Remember Me

I suffer death
his hard blue sting
his theft of breath
his hammering
Yet though worlds fade
before my eyes
I’m not thus made
the thing that dies
I am the wounds
I am the tree
I am the sin
Remember me

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A Snowy April Day

Gray and white, gray and white and gray;
That which has died should not so frisky play
The winter’s ghost ought not so lightly fling
Snowflakes as in Autumn, now in Spring.
Green can be the color of a blade of grass;
The liquid tint of antique glass;
A hue that hovered in our glade
Upon the trees, between the trees, the [...]

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The Coarse and The Divine

Here, a filament
too thin to be green
stands up on a cane of slow silent water
from under warm dirt.
Here, under the sun,
is a Radish Plant.
Radishes are good with salt.
I learned this kneeling
at garden’s edge with my dad
while a knife and a saltshaker sat in the grass.
The sun was too warm, the air too cool…
My problem is, small pleasures I’ve had
seem to me intimations of thunderous [...]

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Fear and the Love-Talker

Another Folk Poem
Lady, come over the ivory field
Clad in cream linen and milkweed down
Wait for me under the Fireweed Trees
Crossing your arms, the white on the brown
I’ll come dance the dance of the flame-lipped lizard
Salamandral, beasts’ own wizard,
I’ll dance so solemn your face will bring flying
Wind River, switches of air that come prying -
The down of your [...]

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Broken Verse

Mealy potatoes,
Moist rice;
Some things the poor eat
Are rather nice
Out of God’s hand
Life flows;
Into his other hand
Life goes
 

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A Very Poor Effort

What song can I sing?
I have not a word to say;
Full of emptiness,
in wordless prayers I pray
toward formless forms and heatless burnings
toward Flyers In The Heaven without wing
and know – it is not You! You are not these!
O! (Whom shall I address?)
To what bright center shall I press,
and truly say: Ah, it is you! At last?
(When will I be [...]

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Poem XXI: My Grandmother’s Smile

I
Feathered grasses float before
A chipped door, eight decades old.
Old, ornate, many-windowed:
Our house, hoard for handy-men.
I’m just six; I cross cracked tiles
To where Grandma’s washing walls.
Gray-grimed walls, once gilt-papered
Are streaked now by soap and silt.
Her hard-worked hands halt halfway -
She feels me standing; turns, and smiles.
II
Twice we moved; I turned eighteen.
At her table Grandma sat
All day, with [...]

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Folk Poem II: My Love Was Wondering

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My love was wondering where I’d gone
He sought me long and weeping
But fellow travellers had I none
Save there were cliff-vines creeping
I wished him daring by my side
And bitter was my feeling
Alone I slashed a dragon’s hide
With bats around me wheeling
At last I fell, as fall I must
For I was fighting lonely
I crashed against the planet’s [...]

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Folk Poem I: I Am A Fool

I am a fool
And I know why:
I was born under
A bronze, bronze sky
When some stark bird
Fell from its nest,
And died within
My mothers’ breast.
A warring girl
With bronze, bronze hair
Called to the wind
But none was there;
Spoke to the grave
With no reply
Then something gave
In her bronze, bronze eye.
O come with me
Who on the earth
Creep haltingly
Twixt death and birth
O [...]

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Poem XX: Willoware Land

Passing into the Willow Ware
Is something one doesn’t often dare;
But when you arrive in Willowareland
Be sure to wield a steady hand.
O deep blue shadows and shallow white light;
The shores of Willowareland by night!
Shores where you battle the Willoware Dragon
In quest of the fabled Willoware Flagon,
While from pearly trees float the savage cries
Of the Willoware Boy to him who tries:
“Rally from foliage; [...]

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Poem XIX: Holly Healing

Below is the ninth and final poem in the Holly Brightweed cycle.
I have a steady, heady lust for light.
I breathe (what time of day
the light goes gray)
sharp sheen of coming night;
Drink the whitened brilliance
in which late-night shoppers swim,
and chase those glows that kindle dim
through Juney velvet fields their bobbing dance.
Wild for moon, I will
wait in a wintry [...]

