This is the day you couldn’t refuse
the world calling your voice truly
to all these falterings failings
moments of sweet elation
earth warming to you now
*
What joy? What lies? Wander
path through woods dark before
behind unlight untrodden
*
You are furnished whole
with everything broken
not to be solved
by poster-quotes or
equations or even what
we call love
*
Can you remember the mountains
spread beneath you a green hill
framed by crumbling stone
crumbling stone a Christmas
under stars under stars
*
The center is all that’s left
the petals fallen away
the fruit shriveled clinging
swaying in winter wind
*
It is not the time to fight
the phantom all those demons
crowding one by one to claim
the vacant house always
and never not quite arranged
*
Until your violet-tinged end
another tangled vine
another painting poem song
making
shifting patterns
against cold morning light
Graceful Press Poetry 
waiting…(K)
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I have always liked the idea of painting poems. It’s good to see that I am not alone.
I also like your phrase “poster-quotes” and the importance that you assign to them.
Your work never ceases to amaze me.
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This is a comment that made my week. Thank you.
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I second this comment.
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The stanza beginning ‘Can you remember…’ lovely. The repetition that you use here and nowhere else, is like struggling to remember detail.
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Ah, yes! (I was pleased with this stanza, thank you.)
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Beautiful. There is so much here – wistfulness and memories and a call to patience for what is. I love “earth warming to you now,” and the stanza:
You are furnished whole
with everything broken
not to be solved
by poster-quotes or
equations or even what
we call love
Isn’t it true that some things can’t be solved or fixed or put together again?
Also love “shifting patterns against cold morning light.”
A wonderful poem, one of those real poems, the kind that should be in an anthology.
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This is a comment that will keep me going for a long while. 🙂 Thank you.
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You’re choices of repetition in the fourth stanza worked really well, Jennifer. Like the narrator is repeating to make sure they remember.
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