On Conesus

$16.00

"There is a lovely resonance and particularity in these various poems. One's brought home to the physical world again, its daily, relieving insistences. So a life finds its company, always."

Robert Creeley


"John Roche's On Conesus traces for us a place he located in his life-journey where the mind's contours could fit, for him, with the spiritual contours of the land and water on which and near which he and his wife lived. You can trust that vision. Thus, the silent loss when a beloved cottonwood falls, the poem notes it, and we can feel its loss for all of eternity, as long as words stand black on white. A pig farm mentioned in the Maximus Poems is long gone, but the poem remains. Long live the vision of Conesus."

Ed Sanders

Signed author copy

96 page hand-sewn paperback copy with spine

ISBN 0-941053-57-1

"There is a lovely resonance and particularity in these various poems. One's brought home to the physical world again, its daily, relieving insistences. So a life finds its company, always."

Robert Creeley


"John Roche's On Conesus traces for us a place he located in his life-journey where the mind's contours could fit, for him, with the spiritual contours of the land and water on which and near which he and his wife lived. You can trust that vision. Thus, the silent loss when a beloved cottonwood falls, the poem notes it, and we can feel its loss for all of eternity, as long as words stand black on white. A pig farm mentioned in the Maximus Poems is long gone, but the poem remains. Long live the vision of Conesus."

Ed Sanders

Signed author copy

96 page hand-sewn paperback copy with spine

ISBN 0-941053-57-1

From the Book:


On Conesus


wine glow of

"Indian summer"

afternoon

no wine-dark sea

but sparkling

water and

air that intoxicates

--why "Indian"?

autumnal images

(even John Ford employed)

Senecas once

a lake rich with

northern pike

saltlicks

wild ducks

turtle stones

longhouses on Conesus Creek

(village of old Can-ne-hoot, Chief Conesus in Hosmer's Yonnondio)

sheepberries

beaver colonies before the hat fad

fox

bear

panther

wolf

(Did Rushville's "Great Wolf Hunt" of 1811 reach here?)

--reverie broken by jet ski--

stillness returns

even Thoreau had the railroad

reverberations across his lake

--whose lake?

time

aboriginal canoes

time

Mort Zuckerman bulldozers

time

Don Henley concerts

time

All-Aboard!




Wellspring


stream path

from hill

through our

cellar

surfacing

on beach

forms ice-

banked

river

soon widens

into bay

as ice

recedes


we drank from this spring

until January

contractor

broke concrete

of driveway

drilled frozen ground


now we have

chlorinated baths

a mound of earth

an eroding trench


for fifty years

people drank from the well-

spring

within this house




Solar Returns


Day-O!

glistening

island sun


Take a Carnival Cruise

in my li'l rowboat

but it's 40°F.

and the boat leaks


Van Morrison

on the box

"Too Long in Exile"

and

"Til We Get the Healing Done"

for now

thankful

for a wee bit

o' sun

after yesterday's

1st snow

that stuck

barely broke 30°

two layers

of socks

two sweaters

in the house

burning fossils

eating carbs


That old cave mentality

returns

almost enough

to make one

a Republican



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