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Poem XVI: Holly Brightweed, Second Narrative

Holly Brightweed and her willing beau
unspeaking wandered on the shaggy ridge
that topped her father’s strip of land
much like the tooth-torn cartilage
of a dog’s well-loved and well-gnawed bone.
For feathered weeds, mostly dead,
were mashed and crashed
through hollow and head -
all colorless, or brown, or sickly green.
Holly said it was the scene
she found the saddest all year round.
“Spring [...]

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Poem XV: Holly Brightweed and Richard Healing: Their Unspoken Thoughts

Holly: what a white-souled, grey-faced child.
Her feet shrink in this snow,
Her head hangs down beneath this heavy sky…
Oh that I knew why.
Richard: not distinguished, wealthy, wild,
Not anything I know.
Yet warmly does he speak to me – he makes
Of me his human kin.
Stooped in bluish pools of grief-bruised skin
Her eyes that once were suns
So feebly and so [...]

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Poem XIV

I
White wine wonders
red wine knows
(give me Blue for the morning rose)
Fly down, Angel
with your steel nose
plant
steel
seeds
in stuttering rows.
(The democrat hardly knows
what is going when it goes.)
II
To your parents, Last,
but your sons call you First;
First of your kind,
the tall, gray, Cursed
Of whom, pray, will the Judge demand:
Why did this boy die of thirst?
White Wind wanders
Red Poppy [...]

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Poem XIII: Holly Brightweed’s Final Thought of Justin

…then at last it slipped my gasping grasp
and shot down in that white abyss
where all things go that
Could Have Been,
but are not.
My hand still held that stiff clammy clasp
around the hole it left. How this -
this outcome? How? Flat
I sagged then,
hope hissed out.
Then He came – and spoke, as once before:
“Who grasps will lose. But loose [...]

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Poem XI: One Dryad to Another

 I wrote this one year ago today: February 7th 2007. 
Come, neighbor;
Breathe my perfume and I will taste your fruit.
We shall not be divided, you and I,
Since our particular roots have stretched themselves and fingered down
Through sanded clay, through dank edged dirt,
And dipped with selfsame thirsty joy
In one selfsame,
Deliberate, Resplendent, Surgent Source.

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Poem X: Psalm One in Verse

In the tradition of Isaac Watts, this rhyme is rather brittle but expresses biblical piety. Also in his tradition it conflates New Testament gospel with Old Testament song…and in my case I threw in the ten commandments.
It’s a relic of my search for true religion, about the time immediately before discovering Orthodoxy. I think [...]

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Poem IX: After Justin’s Final Rejection, Holly Brightweed Contemplates Becoming a Nun; Her Mother Cautions Her

(Mother)
“But not
to love,
who had
no thought
but love,
begot
of love?
It’s sad.”
(Holly)
“That I
who have
a heart
laid by
should salve
my smart
alone
and die
two ways
unknown?”
This high
I raise
my goal:
to hate
my life.
My soul
will mate
with strife.
And still
when all
is said,
I choose
so fine
a pain!
To lose
all mine
and gain
my fill
of All
instead!”
(Mother)
“But when
you’ve done
all this,
your All
may still
include
the men -
The One;
The Kiss;
the fall;
the thrill -
God’s good.”

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Google Searches that Brought Me Readers – Mean Poems to say to Enemies

One of the informative and sometimes hilarious things about having a WordPress blog is that you get to see how people stumbled on your work.
 I get a lot of search-engine hits from people (no clue who they are) looking for tips on how to get their toddlers to eat well – apparently my veggie post is [...]

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Poem VIII: Afternoon World in Autumn

Dearest Maggie,
This afternoon I drove into the country.
Now tell me -
From vast curves
Would you not deduce movement?
Thus the moody hills
Through which I rushed
Forward
Put me in mind of a great hand
Fluidly sculpting
Sideways.
Add against a translucent wall
Of golden sky
A swirling torrent of blackbirds
Upward;
This afternoon world
Is enough to make a girl dizzy.
***
Crime longs for accomplices,
So I looked to [...]

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