Marked by
light, shades, colors
death: fiery lightning flowed
and glowed, gift of vision leaping
cloistered
The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 21 was an erasure poem. I “erased” around these words from a booklet called Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard, which I picked up last weekend while hiking the “Rüdesheimer Hildegardweg.”
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.
that rusty old car
fueled by coffee grounds
and ink—
once in a great while
I haul it out for a look
turn the engine over
(and it embarrasses my children but)
I let it run unmuffled
just to make sure
it still works
It reminds me of my youth; and alternately
my aging. This heart that drops stone-
complacent or lifts like mountains in
new birth: stirring, violent. You
look at me (do you see beyond what mirrors?) and
together we seek the burning secret of a star.
A “golden shovel” poem after the last line in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Evening.”
This hollow place with the tide-breeze sighing—
Can I believe that the goddess brought me here
and say that when young dawn stroked rosy fingers
over the damp cave walls I saw your markings
and wondered how they aligned with the stars?
I unwrapped this tissue-linen and found nothing
but small bones, bird-fine and hollow, dyed shells
that I rinsed in tide-pool water and gazed at, wondering.
Can I believe that if the goddess brought me here
it was to interpret your breathings, the soft sigh echoed
by tide-breeze that vents this star-gazing cave?
Can I believe you once lived here at all?
Because I find only tissue-thin bones, salt-streaked
shells and they don’t align with your markings.
I wait under empty skies, dry-eyed and wondering.
When young dawn with her rosy fingers strokes
these open hands I will, with what care I can,
arrange these dyed shells, your bird-hollow bones
into a cairn below your markings. If I can believe
the goddess will bless the shrine, I will take this life-
breath and follow fading starlight onto the open sea
once more.
With apologies and gratitude to Jenifer Cartland at Poems from in between for this inspiration.
1. What of those who remain?
She stood by the cave mouth, weeping—No,
Ana is not one to weep. But her shoulders
curved the weight of grief she has carried
from before she knew she should grieve.
2. Ana calls it lightness
When the world lifts suddenly
from your head and you discover
all the ways you suppressed
and suspended happiness…
Is it only that he is gone
to the fathers of his people,
his body gone to mother earth?
Is it only the way he always looked
to the tree-sky when we talked
and my heart is an empty gourd?
3. How was I to answer?
To say, Rose gave me this tale and the end
was inevitable as the crumbling dirt at our feet?
She had always hoped her contained diamond
hope. Could I not have given her that diamond
just once, in the daylight?
4. Rose has no sympathy
I cannot give you what you want,
but only a whisper, a shadow beyond
the corner beyond the next corner.
You follow the breadcrumb trail
and find it peters out; you hold the thread
but stumble on the same stone
on the black cave floor. There is no
lightning gift of the gods, no comfort
in my flesh—what flesh? You dream
of soft caresses but wake cold-still
and forget everything I said.
Now is not the time
to close down
curl up
burrow under
the comfortable warmth
of last year’s deadleaf
expectations
but time to run lightquick
down dank halls
fling open
windows and doors
to mooncold and windsilver
to wolfhowl and winterbird
song
She stood at the lakeside, pale
skirts summer-twilight glowing,
hair loose and light about her head
as if in water outspread. Wavelets
ankle-lapping. I called out
but oh, God, she would not listen.
She just ran and I could not
follow, all dark and I couldn’t find her.
The slap and slosh and cold water closing…
(We sat on the wall and talked,
we lay in the grass and loved.
You princes always prating
of other islands in other cold seas—
Forgive me, good sir, I am bound
for better or worse, for airier realms.)
I have brought you here for this singular purpose:
We will rescue the innocents I’ve marked.
You toss your Keats and declare yourself ready,
but I know how you cower, dreaming or not.
I know this riffling of pages, birds plunging
from the cliff, after-silence of low moaning wind.
Two projects are conflating here today: a nebulous, rambling, and mostly plotless prose-poem or poem-prose I’ve been calling Rose-Witch AND my continuing inspiration-tag with Jenifer Cartland of Poems from in between. I had written this line of hers in my notebook: “I ask you how will your innocence hold up.”
Your atoms have danced
through the heart
of the sun
flashing
achingly golden
We will spin and flare
there again
unknowable words
in flame-bright
song
Graceful Press Poetry 