BY JAN HAAG

POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO





STONECYPHER

10-24-97


I have a friend who lives on Stonecypher Road,
tall, and named Julia,
an artist of esoteric acclaim,
creating circles on the lawns
with thin wire
and white flags

on
Coca-Cola's former grounds.
Stonecypher --
the ringing romanticism
of the name --
runes
and
encrpytions,
lost languages
and secret lore
personify
Julia,

statuesque,
undecipherable,
posing as male
and female,
strange,
living in rooms
of an elegance
beyond the Age of Innocence
before the movie,
before the fame,
Julia.

Not her real name,
Not her real time,

Julia
on
Stonecypher Road.
I was there in the winter
when the ice storm
broke the branches
of a hundred trees
-- crack!
crack!
crackling
in the dawn and in the night,
ice laden trees
rifle-shotting through the night.
For days we could
walk,
but not ride.

We sat in the blue room,
and the red room,
with the cats: Sita
and Phoebe.
The dog, a Viszla, too rambunctions for
the middling small library,
frightened me.

I listened to the rifle cracks,
the cannonade
through the night,
along the Suwanne,
she from the South and me from the North,
thinking of the Civil War
which by then
went on only in
Julia's breast
and my own.

Civil we were,
and at war with we knew not what.
Tall, elegant, sophisticated,
mover and shaker,
Julia
living her life out in the blue rooms
of Stonecypher Road,
where her friend
arrived and ate turnips --
fresh from the ground
and free,
under the frost.

Were there cyphers cut in the stone?
Some place?
Across the road at the down-home music barn?
-- to which I crossed alone,
dark, under the stars,
sat in a pew to hear the music,
free in the freezing night.
Julia,
of 4040 Stonecypher Road,
tall and elegant, friend of my youth
enigma of my age, artist, Grand Dame,
mother, child, friend and rune.

I gave her one of my Hermes scarves.
For though she and John
owned the house on Stonecypher Road,
she had never had
thick French silk
around her neck.
Julia.
Tall.
Enigma.
Artist.
Queen.

She told me where the name
Stonecypher came from
but I have forgotten.




Copyright © 2000 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu



THE DEVAYANI POEMS

And

Dour

Feeding Frenzy

Gifts

India

Lung-gom-pas

Nothing



BY JAN HAAG


POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO



21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context