Watermark

Bell

[I'm on vacation. This was originally posted Wednesday, 25 August 2004]

MP3 File

once I imagined the bell
all the rest came easily
the young man in the burgundy coat
lilies tolling their scent in the garden
pale moon over narrow streets, it all
dreamt itself into tall dark trees
shivering with sparrows and wind

the wind in the shutters
the nervous courtyard
something sacred at the altar
the pale child in her ghost dress
the book with its gossamer gilded pages
its thin black-pebbled cover
this docile child, butterfly wings

the old man bent into his cane
shuffling, shuffling, the pale moon
it all came quite easily, then
the moon walked into the mountains
the stars fell the old man fell
the lilies dropped their thick petals
the young man became a branch

scratching, scratching the window
the shutters opened their louvers the fan
making its ocean sound it all became
lightness and bright stripes on the wall
morning morning and I step into the garden
thick slow beat of pelican wings
into a cloud of pale moths

...in the garden

[I'm on vacation. This was originally posted Sunday, 02 May 2004]

Blue clematis bells; their white tongues.

Woke early, slept, woke, slept -- finally up at 11:00. The angelique tulips are open; lilacs are showing their color. Just now, at mid-day, there's a soft breeze in the garden. I am living in realms of sleep, half-conscious, beneath rustling leaves.

While sitting in the garden with K., a kestral flew in, landed in the dogwood, flew out. After recovering from her shock, K. said, "I suddenly felt like a rodent."

I cut my nails in the garden, L. having told me that ants have some use for the clippings, calcium, perhaps?  I wait and I wait, but the ants don't come.

Alice Notley in The American Poetry Review, May/June 2004: 

I think the poet becomes more and more of a shaman, getting older, in the sense that so much happens to one, and there's nothing left but the poetry function, which is a healing, ecstatic function, as much as it is anything else.

The LifeFlight helicopter flies over, very low, very fast; there is no time to waste.