The Nerve Trade cloth - 2002

Details

• Title The Nerve
• Author Maxwell, Glyn
• Binding Trade Cloth
• Edition First edition
• Pages 58 pages.
• Language EN
• Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston
• Date 2002-09-24
• ISBN 9780618155460

THE SEA COMES IN LIKE NOTHING BUT THE SEA

The sea comes in like nothing but the sea, but still a mind, knowing how seldom words

augment, reorders them before the breaker and plays them as it comes. All that should sound

is water reaching into the rough space the mind has cleared. The clearing of that mind

is nothing to the sea. The means whereby the goats were chosen nothing to the god,

who asked only a breathing life of us, to prove we were still there when it was doubted.



THE MAN WHO HELD HIS FUNERAL

Rugged and silken, like a country singer both those things, fastidious and scary, yet fitted by the terms of his employment in a sober suit and driving gloves, he seemed defeated in a civil war still going.

He said he’d lived his life. What was he, sixty?
with children and grandchildren, his car business solid, sold. He laid his leather hands on the steering wheel and said he’d lived his life.
And so one day had held his funeral.

Although he looked in his blue single-breasted right for one, we caught each other’s eyes and tried to find this funny or him funny.
It depended. All his pals had been invited, had come from far and wide and there he lay,

face-up in a hired coffin, taking breaks for Pepsi while he listened to their speeches.
Which, by the grin I saw in the driver’s mirror, must have delighted him on his bed of satin, staring with eyes closed. Oh they made cracks,

he told us, they hit home, they didn’t spare me!
We didn’t really know how to receive this, in the back, on the winning side, except politely, then without words to stretch back and imagine his friends were probably mourning him, you’d have to,

because he hadn’t died, because he’d held his funeral, to hear the case against him, but had heard nothing and was satisfied, and reassured that all the things he loved and strolled among had had their hour of judgment.



THE WEATHER GUY

Hurricane This is scaring us, Hurricane That’s not far behind, and we’re not turning our backs one second.
We look at the screen all day. We find

Hurricane This still flapping away at the shirt of Tom the Weather Guy.
Canada throws an arm around him.
Hurricane That just bats an eye.

Hurricane This is whipping off the Carolinas’ tablecloth; Hurricane That, amused by this, is beating ocean into froth.

Hurricane This is playing wolf to New York City’s clever pig; Noah’s nailing down his roof so when it comes it’s nothing big.

Hurricane This is burning out off Providence; Hurricane That is disappointing Tom, who’d dreamt of half Virginia pounded flat.

And Hurricane This was called Renee.
And Hurricane That was Stan.
And Canada pats Tom’s shoulder now as he hands us back to Jenni-Ann,

who asks about his weekend plans, which are much the same as ours, so maybe we’ll see him nosing out of a local brawl of cars,

and maybe he’ll give us the wave he gets when the heat kicks in and how, and it hits the heights he said it would this far upstate by now.

More likely he’ll just speed away.
And I’d be shy of the love of those who have to live by what I have to warn them of.

Copyright © 2002 by Glyn Maxwell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

"This new collection applies Maxwell's fluent gifts to his recent years in America . . . the especially accomplished final poem offers a set of deft off-rhymes . . ." Publishers Weekly

"Maxwell is an intelligent and sensitive writer, and THE NERVE is one of the most enjoyable books of the year." --David Orr The New York Times Book Review

An intelligent, sensitive writer, moving confidently toward expressions of common feeling.
The New York Times Book Review