Platform

‘Holly Brightweed’ is a story told by a series of nine poems.

Poem I: First Narrative

Holly Brightweed spread her arms and ran
between the double hayloft doors, and yelled
“I’m riding home, Dad! See you there!”. She bent
and snatched the green knit scarf her basket held,
wound her neck, then seized her prostrate bike.
“Now down this frozen track in time” she said,
“befitting Gwenyth’s steed.”
                                           Both grace and use
she had in mounting; sternly bent her head,
made instant force against the pedal. Wind!
Her face rejoiced. The road was straight and long;
Her father’s fields lay square on either side.

Halfway down she halted. “Something’s wrong.”
To left and right two lines of trees split fields.
To right she stared. “A fair enchantment, this”
the girl pronounced, and stilled her mount. “Gray sky,
gray fields, dark limbs of trees, and who should kiss
a thing so dead but White Queen Winter?” (Lines
she’d learned by heart.) The flakes fell silently.
She breathed.
                       Her father’s pick-up passed her then,
honking twice. She smiled and waved, and he
did too. His deep red hat reminded her
that Christmas-time was here when through her home
bright red would hang and drape and plop and cook.
“Evergreen dreams and gingerspice days and comb
your hair and sing his praise and presents lay
beneath the tree to Grandmother’s house we go…”
She sang a hodgepodge medley, riding on
past one more field.
                                Their house was now below,
glowing in a little dale. Holly stood
astride her bike, gazed down the craggy ridge.
Her dad was walking ‘cross the yard, and through
the window Holly saw before the ‘fridge
her mother pulling out a yellow bowl.
Dinner soon!
                     Holly Brightweed shoved
her feet against the ground and sailed the last
few yards down to her home. The bike she loved
she almost tossed inside the lean-to; then
she ran. In the house her parents kissed
and Holly, washing at the kitchen sink,
sang and splashed and sudsed and sighed and swished.

Poem II: Holly Brightweed’s Romantic Era

“O let me for one moment touch her wrist
Let me one moment to her breathing list;
And as she leaves me may she often turn
Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne…”

- John Keats at 22 years of age

John Keats once prayed to touch a maiden’s wrist!
I merely pray that I’ll not first be kissed
(awkward as it must be) before an audience,
Nor by some hurried boy far too intense,
Nor by some practiced jerk who’ll grade my nerved embrace.
I pray to be proposed to with some grace,
to find some garment not-too-short, for first-night rite,
and that my future spouse won’t run his ship too tight.
How slowly, as my youthful years advance,
How surely have I ceased to dream romance.

Still, when the brisk young woman I’ve become
Stops to read what Keats prayed, also young -
The maiden with the rustling gown wakes inside,
Who’d interrupt the poet’s goldfinch-watching by the brook,
Blushing to have kept that unplanned tryst.
Were I to meet his startled look and lyric tongue,
Were he to lead me to the brook’s far side,
I think that leaving, I, like her, would turn and look
A few more times when he had brushed my wrist…

Poem III: Justin Notices Holly’s Interest

Holly had an eager glance tonight.
She probed my eyes, attended to my hands,
as if she thinks I know the master’s touch
to make her pour out some unearthly song
and almost paint the air with gold and light…
It’s true she’d play for me; almost demands
that she be played. This girl’s suspense is such
as tunes my violin strings taut and long.

A shame she’ll never know my mastery.
It’s just that candor cries, but doesn’t sell.
A louder violin won’t always do;
For worthier instruments have subtlety
and when the whole world sees your choice…ah, well!
There’s nothing like a girl in love with you.

Poem IV: What Holly Would Have Said to Jusin

Love me, lad.
I dare not ask thee,
Would not task thee,
Yet I’m sad
Not to hear thee
Or be near thee;
Love me, lad.

Love me, lad -
Yet don’t fear me;
If you’re weary
Go, be glad,
Live without me.
Lie about thee,
I won’t, lad.

Nothing, lad,
Is what you owe me.
Proud to know thee,
To have had
some moments with thee
Bright, kind, witty,
Dearest lad!

But if, lad,
You’ve just not thought thee
To have sought me,
I’m mute, lad,
Yet I plead thee
Somewhat speed thee,
Do not bleed me.
I do need thee -
Love me, lad.

Poem V: Holly Brightweed and Her Mother: When Holly Contemplates the Cloister

(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.”

Poem VI: Holly’s Final Thought of Justin

…Then at last It slipped my gasping grasp,
and shot down to 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 to me…”
The loss done, duty
was consent.
I writhed and

Groaned: not in regret - but I was sore.
Then I spread my hand. Aloof, He
as at some beauty
gazed, and sent
with His hand

A streak of something bright upward.
Heaven that I falter faint toward,
In a new star glows.
What is it?
Well. He knows.

Poem VII: 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 nobly try to shine:
Not if she were mine.

And why should I not answer one made kin,
In kindness’ kind? The nuns
Do yet so much. If further comes,
It comes. I’ll plan no more.

I longed for paths lit longwise from above;
But each step lights the next for humble Love.

Poem VIII: 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 was mother-mud” she said, “until
a green mist rose up from the dale
and crept of a morning up this hill.
Green and golden days swung by
all the glancing, dancing summer.
In early fall we chased winged creatures
turned to flightlight, you remember -
everything glowed more to gold.
Now this.” She stopped and crushed
a withered leaf. They both stood still
to hear the land. The air was hushed,
harvest over, few birds left,
insects dead. “Winter’s near:”
she mourned. “The wide world seems to wait.”

Richard Healing thought her voice held fear.
He said, “But Winter’s fair.” Richard’s speech
was cheerful, even musical, like wind:
“Something in you loves the cold and white.”

Holly winced as though he sinned.

“Cold is fire inside-out” she said,
“it eats my shuddering hands and toes.
Snow’s a jail that keeps me locked
inside the house to blow my ruddy nose!
And white - it’s lovely, I suppose,
but teaches me to ponder emptiness -
empty house, empty sky,
empty rooms that throb inside.”
                                                  “I bless,”
rejoined the man, “whatever made and kept
Holly Brightweed wintry-white in soul.
Will you wear white for me one day this yule,
And taking Winter’s color, salvage what She stole?”

Halfway down the shaggy ridge they stood.
Holly Brightweed turned and looked at him,
and guessed the versey riddle. Down they came
against the autumn breeze - the light fell dim,
the wind picked up, the silent trudging pair
thought of hallow Winter that was near.
They glimpsed aloft a tiny shiny moon;
They stopped, clasped hands, and called each other ‘dear’.

In the house where Holly and Richard live
a yellow kitchen cheers a hall of brown,
a library beckons with a scheme in green,
the parlor lamp warms red, where folks sit down.
There also hangs a fluted gown of white
Where in a soft-hued room they share the night.

Poem IX: Holly Healing

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 midnight, till
strange silver spills down white
bare trees. O languid light!

And laughing light! That in the Summer plays
caprice upon the surface of the lakes -
an early gray soon sparkles red;
glows moreover into gold
that gilds a wavelet’s gliding bed;
gloats on, overbold,
the shimmering love of dragonflies and drakes;

then through our bed-side window breaks;
fills the ivory cup my husband’s brown throat makes,
anoints the sleeping wealth I hold,
tangling with his bronze-curled, christly head.

I know that I shall go and gaze in latter days
upon That Light from which, a torched flower,
our sun outwent:

then, at last, shall I bow down to rise again
and stand, myself enblazed, and look, how long!
and lust content -