Category Archives: Poems & poem-like things

“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.” ~ Bizet

Aragonaise (the simplified arrangement for piano),
by Bizet, from “Carmen”— I remember a well-thumbed music book
covered with pinched pencil lettering, the weeks it took to learn.
Did the nuns who taught us, drill frozen arpeggios from our wrists?
Every girl one girl in a blue and white uniform with a straight face.
From deep in the lilac, the warble of a tree sparrow rose,
grew a little warmer, coloring like a flame
hovering just on the edge of what little we knew.
It’s possible some of us could imagine Carmen in
jail, possessive lovers; seduction, jealousy, dark rage
kindling in the breast and nearby in the meadow, bulls
lifting their feet, snorting, ready for the charge.
My own instinct is never to give anything away:
not a hint of what I’m feeling inside, though
often enough it’s worry or confusion costumed
poorly by bravura. Ruffles, a rose, a skirt
quilted in deepest red. At the sweetest passage,
read the notes, play them like they’re violets about to be
surrendered under the hooves of the heaving animal.
There’s no way to learn that simply by rote,
understanding how things measure out. Years later,
veer toward this music again as it drifts,
wayward thread unhooked from memory.
Exactly how do you know when the song has reached
you, claimed you? When its naked feet stamp out the flame,
zero in on what it loves, dagger aimed at the heart.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What veils? What clouds?

Wing upon wing feathers the view.

The door swings between rooms.

Blast of air, cold rain. Not

ruin. I’ve only longed to find

what you said you lost in a dream:

mountains dissolved in lake water,

sunflowers turning like weather vanes.

Amulets among the cracked stones,

cross-hairs in the branches.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Zest of lemons fills the air, and on the radio,
yearning notes from the throat of a cello.

Exactly how much salt or spice to throw in?
Without measurement, the senses tend to open wider.

Viola, violin, strings from the orchestra fill out
undertones in the andante part of the Rococo Variations:

this is Tchaikovsky in the arms of Rostropovich, or
so my daughter tells me. Slow as a waltz— and suddenly I

realize this might be the music I’d like played at my funeral.
Quelle alternative? I don’t know, as I wasn’t really

pondering the matter. Just something in the phrasing,
or the way the quietly contemplative cadenzas make me feel

none of the sorrowful hysteria sometimes induced by
music that lobs the racquetball of the soul around in its cage,

little bird reminded of the wilderness that bred it.
Kindness after long difficulty is what I hear, perhaps. Or

just a simple turn, a few steps around the room, notes that burgeon
into the fullness of their theme. I don’t know much more.

How have I started with lemons and garlic—
grease quietly sputtering under the layer of

fricasseed chicken breasts in a pan on the stove— then
ended up thinking of music by which to exit?

Don’t read more into this than there is.
Clouds look lovely outside the prismatic window,

bunched and fleecy as pulled wool. I’m here and not
about to go anywhere just yet; I love the color yellow.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Confused by warmth followed
by plummeting cold, buds
on the pink magnolia

begin to fruit. In this case,
as in many others, I know
the outcomes of nostalgia.

Don’t look back, I want to say
to the not yet fully formed
corona of petals—

though the sun’s warmth
is barely a husk on this
day with no brim or trestle.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

There are mockups of mermaids every few
blocks in this town— plaster and paint
over wire, arms stretched fore and aft. All
in the same frozen pose, they look like
synchronized swimmers yanked out of the pool
before their final choreographed curtsy.
Pale, flat-chested, not the least bit
sinuous, each sports a different garb:
one’s in a sailor suit, another’s covered
in fake barnacles; and the one in the bay
of the Chinese pagoda close to where
we live has a painted-on cheongsam
of red and gold. Rooted under the half-
moon and the scattering of pixelated stars,
each looks across the pavements and parking
lots, out to the dark water— where all day,
restless waves come in and out with the tide.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The wind drives us forward.
A little spin and we’re pulled
as thread into a skein, the skein
into cotton, the cotton into a scarf,
the scarf into a cowl. Gandhi once sat,
not speaking, only spinning. One thread
unbroken for nine hours. How long
would I have lasted? Here, it’s almost
half past three. Children spill
out of school doors, pulling peacoats
on top of cardigans. Are those leaves
poking through the brown fretwork?
The clock’s hands never run the other way.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

To the unrepeatable life, the poet writes—
a hymn of gratefulness, a toast to low-

hanging clouds that catch on treetops,
and crows that signal their arrival

with frantic wingbeats; to beds
where bodies have been taken in heat,

in the delirium of fevers, in the
declension toward the final and most

difficult crossing. But I am afraid
I cannot raise the glass fully

to my lips just yet, even if each
of these moments is practice: to love

the body of the grape that shimmers,
crushed skin distilled in liquid; to love

the beauty of the knife and its true-
ness to its intention when it cuts

across the grain of hapless veined
vegetables on the chopping board.

And I know I haven’t learned, anyway,
all there is to learn about forgiveness:

so much regret and longing, anger, bad
habits, the love of sugar and salt and fat.

And yet, even in this blindness that is not
yet seeing, I know that in every bead of

restlessness there is a filament
of perfect longing: a thread

to knot around the wrist or finger,
vivid red to pick out through the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.