Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Risk is the fact that you have to go
not only farther, but deeper; or higher—
often only a tendril of scent to go on, or
whatever it was that woke you from sleep
so you could not return to its arms—
Impossible to do anything else but
discard old skins; to give yourself
to the flickering pulse in the lilac,
some dark eye in the leaves
that watches, and does not blink.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Start with something tiny, said the poet:
like a grain or a snowflake, and gather
around it the poem— in other words,
that process of improvisation you know
only too well: cobbling a cabinet from
castoff parts, landscape in the unlikely
viewfinder of a rusted keyhole. From
accident to accident, the map moves
for the most part toward clarity.
Walking in the wood, one day we come
upon a newborn fawn; and in the grass,
its mother licking the last traces of
the afterbirth. There’s always danger,
some current of the unknown that noses
us out, the smell of fear sharp like iron
in the gut. But nothing I’ve ever done
or faced unfixes that light moving through
the leaves, the animal’s instinct to save
itself from compromise. Pay attention,
she says. This is not only about you.
.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
an angel stands behind the entrance,
water in her cupped hands made of marble.
And in the nave, two by two, hour by hour,
nuns prostrate in prayer. Now they kneel,
though you are told that in the old days
they used to lie face-down on the stone
tiles, a strip of carpet beneath them.
Imagine the floor gradually warming
under their cheeks, the sides of their
foreheads. Hours pass. Shadows move
across the window. The only cloud in the sky
finds the sun, and still they don’t move.
In the atrium, the signs instruct: write
your petition on any of the strips of yellow
legal paper. Lay it on the plate. Drop
some coins and hear their muffled clink
in the collection box. Strike a match along
the iron votive holder. Hope that this isn’t all
improvisation, even as the choir begins a hymn.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
On the edge of winter, every branch and twig
will soon grow white with rime; and every feeble
plant go under. Not one voice of protest
will we hear when sheets of snow and ice descend,
imperial in their judgment. Which makes me wonder,
in 258 when Emperor Valerian ordered the execution
of the deacon we know as St. Lawrence, what sounds
did the martyr make, roasted alive on a gridiron?
And how far beyond the olive orchards did the smell
of his charred flesh travel? What end?- asks a famous
poem: choose ice, or fire. In most cases it really
isn’t a matter of choice, even when sufficient
will’s involved. Take the graceful Isadora, who danced
barefoot, loved improvisation, and led a troupe of
young pupils called Isadorables— she died
of a broken neck when her long silk scarf
caught in the wheel of a car. What I didn’t know
was that her two young children drowned in the river
with their nanny, when their French driver forgot
to set the parking brake and the car rolled down
the Boulevard Bordon. I doubt any of them
thought this was curtains, fini, the end—
Not even the Kabuki actor who claimed immunity
to puffer-fish poison and asked the fugu chef
for four; or the American statesman who expired
from sticking a piece of whale bone through
his urinary tract to remove a blockage.
Not poor Franz Reichelt, the tailor excited to test
his brilliant invention of an overcoat parachute
(like a cloak with voluminous folds and a hood)
from the first deck of the Tour Eiffel in 1912—
captured on grainy film falling to his death below.
And certainly not the nine people killed in the London
Beer Flood of 1814, when 323,000 imperial gallons
of beer burst out of their vats at the Meux
& Company Brewery. That sudden amber sea,
flecked with foam, gushed into the streets of St.
