Yellow Lake 2 by Judith Skillman
Large Trees in Tight Spaces
My wife woke to a late night thundercrack
when the first catalpa, elephant
of weed trees, gave it up against
a siege of wind in the back yard. Our scrap
of ground is hectic, and so small the tree
had only play enough to dent the fence.
Its remnant hollow log, prone and ivied,
slowly crumbles under fungi, shelters
an infrequent skunk. It puzzles us.
How does such a mammal find its niche
in our cramped neighborhood? Raccoons,
quartet of siblings who discovered
the next yard’s family trampoline:
where in this micro-forest do they nest?
A long-ago resident of our house
twisted a screw hook firm into the trunk
of the second catalpa, compadre
in age with the first. Twentieth-century style,
I hang wet laundry, as that person did.
I have to go on tiptoe to attach
the clothesline. This used to be a simple reach.
The behemoth hasn’t found its final height,
but we’ve woken twice to see
its upper parts snapped off, paying a call
to the house behind us. Braced against
that fire escape, peeping into bedroom
windows like arboreal voyeurs.
I want to ask of the evodia, wedged
between our front porch and the sidewalk:
please keep us company till someone comes
to carry us away. Korean mammoth
with Kraken root-sprawl, how is it you don’t
swallow all the groundwater?
There’s an arboretum near, and birds
who peck up seeds their guts can’t use.
Was that what brought you seven thousand miles?
Evodia, we’ve pruned your dying, lichened
branches, thick as trunks of younger trees.
Last year you threw an August carnival,
mesmerized clouds of four species of bees.
This year you’re nearly dormant: why won’t you
blossom? Still, your crown is dense.
You throw green between my eyes
and burn of summer mornings on the porch.
Your steadfast trembles clothe the breeze.
These Concerning Men
Hands lie limp, in his lap.
All the others lift to applaud,
strike their partner hands.
What is this?
Those two hands flopped in that one lap.
Suffocated fish,
stilled in the heart of the uproar
for an orchestra tearing the concert hall.
I look again at what’s not my business.
Has it all been too much, sir?
Have you heard too much.
Perhaps applause hurts your hands.
Does it hurt?
This evening, across the aisle,
man at a concert, hands sighed into his lap.
I’ve seen lead weights like those before.
These men, still older than I am, some of them, still.
I watch them, watch, every day.
Their appalled stares upon entering a room.
On the bus, at a pharmacy, mouths open.
Yes, oh yes, older, still older than me.
Really quite old.
But this is less true by the day.
By the hour, less true.
So what is that about, mister?
These hands still, still, in your lap.
Please tell me, man older than I am.
What is happening, sir.
Mr. Charles Ives and Me
His perpetual Danbury, Connecticut hat: plate-brimmed, puffed like a pumpernickel, old-time
beyond satire.
His father George, who set three bands to marching around the village square, different tunes,
different tempi, training Charlie’s ears.
His composing, composing on the commuter train, in his insurance office, in his mind, notes
blasting across the music paper.
His retreat deep backstage in fright at a rehearsal he could not face, hidden from musicians he
did not hear.
His father, the town-cornetist, who asked why not fill a workaday octave with unheard tones,
more than twelve?
His late-diagnosed diabetes, that ate him from the inside out while he raved against
emasculation.
His Fourth of July, the whole orchestra a rocket setting the Town Hall roof on fire,
making a boy in Amherst, Massachusetts, startle beside the record player, then set the needle
back into that fresh chaos.
Simonetta Vespucci
At that moment, I could have believed
that when my wife and I rounded the corner
into the Uffizi’s Botticelli gallery,
this was our sole motivation for traveling
to broiling Florence, or Italy itself.
We’d then return home, ignoring
my international librarians’ conference.
To stand before The Birth of Venus:
nine-tenths the reason for queueing outside,
hoarding the shade. But though I’d seen
decades of photographs of “Venus
on the Half Shell,” I hadn’t realized
the size of it, that to gaze undistracted
was to be swallowed, almost bodily.
And also, though I must have figured
that Botticelli modeled his goddess
on a living person, it wasn’t until I turned
ninety degrees to the right, seeing her
again in La Primavera, a multiple of her,
that I fully understood this: those eyes,
straight from the canvas, capturing mine,
belonged to a specific young woman
who died a very long time ago.
Simonetta Vespucci, perished at 22:
tuberculosis, as tradition says,
even if modern medicine suspects
otherwise. She may be all six women
in La Primavera. Botticelli loved her
so utterly, he had his body buried
at her feet. I did without my breath,
immobile, seized by her attention,
seized by a face I could have known.
About the author:
David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Nixes Mate Books published his Sprawled Asleep in 2019. His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Reed Magazine, About Place Journal, Tar River Poetry, Gramercy Review, Second Coming, The Ekphrastic Review, The Disappointed Housewife, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. David is a member of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Poets, and co-directs their Chapter and Verse literary reading series. He is a member of the New England Poetry Club’s Board of Directors, and is the recipient of a 2025 Tanne Foundation award.
In the artist’s words:
Judith Skillman paints expressionist works in oil on canvas, board, and paper. She is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world. Her paintings have been featured on the covers of Thin Air Magazine, Torrid Literature, The Awakenings Review, and appear in Penn Review, Southern Quill, and elsewhere. Skillman studied visual art at McDaniel College, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and Seattle Artist League (SAL). Shows include The Pratt, Galvanize, and SAL.
Visit judithskillman.com