Category: poetry as story

Wednesday’s Words/Poem: Under the Willows

(Photo by Dan Hamill on Pexels.com)

Love as it finds it way into dreams has

no boundary, no shore that it beats upon,

but marks its presence with upwelling or exhalation,

a rush and gloss of feeling meant to startle, thrill, soothe.

It comes for all, even in the midst of emptiness or anguish;

it visits without warning, a stranger or a friend

that hopes for welcome, and escorts the dreamer into its story.

***

There is a paper boat which carries tender words

and tiny blossoms over water to where you sit, rest.

Under the dancerly willows you wait–for what?– full

of passing thoughts, snippets that escape on

a breeze and tumble in sudden sun.

You are lost in a passage of time,

eyes colored by loneliness and sorrow

that cling to the skin that clothes you.

And then arrives a boat, bobbing, steady, upright.

Hearty in its folded symmetry, it floats without

caution or worry, transported by the very light of lake water.

It stirs you but you think it will pass,

on its way to somewhere exquisite with happiness

as such a good, honest boat would.

But no. It stops at the bank near you

with hands folded over bent knees, face in half-shadow.

The boat shifts closer, leaning toward the muddy bank,

so that you are compelled to move, reach

and lift it up, hold it to your sharp eyes.

Suspicious that it heralds something more.

You scan the other side; there is someone.

He looks back, gifting a smile.

It was he who this empty afternoon conjured

the dream with his boat building, who filled

a paper creation with just enough sweetness,

who nudged it into the greater world 

to see where it might sail, then followed its lead

to you waiting in the fine green light of willows,

as if this was a dream that belonged to you, too,

and so it does, it does.

Friday’s Poem: Glimpse of a Fleeing Man

(Photo by Brady Knoll on Pexels.com)

*

When he left town down below the air was

tony with fragrances everyone thrilled to

and the pungence of damp earth clung to his hands

and fine blooms nodding across tidy yards.

It was time to go.

They vanished in the rear view mirror and

the further north he drove the better

his heart, still smarting as if stung by nettles,

though it was a woman and one he’d been glad to adore.

Up north there stirred a natural cleaness,

the road empty of chatter and barriers,

swept by benign light that shone on land and lakes.

He had camped all summer, mind uncluttered,

fishing pole easy in his hands, his grandfather’s knife useful again,

his tent a haven. Other campers greeted him, passed on.

Everyone knew what mattered, wilderness and solitude.

But the sway and grace of northern greens

too soon ignited ruby and gold, save for steadfast pines.

Some weakness called him back to the other place,

to warmth of family, old friends gathered at long tables.

Until one morning he lifted the tent flap

and beyond his feet spread a crystalline whiteness

sparking in sunlight, a wind tuned up and

sharp enough to smart his skin. There was a confab

going on, the trees creaking under luxurious stoles of snow.

There was nothing to it but to stay.

To set the crackling kindling, trees’ old bones afire.

To pick out icy stars in night’s velvet;

to count deer that came and went like ghosts;

to listen to rising songs of winter birds.

All of these would not fail him

(like women, parents, friends

who’d now forgotten when he had left,

cared less when he’d return, loner that he was)

no, not even in the cave of wild winter,

in the depths of days that called

him with a dangerous magnet of beauty

like a promise of a holier place

amid the ruins he’d fled.

Here he was his own person,

clear, bigger of soul. Free.

(Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com)

Friday’s Poem: More Lessons at the Wetland

Photo by Hrishi Thacker on Pexels.com

It has been that sort of time again:

whether to laugh or weep, she mumbles.

Head in hands, elbows on knees,

knees pulled up close to shut out the world,

she folds inward, flesh like cloud bunched before rain,

thoughts crushed dense as leaves into dirt.

Dampness bathes her; a sunset sky dims.

It’s the sharp-edged mysteries, human life

that careens and flips into one hand and

miraculously the next, a juggling act.

And then it all spins slowly from center,

heart holding, mind dizzied with then or now,

and the sweat and breakage,

the geography of fissures,

a pantheon of losses.

The desserts of work, a puckering

passion for this and that one and that.

To live here like this, to be alive and know it

and then fade and die in the thick of it.

It seems too much, both ayoke and strange wings

that lead her to wetlands and river again.

Redwing blackbirds trill, crows convene,

osprey glides to treetops, eagles to the fish

and so much is hidden she might feel an outsider.

But does not, not when she’s still.

