Lyric on the Edge of Winter

This entry is part 51 of 63 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2011

 

This is the dark tip of the spindle creasing the clouds,
pulling the curtains down; this is the cue stick that flicks
the wobbly moon across a velvet-flocked table, hoping

yet to fill a pocket with casino silver. These are the few
remaining blades of scent from the last of summer’s
herb garden, where hair-thin slivers of frost have begun

to nest. Here are the low-creeping vines that argue in
their own impertinent flowering, for that green hope
which pushes between rocks and over graves. This

is the smolder of sticks, of touchwood and spunk
pushed into the grate as tinder; and this is
the resin that shades the veins copal or brittle

amber, amorphous soul I feed to the fire each day.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

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6 Replies to “Lyric on the Edge of Winter”

  1. Yeah, but we’re used to the richness of the Luisa word-hoard. What I love is the way the syntax blows up in the last three lines. What the hell? The words just pile up there like sticks against a weir.

  2. All Luisa’s crossed lines (spindle, cue stick, blades): sticks against a weir, exactly! Perhaps prompted by “casino silver”, I saw the weir minaturized. Sticks clog the catch-basin grate on the loser’s street, but the tinder never catches fire.

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