Waking to rain
Is the one called Magdalene,
Having dreamed of kingfishers,
The long-nosed
Feathery bunches
Perched on the high wires
Over the Tuckasegee River,
Long rolling swath of childhood
With its pre-Cherokee fishing weirs,
With its trout and the minnow shine
That belongs to Lord Rufus,
Rufus Kingfisher, famous among fishers,
The best of all feather bunches
And worthy of praise,
King of the Kingfishers,
Crowned with a spiky punk topknot,
His lineage passed from king to king,
His lineage of the rattling call,
His lineage of the blue-banded breast,
His lineage of the rufous-banded Queen who is also King,
His lineage of those who are crowned in the egg,
His lineage of those who dye cloth with dogwood bark
Or cornflower mixed with iron or copper,
The Queen King or King King
Perched on a wire before Magdalene’s house,
Halfway between Cullowhee and Sylva,
A percher, a trapeze sitter,
A note on an unfinished staff,
A kinglet among the long noses.
Flashing in thought
A thousand miles north, along the spine
Of the Appalachians, she thinks of Rufus
As, outside the window, mist goes dervishing
Slow motion up from Otsego Lake,
Veiling Kingfisher Tower,
Named for the tribe of kingfishers
And also worthy of praise,
Raised up in a lean time,
A gift from the monied mighty
To the Otsego stoneworkers,
Standing stone, straight in the lake’s edge,
Reflected in broken panels
Of water, or watered-silk-water,
Silk-taffeta water,
Moire Anglaise water,
A seven-mile bolt of water
Fenimore Cooper praised,
Canoed, swam, drank—gave
The praise name Glimmerglass.
So many years of winter penance,
North of the old civilities,
Magdalene watching the tower from the window,
Always finding it stalwart and strange,
A rest, a nest, a perch for the eye,
Magdalene stepping into the moonlight at lake’s edge,
Seeing the faint color of stone shimmering on ice,
Or maybe the tower floating in spring and mist,
The tower pointing in priestly admonition.
Magdalene wanders, wonders through the trees
That flower for such a brief hour in the North,
Singing, rhyming,
Seeking the tower, knocking
With the twisted, hand-wrought ring,
Forged metal against the wood a demand
No one will answer.
Not one.
The tower goes on floating like a dream
On the surface of the water (a dream, a stream),
For the lore of Otsego says
The old man cannot rise from his bed,
Or not unless he dies and the spirit
Swirls from his body like the mist,
Like the soul of Glimmerglass at dawn—
Everything Magdalene loves most
Is like a ruined tower,
Is like every stone from stone unfastened
(Not one stone left on another),
Is like rubble without a name
(Rubble that has forgotten a name.)
Everything she wishes to praise
Has fallen, chunked like a tower into its shadow,
Like a lake tower avalanche under glimmerglass waves,
Like the end of all strength and up-pointing stone.
Magdalene presses her forehead on the door,
Knowing the white-haired king lies stretched on his bed,
Knowing the cup is gleaming in the dark,
Knowing that she alone will wrench
And tug the iron-bound door.
Under the spring’s flowering trees,
She sings a ballad for the Fisher King,
Sings it, though despairing that he will hear,
That he will ever rise and let her in,
That he will recall her name, her praise any longer,
Wounded, hurt as he is,
The pain at the root of him
Like a bonfire flowering.
So it is Bran who hears her,
Who goes to her under the trees,
Limping, bearing his bamboo fishing pole
And his string of silvery fish
(The gills still lifting, cutting the air),
With a white whippet at his heels,
And it is Bran the son who lies with her
Under the flowering trees
While the ghostly procession goes by,
The candelabra held by hands decked with rings,
With no body, nothing but leaves and branches,
Then the lance kissed with blood like the Christ-spear
That brings on a stream of wine and water,
Lance also held by hands, though these are naked,
And the cup chased with mystic signs
Held by hands in white gloves
Like the gloves little Magdalene
Wore to Sunday School and church,
White cotton with embroidered flowers,
A world ago, down South.
And Magdalene, her gown stripped away,
Stands in the clearing and sings
Of a world reborn, of the old made new,
Longing for all craft and artifice,
Longing for the intricate works of hands,
Longing for the glories of lost ages, singing
After the burning candelabra,
After the bleeding lance,
After the gold of the grail.
What is this candelabra
Born by hands, she sings,
And what is this bleeding lance,
And what is this golden cup
So red with the blood?
Naked she sings, naked
Save for the veils of mist
As she dances around Bran, the son,
Her husband Bran, so long away,
Fishing his way, his loop, his lasso
Around the shores of Glimmerglass,
Searching a path toward Magdalene
With his strings of silvery fish
And his white whippet,
Magdalene whirling,
Praising the golden candelabra,
Praising the burning lance,
Praising the bleeding grail.
This Magdalene, so wholly
Unfashionable, loving the archaic made new,
Wholly without kowtowing to the day,
Wholly devoted to the shape of her own desire,
The lineaments of her song…
She is singing as if to salvage all beauty,
She is singing as if to salvage all
Truth and all goodness,
She is turning the world inside out,
She is braiding lament with praise,
She is praising, singing the Fisher King’s rise
Out of the bed where he has lain, lamed
And frail, the cup gleaming before his face.
Magdalene
Pent, calling, demanding—
So long, her longing for spring,
So long, her longing for the unfurling of leaves,
For the firm steps on the greening land,
For the torso of the Fisher King
To be suffused with a dawn like lamplight
Glimmering inside alabaster,
For everywhere he passes to wake, as if alit.
She wades through the waves toward the castle,
Still naked, unashamed,
Her shape like some American naiad
Who slips into the lake,
Wakening the kingdom of waves,
Wakening the leaves and sky,
Wakening the old man
(Who now recalls her name),
Wakening the silver
In a song
That spires,
Glimmering
Stone on silver
Stone—pointing, spearing
Into the sky.
Marly Youmans is the award-winning author of thirteen books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent novels are A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Glimmerglass, and Maze of Blood. Her recent poetry books are The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011), The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012), and the long post-apocalyptic adventure, Thaliad (Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal, 2012.)
"Kingfisher" © 2015 Marly Youmans. This poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.