Here she hides where waters run beyond reach to ocean,

deepened and wild, rich.

If they could all tell her– what?

What next. What comes now, then another now.

What means this bigger landscape of

soul-shaking giving and taking?

She hunches like a person who has lost

her sense when the voice of a girl

(one day to be her own woman)

speaks, a pale hand placed on her shoulder,

eyes on dragonflies as quietness ripples:

Can’t you laugh and cry at the same time?

And that is the answer.

The woman rises, cradles the small hand like a gift.

They walk through grasses tall as trees

with elegant tassles that brush their arms–

and she is laughing, weeping softly as

the blue hour lays its cape about them,

secures them in its power.

Friday’s Poem: A Red-Winged Backbird Interlude

Photo by Cynthia Guenther Richardson

That call on the wing is not meant for

people and though you left long ago,

I pull it close, anyway,

spirit opening like a welcoming gate,

feet dragging to a halt in a muddy spot.

I know this sweet-rough song,

it followed us everywhere in that country,

and now it ascends and descends,

a handful of pure air,

and flees between river and marsh.

I move by the watery banks,

not so unlike those up north,

plucking reeds and random leaves,

holding them to lips, forehead,

the center of me where my heart dreams.

Everything drums or hums or gurgles,

yet if I listen with my best ears

there you are:

super sonic flash of silence

or far away thunder with no rain.

My fingers graze high grasses;

there are cutting edges as well as smooth.

Like it was, but now it is a dozen things

that heal and fill me up:

white butterflies,

bass gargles from spring peepers,

sunshine signals that find flowers

and leave a memo:

open in glory, fade in grace.

As it must be done. And are you gone?

I wait while a bluet sky expands,

and moments circle ’round

my smallness, my aching knee,

my head lighter in the later light.

I think of how strong we were,

how you would care that I can walk again.

There, the red-winged blackbird sings, yes?

Common, sharp, clean and rich,

bold and faithful,

pullling me from heft of earth,

swinging me higher toward you.

Tuesday’s Poem: Making a Visible Life (a tale for my mother)

Night lingers to greet day.

Swirls of an organza mist

wrap the vista as I stand invisible

at the prow of a tall ship with taut sails;

it carries curiosities, sustenance, shards of hope.

There is no shore; I am on a balcony outside

the warmth of my house, that place where

time is greeted and resisted, cupped in my hands

and released. Out here the view holds surprises,

tosses them like ribbons of silver and green

across my mind, enticements for a restless soul.

An icy spray settles on face and hands

but the grand matron of earth nourishes

its beloveds even (I pray for this daily) me.

Amber leaf, veiny stone, pine cone

and red holly, a blue-black feather-

these are raiment I’d wear if permitted,

a cloak of bits and pieces, a laugh in the midst of things.

If I was brave enough to be visible, with my essence showing–

a woman who gathered pulsing rays and glowed in the dark.

Simple as that. But this is human life

and thus not an angel’s scheme, is that how it is?

Let me seek and discover.

Fog secrets away the mountains so I retreat

indoors, labor awhile. I rest, absorb my books,

their exploratory maps.

They prop me up, lift me over the cliffs of misgiving

and toward gates of wonder.

Such peace!

The words emit scents of cedar and river,

of moss, apple, lavender. Plum, rose, fern, bird bones.

Later I climb the hills, new stories at my heels

like sprites and elves in the brume.

Squirrels fatten up but glance my way as if

sensing my hunger for chicken and dumplings,

my mother stirring the pot,

white waves damp at her forehead,

face pinked with heat and pleasure,

common wisdom added to the stew.

The abundance of it shapes me still.

My throat closes then opens to music

that visits me in solitude,

this one for my mother–

but it is only a desire or a memory,

lyrics and notes drifting like smoke lost to rain.

A finch offers a refrain in consolation;

and it tenders me as I tack and sail

into the heart of woodland, beyond sorrow,

past the shame of all that’s unconquered,

still left undone.

A wintered wind ignores such musings

but my mother’s spirit implores

like a medicine woman:

write write write sing out.

These days it seems a luxury but today

feeling and thought–sharp, sweet, savory–

fill me up as I trudge through murk.

Music, language, how they hoist and shoulder

the weight of my life, fix it, free it.

Sunlight steals through this landscape of haze,

or is it seascape and soon to be moonlight?

The glimmering limns the curve

where I am heading right into

the thicket, the glory of it,

as you, too, may have imagined.

.