Giles Parish: destroying homes, knocking down walls,
filling the basements where poor families lived. And they
took the brewery to court, but as in the case of hurricanes
that whirl overhead and ice that hails from the sky,
the jury simply ruled that this was an act of God.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
The soul’s wilderness is ringed by pine and rugged cliffs above which birds with wings stronger than mine circle and circle the primed canvas sky. They give me their surplus of feathers— dress remnants of silky black, ink grey, satiny pearl. I find them strewn carelessly in the discount racks and rush to gather them up. I study them closely to make adjustments— ah what I wouldn’t give right now for even a jar of Gorilla Glue or a hot glue gun, in lieu of a crossbar and wires, battens, a keel. Something that noses into the wind and lofts quick with the changeable currents, to take me away from here. It’s cold at sunrise: that time of day when the honey and the wax need most prodding (I’ve come across tiny striped bodies, asleep in their padded cells). My arthritic hands need warming too. They hurt intermittently, as though these fingers were carving labyrinths from stone. It’s always more difficult at night, or in the long winter months when the light slants, elusive, in the cave. And yes, that crazed bull likes to sit in the mother of all mazes, making frightful noises: uncombed, unwashed, unkempt. But, surprise— it unravels too. All it takes is one skinny thread, one end of yarn poking up from the corner of your brightest red sweater. It works something like a ripcord. Pull on it. Or wear it and see what happens.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“What patience a landscape has, like an old horse,
head down in its field.” ~ Denise Levertov
Through the grass, through the tall weeds, brush fires; then winds that blow their alarms, lapping at everything in their path. There go the trees. There go the boxy houses. There go the railroad tracks, yanked like bones from the back of a fish. What else could they eat in a trice? Only the weeds smudged close on the earth escape notice; or the insubstantial calculus of stones. Months later you’ll find a charred copper penny, a mangled boot; the bones of small animals and their grainy reproach.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Breakfast of weak morning light, trickle of coffee. Steam from heat vents along the street. Tendrils of hunger. Gently I push them down, move them to the back. I say Later, later. And it’s later, and I’m still saying Later, though the sun is high and the clouds now move across the sky, puffs of mousse on a Magritte platter. One of them looks like a young hare: white on white, hunched around its hunger. Another’s corded like the shell on which the goddess floated, like foam on the skin of water. Meanwhile my insides are gnawing on the leaf of impatience. Its veins are green and have no dressing; and butter does not always make everything better. What do I want, what do I need? Later, I tell myself, later. There’s plenty of work, the hours full of obligation. But I know I am not virtuous: I am always my hunger.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Ang mga sinulid ng ulan, tinatahi ang
pira-pirasong damit ng agam-agam.
(Threads of rain are stitching
uncertainty’s tattered garments.)
And at dusk, the filigreed trees, the light that turns everything briefly to gold; and in the bright-dark shimmer, the houses and trees; lamp posts, the cobbled walk edging the park, oil-glazed puddles of water like wax melted down in votives. Oh such honey trapped in a clear glass bell: and like a clapper, the bee’s bright wing to beat and beat against it. You know I would follow the thread from its tangled beginnings, wind it around and around my wrist. When darkness falls, I know I’m not the only one here. Rain fine as mist, faint as silver. Fleeter bodies than mine, hidden amid the trees. My tongue-tied ones, your heartbeats flush the air.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
underneath the skin: who was it that first taught
you to always prepare for the inevitable? So much
for cautious optimism— elegy being the reason
all poems and songs, the different ways we try
to harbor what glimmers before it flutters away,
are beautiful in their brave but measured embrace of
this world. The bird with green-blue feathers bobbed
his tiny head from side to side, perched on the rim
of a tin cup half-filled with water. The small
brass bells with bits of orange ribbon still
tinkle, brushed gently by a finger. And why
do I still gasp, going under the first shock
and spray from a cold shower, or breaking
the film on the pool to try the dead-man’s-float?
Through the skeletal trees, a car engine backfires
several times; but that is not the sound of distant
shots across the water. On the first floor of
the local mall is an old watch-maker. His wall
is full of cuckoo clocks whose doors open and close
on the hour: in one of them, a child comes out with her
bag of crumbs. A girl meets her beau under a linden
tree. Then they sit, facing the sunset. Only the bird
comes back as a bird, who knows the song of time.
– for Picasso, my daughter
Julia’s conure, who will be
sorely missed
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Reading a poem by Di Piero, …the best
of love is enthusiasm’s/ intense abandon,
a voice/ in song that preys on no one/ and is
unconscious of its joy, I have to stop and think
hard to remember: when was the last time I
felt such rust-colored joy, ruddy as the copper-
clad teakettle brought quick to the boil,
singing its head off atop the stove?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.