Letter to Leaving or Staying

This entry is part 25 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

 

Dear heart, the rain dresses all
in changeling colors: leaves that molt—
part celadon, part yellow— then turn pewter
where they drift on water and water reflects them
back as shimmer. New leaves, parchment-thin:
they’ve shaken off their flimsy tethers; and it’s not
even the season for leaving. Everything is just
beginning. Or beginning again. Every day,
the air thickens with shadow, with shape, with
odor. My hands bear the smells of mint, the stains
of verbena. The skin on my back remembers
when last it was touched. Sometimes I teach it
to grow colder. Sometimes even the smallest
flush of color reverses, like a wayward fever.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

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4 Replies to “Letter to Leaving or Staying”

      1. Yes, I am liking these as well.

        Wales? Dave is going too! It will be funny to meet there, when we aren’t hugely far away, as distances go in the states.

        We are going over for the 60th birthday retrospective painting show of Clive Hicks-Jenkins at the National Library of Wales. Two books are being launched, one a book of essays called “Clive Hicks-Jenkins” from Lund Humphries (only I am ill-behaved and have a chapter that is not an essay but a lot of fictional pieces, including one faux-biblical piece–mostly about the paintings but one very much about Clive.) The other is called “The Book of Ystwyth,” and is an anthology of six poets responding to Clive’s work–me, Dave, Andrea Selch, Damian Walford Davies, the late Catriona Urquhart, and Callum James. I’ll have at least one poem on tape at the retrospective (have not done more as yet), and we’ll all do a poetry reading at the university the night before the opening. Should be splendiferous. I’m also planning to meet up with novelist Clare Dudman one day… Adventures will happen, I am sure.

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