Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
In front of a cloud
of blossoming mountain laurel,
a deer: the flash of her tan coat
passing quicker than a kiss farewell—
Always, you travel ahead. And yet
you’ve cast your shadow everywhere:
even here in the river shallows,
refracted in the volatile colors of fish
swimming from the brutal heat of day.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
So yellow, so open now—
as though the evening primroses
had soaked in morning’s heat
and saved it for the darkest
hours of night.
What do they have
to teach me of grasping and letting go?
Even the bee is forced to make its visits
cloaked in the dressing-gown of dusk.
The claw-shaped shadows cross
like weapons; retract, and yet remain.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Now it’s the turn of Via Negativa’s other regular contributor to hold forth at Marly Youmans’ blog as part of the ongoing House of Words series there. Fortunately, she’s not quite as prolix as I was! Luisa talks about how she got started using entries from The Morning Porch as writing prompts, and gives three examples of how particular entries sparked the poems they did.
For instance, Dave’s TMP observation on January 28 was “The silence of falling snow. When my furnace kicks on, the three deer digging under the wild apple tree startle and run down the slope.” When I read that, the first sentence, “The silence of falling snow” coupled with the image of “the wild apple tree” had a certain beautiful gravity that felt– and sounded– almost biblical. The wild apple tree and the three deer digging also made me think immediately of medieval tapestries, rich with illustrations of plants and animals. From there it was a short leap to recalling stories in bestiaries like the Physiologus. […]
I find Luisa’s fealty to craft and the creative venture endlessly inspiring. Go read.
In memoriam, Jeffrey H. Richards
The bulbs that wintered in the ground
have ripened their hoard of secrets:
all is color, ruinous color, overpowering
scent. Balm grows in soil that has stained
the gardener’s hands, sweetened the tea
his wife must have brought sometimes
for him to drink. Cerulean, croons the warbler
whose shadow crosses the yard; flame orange,
hibiscus, mauve, lime— And for all this,
nothing is ever spent.* In the cool afternoon
his friends gather in a courtyard
to remember his days. They sing a hymn
about the apple tree in a seed, the flower
in the bud. Between the church and town,
long-legged birds wade in river water. So much
like them, we’ve moved against the current,
shielded our eyes against the sun, straining to read
the letters scripted by some hand on the sides
of boats rocking gently in the pier.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
* from “God’s Grandeur” by G.M. Hopkins
I pull away every now and then,
when the world’s too hot, too bright,
too bitter; too cold, too merciless
in its inconstancy. Too rough, too
callused, too grainy, too stubborn
to answer the hand that pulls
at its ends and begs it heed. See
the ease with which the robin finds
a bright green morsel to spirit
out of the woods? Above the treeline
it flies, little beak a caret marking where
some buoyancy or joy’s gone missing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
If some are born to sweet delight and some
are born to endless night, where is the noon
where they might crisscross paths? A sparrow
tumbles from the eaves and auto-corrects
its flight. O wind, perilous as the pulleys that work
their hidden influence on our journeyings,
be gentle on these frail, tired wings.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Sulfur and sweetness, relish and bite:
you know it’s that good when you cry
from pleasure. Light a single votive
as you chop and mince: it helps to muffle
tears. The husk is a paper tunic, a skin
to wear like another language—
like the woman in Oregon who woke
from dental surgery surprised,
speaking with a foreign accent.
It means the house for what we think
we know is made of swirly layers—
see all those rings that fall away
on the cutting block when you
slice crosswise through? I like to think
that everything we’ve touched,
touches back; and vice versa.
See how a bug has left a red
swelling between my knuckles—
I’ll put some salve on it
until it subsides; then finger this
new site of rescue absently for days.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“There are tears at the heart of things, and men are touched by what human beings have to bear.” ~ Virgil, Aeneid
Oh love I want to lie in your lap full in the sun,
to bring everything I have that’s querulous,
tremulous, divided from this air dripping
with nectar from the tulip trees in bloom.
Will I remember what this moment
might have been? So often the world
overturns in the bowl of the spoon.
Its silver flashes like a warning at noon.
And still I forgive its afflictions,
what it sows, hard and bright:
salt and ore in the heart of things.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Some days, I dream a snatch of a poem
standing on a rocky cliff, waiting to rebuff
a tsunami. Only a little phrase, language
rubbed with the odor of the sea, a spray of oil,
a veil of orange. For now, everything is warm:
too warm, too still, too soft from lying in the sun
with its mouth open, waiting for what brings
the coolness of water. The bird on a twig
with its breast rouged red is a prayer.
The bird is a question, or the bird
is an answer; or the bird is a letter.
It flies away. There’s always change.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Thanks too, to Risa Denenberg for her piece today.
Some days I am nothing
but a hand clumsy at Braille,
feeling for eyelets as I fumble
for the laces of shoes in the dark,
for all the loose ends and bones
of my dislocated selves. A sparrow
chips away somewhere, dutiful
at the task of widening its own
corner of morning. I hear it and
want nothing more than a handful
of seed to bring it home.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.