what is the spirit? how you felt
exhilarated in the rain and wind
that one time, you were ten
and traveling, you knew
actual magic
*
you must bring it
the yoga teacher says
no one else can
find those places
of either hurt or release
*
in ancient Greek, I’m told
pneuma, verily only
the stuff of life
which blows
over all our heads
*
true dark skies last summer
Milky Way and eclipsed sun
beyond earth’s wind
beyond need for meaning
your heart, you think, must
by now be something
like that Hill Country scrub—
even your outside prickly
inside hard and harder
dry white
when? there were years
of next-to-no rain
and still the flowers bloomed
driving south, pear trees
like white flame, sparked wild
and a-flourish
this in-between, on-road:
bare winter prairie behind
ahead nothing but duty
wrung of its last ounce of love
a clutter of rocks
glossed with bluebonnets
(lakeside)
and it turns out water
is only water. it may slosh
and splash, undulate, crash
and okay, sparkle, shimmer
gleam gold. or gray
in shadow, green in light
right down to the rocks
it caresses, rounding
here, near the shore—
or out there, sucking sand.
see, the dog will flail and swim
kicking up white froth, biting hard
at each wave (they never cease)
long tongue licking water
long-legged deliberate splash.
(no creature more prosaic
than a dog) so here I sit, done
with words. why bother noting
it dazzles? the boats drone on
and past, in deeper blue
seagulls scatter
We’re a flower-hungry people, so you know “bloom where you’re planted”: from that land of live oak, bluebonnets, prickly pear you grow in a neighborhood draped with ivy and crepe myrtle. Rooted shallow and wide. Your own first garden unshaded, broad-bladed grass framed by marigold, vinca, mint.
What root traces your steps
to prairie snow, sugar beets, lilac by the door? The spreading apple tree, dandelion spring. Your first taste of hate for forsythia follows to southern pine forests, thin wood at playground’s edge, understory ferns’ moist heat.
What love for a place you never belonged?
Thinking to settle: the huge rain-flopped peony, ants swarming on the buds, short burst of cerise and the cheerful yellow rose. In back, a fragrant heirloom shrub (so your children shower you with petals).
What root graces your steps
to a place of language you can’t speak? Though you can hear its nature through the soles of your feet. Rosenbogen wreathed in pink, balcony view of trellised garnet-red, scented cream-peach Vorstadt walk.
Such love for a place you never belonged.
Now you are here, tamed by hosta, daylily, boxwood hedge. Your roses true knockouts (though bees don’t care) gleaming ruby in the light. Heart-shriveled, craving green-wild and the overthrow of mulch.
What root tangles your steps
and what blame if you guard yourself from sinking right in? You’re the dandelion fluff blown by any new wind…
and I’m thinking of our slow spring days
fascination with eaglet, cygnet
all unfinished things in leaf or on wing
the pleasure in daily checking
pea plant, lettuce bed, sunflower sprout
until that startling morning
we see all is grown beautiful, glossy, wild
shining, confident beyond need
or desire of our shaping
you didn’t know you could be lovesick
for a place, two years on
and no cobble-walking, tender for streets
even crosswalk signals; so when your mind sits light
on the task in hand, stitching waves
on ocean waves or maybe curled winter winds
you’re startled to see just that turn
of the Holzweg, the shop with wine-glass
windows, outdoor stacks of rugs
was it the sudden sun-glint on your cheek?
all your pieces wrapped in a rush
still swathed in paper, waiting
To say nothing of myself
or the self-contained teen
in the other room, of our place
in vast, fragile space
dwarfed by our sun, dwarfed
by other suns—
but let me tell you of our life
with penguins and potatoes
our southern seasons lonely
off the grid, yet in the global trend
(internet at the café, supply boats
twice a year). We’ve embraced
a taste for our own vodka
for homespun wool. No avoiding
your neighbor at the seaside
or singing below the volcano
though indeed no one knows
how I detest eating lobster
I read this article about Tristan da Cunha, and my imagination ran away just a bit.
What do you say to the earnest smiles
the hearty aren’t-you-glad-to-be-backs?
It was no exile from the first day you knew
you didn’t need to pretend to belong
You thought your skin must be stamped with it
a continent of rivers so swelling your breath
that you’d be forgiven the slow answer but
can’t they see you have no word for home?
Inspired by a new call for submissions at Silver Birch Press.
They speak their language and we listen
on the train, perhaps or at a café
lulled by the perceived music, drawn on
by one word in a dozen that stirs familiar
our ancient roots. Of course their talk
is as mundane as ours, all the daily needs
to communicate, to demand, make known
the self; but they in their world, we in ours—
messy, but for the moment not burdened
by meaning.
NaPoWriMo Day 25, prompt is to begin with a line from another poem. First line from Mark Jarman’s “Chimney Swifts,” which I discovered in the Bright Wings anthology. I also borrowed the title from Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
Graceful Press Poetry 