Approximately in the Key of C

Tony Curtis

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781910345436
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Curtis's humour and charm, ability to turn a poem with the seemingly simplest of images, and that understanding of how words will play over the listener's ear, are hallmarks brought to the fore on the page... His greatest skill is to make readers go 'yes, of course'; he reminds us of what we've known all along. Michael McKimm, The Warwick Review

THE BLACKBIRD’S LULLABY

Soon the ice will melt,

and the blackbirds sing along the river…

Henry David Thoreau

Blackbirds are great sleepers.

With their pillow of feathers

and their harvest moon eyes,

they hold the night within.

Only the old know this,

or so an old woman told me.

She may have been out

on the end of a branch, swinging.

No matter.

I left her by the river

with her breadcrumbs

and her knowledge.

But now, every time I think

of blackbirds, I think of her.

And I have been thinking

a lot about blackbirds,

for these nights

I hardly sleep.

You could say I dream

more than I sleep.

Like everyone

I have my worries

but at my age

I don’t worry

about my worries.

They are part of me,

my dips and hollows,

my feeble legacy.

I could blame

my poor physical

condition,

my tiring heart,

my tattered soul,

fretful in the dark.

In truth, I think it’s

this troublesome trade:

obsessively adding

word to word.

Hammering the dark into light

until the night is almost gone.

Until the page creaks like

a gate almost off its hinges.

I read in a magazine

that the silver light

from a laptop can affect

your circadian rhythm.

Perhaps that’s so,

but my rhythm

has always been

off beat. When young,

I was often found asleep

face down in a book;

I could as easily nod off

in the light as in the dark.

My doctor says I should hum

to myself like an old Buddhist:

I am ready for sleep.

I am ready for sleep.

But I am not...

Table of contents

• Contents
• The Mole and The Cosmos
• A Blessing on Things Made Well
• From the Central Mental Hospital
• The Hunter
• In the Wilderness
• Amhrán
• The Blackbird’s Lullaby
• Unusually Dusty
• Bless
• Snow-capped
• Talking to the Wallpaper Man About a Sculptor
• The Fallen Oak
• Electric Light and Butter Lamps
• Tunes Carried on the Night Air
• The Old Painter’s Journey
• Two Poems
• Gunnie McCracken
• Everywhere
• Elements of Lamentation
• The Blue-eyed Fish
• The Old Grey Herons
• The Headland at Skerries, April 8th
• Two Poems for Gary Snyder at Eighty-Five
• Ash
• Wendell
• For the Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter
• The Stubborn Historian
• Easter Monday 1917
• Civil War
• The Cure
• The Last Breath
• One Hundred Words on the Consequences of Sex
• Fair Weather
• Biographical Note
• Acknowledgments