Once and Future

These years I have burnished
silver, shelved desire
as a thing to sip and sniff
parceled out love as if
the supply might dry up—
What use? Tonight, dozing
fireside, if snow-wind brings
blackbird note, I’ll swallow whole
a drop of hot sun enough
to build and howl and spill

and light my way
to riverside where summer
bridge glints gossamer
humming like bees—
only a step into the forest
fleet-foot past crone’s hut
to rain-hung green-washed glade
where he waits, my blackbird boy
dark-eyed, impatient
to take me to his breast

Blackbird’s Patience

Time has not passed for me
in years or even seasons, moonrise
or sunset, river flood or ice-sharp howl
To wait as I have is only suspension
of wing-beat, heartsong—in my dreams
I walk the earth but my voice is gone

Wizard still strings his words in dullness
Crone sits staring, opens blue jar and sniffs
My girl will come back—To have her back!
But I’ve seen her across unbridged river
settled for what humans call love, forgetting
bright belief like autumn’s rotted leaves

Heartsease for Desire

I believed in fairytales
that words had power
to call up forest, river, oak
deep places of wolves and ogre
kings, the blackbird boy enchanted
pouring pathos into song until
I would take him to my breast
find him changed to joyful lover
in the rain-hung green-washed glade

We strung the words awhile—my master and I—
making shining things, berry-jeweled strings
that held no power, for though the blackbird watched
he never came to earth and in the rainless heat
my desire built like storm, pitched me headlong

I lay under bee-hum, dreamed
of my blackbird boy, followed
him branch to branch
into wolf-eyed forest until
in shadow of sagging hut
I saw the crone

Wizard

I had a prentice, once. She came across 
the river, bright belief like starshine, sharp.
I taught her names; to listen, still; how words 
quick-hum inside the oak, how they can build
and howl like lightning splits the sky, and spill.
We strung them fine on heart-string rope to make 
a blackbird song.
		  She’s gone. To have her back!
but autumn spells and heartsease hold her now.

 

A little blank verse for the Yeah Write May poetry slam.

Blackbird

All that long-lighted day I watched her
rope-spinning, flinging it bridge-ways
across the clear river, bee-hum loud
in the glade. Rain held off and held off
as it did in such a summer (a wizard’s trick
or maybe of the crone herself). A girl gathering
words like blackberries, fingers mouth juice-
stained and she never saw me in her headlong
desire but oh, I would have told her heartsease
is not worth the price. For a word I would have
told her an eased heart is nothing, songless.
But she came by belief and all that light-
long day I watched her, aching, for it was
only a step to the crone’s hut and now
she’ll never find her way back.

Dear Earth

I thought I might be asked to write a love poem
to you, and it’s not that I don’t love you
in all your dry-rock greenglory, your pink-desert
and graycity palettes, your creatures with fins
or feathers or hooves that roam over or skim
or swim (even the spiders, even the ants)—
but I can hardly hear the birds for the street-digging
racket, and the bees are bloom-drunk, bumbling
daily through my open door, into my lap.
Also, there is sneezing. So dear Earth, while I do
love you, maybe it’s in that old comfortable way
of a long-married couple—ignoring the annoying
accepting the good, finished with sentiment
and rhapsody but spring-basking when it wells up
gladly settling in with the autumn wine, elementally
aware of one another’s season and mood.

It’s Earth Day and NaPoWriMo Day 22. Also, I was reading Walt Whitman during a sunny lunch. With bees.

Ars Poetica

I expected more
but you will sit dozing
in the garden
as if this spectrum
from green to forsythia
were reason enough for being

You won’t rise to the rhythm
of truck-springs, dove-throated
scoldings; you come begging
on moth-wings for dew-drops
or even candleflame, snapping
up any crumb of praise dropped
between cracks while prating
of moonlight and blackbird song

If this kind of drowsy bee-hum
is the nectar you had in mind,
who would sip from it?
It tastes of mower-drone
inelegant clang and clatter
of construction on the next corner
whirr of what—saws? And the chairs
need repair; weeds sprout in the flags

My dear tone-deaf old thing
the blackbird is trying to teach you
while you lie there dreaming
you can sing
and fly
 

 

The NaPoWriMo Day 15 prompt is to write a poem that addresses itself.