Watermark

2008-12-09 Snapshot Poem

Not an orphan yet, I come to you.
Snow here is heavy and wet, sky
darker than ground. The doctor
reads the future in runes of blood
and bone.

I watch the snow fall, slant, across
the streetlight. The kitten brings me
her feathered toy, like a dead bird
in her mouth, a low growly purr.
A gift.

The body sends its messages.
Mine calls out to you in dreams.
I wake stunned and languid. I wake.
The doctor casts the coins, mother's
next few months.

Or years. They lay out before us,
dark and secret paths. The kitten
pounces, stops to watch paleness
pass the window. Now is for her.
Don't leave me.

   

Dreamer

Somebody came to my door and offered
to give me a child who had been abandoned.
I declined but thought of you.

They say that in dreams, the house is the body.
Or perhaps the psyche. A house of many rooms.
But who is the child?

Who is the offerer? Who the prospective parent?
What is the car, the truck, the train? They are,
each and all, the dreamer.

This is the vehicle, the work, the task. It carries
me where I must go. Me, the child, the parent.
The dreamer. The poem.

    

  Totally Optional Prompt: Sound -- I added the sound player in response to this prompt. More of my poems with audio can be found at Audio Posts. This prompt has nudged me to add sound to more of my poems. The player above is an experiment -- please let me know if you have problems.

     

This poem is already up at Poets Corner -- Thanks, Anny!

Frost Moon

Death walks with me
but there is no scythe.
For some it's sudden, done.
For others, no swift
taking, but a slow
evaporation, a stiffening,
a brittleness, a steady
sloughing of the self.

This rain is heavy, loud.
Fallen leaves turn black
and slimy, sink into mud,
slide on pavement. The moon
is invisible, but cold. This
is not a freshening rain.
This is autumn's rain.
This is winter's rain.

Nov. 13, 1:17 a.m. EST — Full Beaver Moon. Time to set beaver traps before the swamps freeze to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. Another interpretation suggests that the name Beaver Full Moon come from the fact that the beavers are now active in their preparation for winter. Also called the Frosty Moon.

Harvest Moon

I wake to a bright night, moon resting
on the swell of the mountain.

Geese pass noisily overhead, barking
like a herd of schnauzers.

A storm spins past Galveston
another spins out of Washington

and yet another from Wall Street,
each leaving loss and debris

in its wake. I listen to love songs
on the radio and try to remember how

that felt. It's time for the long nightgown,
the flannel sheets. Time to close

the windows against autumn. The stars
of my generation are dying off.

Somewhere, someone is bringing in
the crops. Long ago, I helped with that,

prepared meals for the field hands,
bacon sizzling, the women talking,

shelling peas, canning peaches. Now,
I lift my food from the shelves. It has

nothing to do with me.

   

   

UPDATE 16 September 02008: This poem has been selected for inclusion on Poet's Corner at fieralingue. Thanks, Anny!

Haircut

 

The Braid

Its weight unfelt
until absent, the
braid lies on
the hair dresser's
table. No tears
in my chair,
she said, and
there were none.
In the Twenties,
this was scandalous,
women cutting off
their hair. What's
left is grey.
Today women cut
their hair when
the divorce is
final, or when
he leaves. In
rage, or mourning,
or relief, they
take the scissors
to their own
heads; or, light-
headed, they step
out of salons,
new women. The
hair dresser sweeps
the floor, packs
away the braid
for the wig-
makers. Left behind,
a foot or
two of plaited
history. We shake
our heads, remember
that forgotten gesture,
pushing bangs from
the eyes,
running
our own
fingers
through
our own
short
fresh
curls.

Fire

09 July 02008, Missoula, Montana, USA

Mount Sentinel is on fire,
and the Constitution is burning,
ignited by leftover Independence
Day fireworks and fear-brand patriotism.

One white helicopter dips water
from the Clark Fork, carries it to the line
of orange flame. People stand on the river trail,
commiserating with one another. Our crews are thin,

sent to fight fires in Big Sur;
our Reserves are in Iraq. Red firetrucks
wait at the bottom of the mountain. Deer leap
into the gorge, then walk calmly into town. Smoke

furls down into the saddle, down
into the valley. The line crawls higher,
one line of flame meets another, a long curved
gesture of fire, grass that seemed green and strong

burning, burning. The Fourth
Amendment is smoking, curling into
ash. As the sky darkens and the mountain
grows brighter, we retreat. We stand at the windows

of our wood houses, watching
the flames climb up, climb down
the mountain. We are mere citizens, civilians;
the fire is near, but far enough, and we leave it

to the professionals. Finally,
we go to the private, inviolate embrace
of our own beds, almost secure, almost believing
that our castles are safe, that the fires won't reach us.

Snapshot Poem 02 July 02008

Where I used to live, light
will be embracing this day
all the way around. Here,
where I live now, light
is shorter, night longer,
days waver less noticeably.

Again and again I dream
of moving. Places strange
and familiar; neighbors
oddly unknown. Today
one of the young squirrels
took bread from the feeder

and came to sit at arms-
length in the tree above me.
She turned and turned
the food in her tiny hands,
scattering crumbs, then
stretched out flat and cool

on the wide branch. I don't know
why she joins me here, morning
after morning. I see a pale bread-
crumb traveling across the stones,
and imagine the strong-backed ant,
bearing the weight, carrying the light.

This week's prompt is light.

"Why cut your hair?"

It pulls so heavy, so long
it's a hindrance to sitting.
Up, it brings headaches;
down, a tangle and no one
but me to brush it out.
No one lifts it but me,
no other hands hold it.
Braided, I'm a matron;
knotted, a librarian. Some
other woman or child, bald
from illness and its cures,
will carry it with more
grace, more gratitude.
It will grow back, thinner

and more gray. I found
blood on the garden
stones this morning.
Some songbird, caught
in the talons of a kestrel?
The garden is blooming:
yellow columbine, blue
delphinium, purple allium,
coral bells, a hundred small
white flowers on the wild
geranium. I breathe deep
the fertile air. I try to stand
up straight. I try to hold
my head high. It's heavy.

  

[revising in place...]

June Moon

Rose Moon, open.
Strawberry Moon, fill
our mouths with sweetness.

It is the month of marriage,
weddings under arches,
long dresses and dress coats.

Women marry men, men
marry men, women marry
women, inconstant humans

promising constancy, forgetting
how you fade, how you pass
from fullness to absence; from

promise to amnesia. Bless
these brides, these grooms.
Scatter your light upon them.

  

10 June 02008 Snapshot Poem

 

       Photo by Bonnie Sue Pinkerton

  

I wake this June morning to storm warnings,
white caps on the mountains, dogs curled warm
against my knees. Even with the dogs, this bed
is too wide, too cold. The sky darkens and snow
falls into the valley. I comfort myself

with cappuccino. Tomorrow is your birthday.
I braid this long hair, which I will cut off soon,
and tie it up with fake pearls. I put on rings,
a silver bracelet, a long-sleeved high-neck
sweater. I wish for blue sky, for a blond

streak of sun to melt this snow. I wish
for summer flowers, for years and seasons
to fall away, for limber, painless youth. My hair
will grow back grey. The garden will bloom,
soon. Storms will come, storms will go.