Poetry

PORTRAIT

*“Mademoiselle Boissiere Knitting” by Gustave C*aillebotte

Old woman, bent with needle,
spinster, maiden, Mademoiselle,
intent on plaiting fictions.

Each stroke demands restraint.
She is compliant,
bound in proper bonnets, sturdy bows,
and stems an urge for wild unraveling.

Yet blushing cheeks,
nacreous rainbows in her purls,
their molten, platinum shimmer,
betray a piqued suppression.

Too late for one revolution,
too early for another,
she can’t escape the irony—
that immortality’s fabled truths are
are belied by deft impressions.

COURTSHIP

I caught you grooming earlier,
nose fixed to your fur,
engrossed in washing cheeks
and nether regions,
intent on looking clean,
and sharp, and able
for another
behind a rose bush,
shyly peering out.

When both of you had gone,
I spread a lovers’ feast
of leafy greens and ripened berries
through the clover,
knowing you’d return
when no one would be there to see
your dusk-tinged tryst,
or lament its fertile course.

Nature? Or enchantment?
But aren’t they the same?

REMEMBER

Almost lost amidst dead leaves
and severed limbs,
a nest felled by the storm,
barely more than twigs.

On other walks, it would have been
a mass to be avoided,
side-stepped in the rain.
But reason,
shamed by distant fluttering,
let sentiment compel
a search for life
within that sodden lump,
so plainly delicate and still.

How to quell despair,
when prodding leaves no doubt,
spills a hash of shattered shells,
a mother’s beak still full?

I laid small stones by the debris,
a bed too frail for splitting skies,
crushing hail,
and,
heeding wings,
gazed far aloft at hope.

MIRACLES

I looked for you again
in the garden, as I have
each year when the light grows long
upon the grass,
remembering that moment
when you lit upon my knuckle,
your tatted wings the hue of
ripened limes,
and eyes like orchid beads,
and wondered what you were,
what passing phase—youth or age or in between—
delivered you to me,
and felt your flutters kiss my skin
before you floated out of sight,
and left me wanting more,
as miracles often do.

COMMON GROUND

The question is not being, if or to, but rather when and what or why and where and how.

If one does this instead of that, results may shift by threads, or swelling clouds of snow. But time, as lord of all, crafts here and now at whim.

And what of this is relevant? What is fluff, and what’s concrete?

A crack, a stone, a thought, a breath, the need to move, progress?

It seems the center’s gone beyond not holding to full collapse. But those corners remaining, can they sustain our weight without it?

Years ago, I saw a man on a corner far from mine. Because there was no ground between us, we got by on shallow waves, our certainties preserved by distance until one day a spot appeared no larger than a tender seed and we set our feet upon it. And from each common yes no maybe, it grew.

Soon it will be spring and time to plant. That, I think, is being; that, I think is when and what and why and where and urgently, mindfully how.

Yes.

THINGS IMMATERIAL

I found a moth on my kitchen window,
climbing up the screen.
It was a large moth, close to an inch, I think—
I didn’t measure,
and it seemed confused
by endless mesh
beneath its legs, its feet—
fragile, if moths have them,
I didn’t check—
and morning’s heat,
the lack of exits,
how it became so impossibly trapped.

At another time,
I might have grabbed a weighty book—
Gray’s Anatomy, perhaps—
and disregarding frantic flaps,
each frenzied dodge,
would have taken aim
in memory of garments lost—
cashmere sweaters, silk shirts—
to their nestling appetites,
hatching broods.
Acrylic doesn’t suit their tastes.

But on this morning,
without a care for material salvation—
the artifice of dress, donned image—
I grabbed a glass instead,
possessed by instincts to
free, protect.

Its wings fluttered hard
against its new transparent jail—
momentary, but how could it know?—
then spread wide upon release.

On any other day, I would have crushed it,
for reasons that seemed right.

But not today…not today.

PROVENANCE

His car belonged to a Nazi.
Not a would be,
Or wannabe,
Or could have been,
Or clone,
But a Nazi high in rank,
A name you’d know,
And I forgot
The minute he smiled and said it.

He keeps it under wraps in his garage
To shield it from harsh winters,
Hungry salt;
But brings it out when sunlight burns
Each Independence Day,
To drive in the parade.
Crowds wave and sweat,
And he waves back,
Honking,
Drowned out by marching bands.

Afterward, he parks it by his house,
And beams as neighbor’s children
Ooh and ah,
And beg to climb inside.
He doesn’t balk, but
Makes them wash their hands
Of sticky cream,
And cheesy dust,
With disinfectant wipes.
He is insistent on this step,
Of course,
To keep the car pristine,
Interior unstained—
As if it could.

WHEN WORDS FAIL

They are slippery, evasive, coy,
dangling on our tongues,
sometimes, yes, at the tip,
and sometimes on an edge,
not big enough to bite,
or near enough to taste,
resting on molars, or canines,
before vanishing
and reappearing in a flicker,
chuckling.

Once in a while, they are gremlins,
gumming up the works,
wreaking havoc.

But it always seems the ones we deeply crave,
those that will plait our thoughts
into a seamless chain,
dodge into remote, cranial crevices
when we call them.

And then it takes four or five or six words
to say, all too poorly, what one would have said—
the one which won’t be found in a thesaurus
because even its synonyms have hidden in solidarity.

Those are the words that keep us
imagining they’ve been sucked
from their shallow holes
into some bottomless eddy.

Those are the words that really bedevil.

Until, by some miracle—
spring, mostly,
their noses reemerge,
unguarded, quivering, curious,
and ready to multiply….

ROWING HOME

That sultry day,
summer’s waning light,
its grasp weary,
anticipated death.

I didn’t know it at the time,
but watched you melting in its haze,
thoughtful, with your oars,
each fading cell a ghost on rolling glass,
hushed waves.

No sorrow in your silence,
you seemed content to sway,
and drift to shore,
a thousand miles away.

ON THE EL’

He walked up to me,
this man on the El’,
a stranger,
and said the Lord asked him to bless me.

His suit was gray,
and his tie was…
I don’t recall.

The essence of caramel tinged his skin,
and his eyes,
a feast of lime, maize, blueberry,
intensified as he spoke—
enticed by…
what?
A tired sigh,
empty stare?

I can’t remember being hungry.
I don’t believe in angels.
I do not worship gods.

But on that morning,
the scent of sweet, molten gold
rose from the quaking ground…

…and I tasted faith.

THE COLOR OF….

It is not rose,
much more like snow
that coats each velvet petal,
or dims an apple’s blush,
the pear’s suggestive charm.

Nor is it fire,
for each hypnotic flame
dispels the notion once contained,
no, more like glass, it is,
transparent, hard,
and always set to crack.

It is not grass or stone.
No, more like ice,
much more,
an army of stalagmites rising from the depths,
unyielding and unbound,
crystalline and honed:

the frigid glow of outrage.

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