don’s notes and bio: “When Donald Mace Williams was in his youth, meaning up through his seventies, he thought of himself merely as a guy, a man. Since at ninety-six he can no longer claim youth, he thinks of himself as a negligent assembly of minor aches, stiffnesses, teeterings, and forgettings. As an old guy, in other words. But also as a lucky guy, since he can still think at all and even write a little. He also feels lucky to have work in good magazines such as Well Met and prospectively in a book to be called Of Granddaughters and Mars, which is due out on August 4 in spite of Amazon’s claim of a July date. Don has lived in Austin, Texas, for three hot, humid, busy years after living in the drier, cooler, lazier Texas Panhandle for a long time. He cooks bacon, toast, egg, and coffee every morning, finds leftovers in what he still sometimes calls the icebox for lunch, and goes to his girlfriend Dagmar’s house, a few blocks away, for a wonderful dinner and a joint attack on a crossword puzzle.”

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Four Poems Donald Mace Williams

Four Poems
Donald Mace Williams