Tag: appearances

contemplations 7&8: your wholehearted servant

Pick the object of your devotion—stomach,
brain—and call it your garden, say it is
for the sake of others; that the fluttering
leaves are your heart; that those twist-reach-
scramble vines growing heavy on themselves
(leaning, leaning) will someday feed thousands.

*

Life, I am your wholehearted servant. Or—
as much of a heart as I have left, is yours devoted
to shutting out tight these misgivings, which lean
toward a belief that my heart is, in fact,
a dropped glass screen. One minute safe
in your hand, the next face-down on pavement.
You know that sound: sudden, small, stifled apology
for becoming useless. How then the fragments
ingrain themselves, how eyes grow used
to a fractured view.

Inspired by Hafiz, “Pray to Your Hand,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Presently

Let’s say I am writing you a better story. Happily
ever after? Wait. Here you are, still tangled
in the thicket. Struggle, scraping by, grief
from earth to sky, as far as you can see.
You wanted a fairy tale? Wait. You are the hero
down, broken, sword at your throat. But. Any moment
the coin will spin. Let’s say we take you forward,
through the tunnel and out, over the walls…

on creating

everything fades in time, you know
how all was black before your birth
and after—you have nothing else to go on
clinging to every look and gesture
winding yourself into being

*

not every spark ends in a sun
transcendent, though
your hand is on the work
indelible

IMG_0023

National Poetry Month is ended, but I still have pages in my Yes-Words journal…

The Poet’s Complaint

Once it is written, the magic is gone.
Galaxied dreams become rocks after all;
sky-blazing-brilliant star turns into stone
once it is written. (The magic is gone,
memory sunk. These words, cold and alone,
conjuring mere disillusionment, pall.)
Once it is written, the magic is gone—
galaxied dreams become rocks after all.

 

Playing around with the triolet for Yeah Write’s September poetry slam.

For poetry makes nothing happen

Don’t say you have never asked yourself
if the world needs beauty as much as it needs
food. May I toil not as a lily of the field,
starscattered while you trudge upright
acknowledged paths, useful.

Like train tracks we need not touch
to hum; with practical passion, quiet
prayer, you swim south as I arrow north
shivering, surviving, a drop-in-this-ocean
way of happening

 

Title and last line borrowed from W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.”

On a painting by Franz Marc

nature’s own masterwork
shading thoughts

(blue

*

i counted horses, dreamed
distant hill

red

*

taking fields for granted
hoof-beaten

green)

 

A new form for me–this is a series of three. Learn about the tilus, see the painting, and join the fun at Jane’s Poetry Challenge #42.