for Norman Dubie
Editor’s Note
Norman Dubie landed in so many hands, and so many of us landed in his ones. He was a great friend to our press 1978-1980 when it seemed we had no other friends, and his poems were cornerstones of our early Telescope issues. Beth Anstandig so well captures his spirit, his life mask, and his quiet, shimmering curiosity.
The trees are full. Hundreds of birds
will leave, will leave
and leave—
and break our hearts
at any given moment.
This is it.
We are given moments.
And sometimes we’re lucky enough
to have been encouraged
to notice all there is
or even all there isn’t.
Even the smallest feather
half buried in sand, even the scaled feet of birds
wrapped around branches,
even the way an old man pronounces a single word
how his lips hold
the last syllable—
Listen, my teacher said,
to the sound of their wings
right before they decide to leave the trees—
like blank pages, unwritten poems
whipping against each other—
One more teacher has passed.
I don’t know—
Sometimes I hold the pen
between my fingers until the ink pools.
No new words come.
The ideas have short lives,
like mayflies
or ocean waves—
or like drug addicts—
What will light up the night
when the sky is thick with itself—
Who will walk the streets
and carry questions around the city blocks?
Who will stand under the pools of light
with the wanderers who care to stand there,
to brave the long darkness,
those scarred hours when no ideas come—
No one said you were a prophet.
No one said the birds would land
on your long fingers and stay settled there—
But we all knew they would.
Beth Anstandig holds an MFA in poetry from Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in Caesura, Clackamas Literary Review, Flint Hills Review, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Louisiana Literature, Phoenix New Times, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. She is the author of The Garden of Forking Paths (Prentice Hall/Pearson) and has received a Pushcart Prize Nomination, Willamette Award in Poetry, The Clackamas Literary Review Poetry Prize, and The Atlanta Review International Merit Award in Poetry. Her writing also has been featured in major media outlets and online platforms including BBC World Service, NPR, Forbes, MomsRising, and Kahilla.