When I sing, music puts its hands around my heart
My words think tears are a puddle to splash through shoeless
Color often stops my breath, and I am held its prisoner
A sudden memory might need release
Any of these call up tears, and I don’t mind.
When the signal comes they might glide to me in a waltz,
or whirl up on the skirts of a wild mazurka.
Better yet, ride in on the smoothness of an alto sax.
Olivia’s obelisk sits in tailored green
behind an iron gate and arrow pointed fence.
Jumped-up gold letters on the arched black sign
declaring Restland. Stand near enough
in late afternoon shimmer and her voice is clear,
restless words reaching for release.
It is spring, but where are the lilacs I asked for?
No rounded shapes, or shade, or not to be forgotten scent.
A bit of rest here and there would have suited,
but this place? That name? The gods laugh.
Where are the staccato horse clops and soft whuffs,
wagon creaks, quiet words from walkers, children playing hoops,
the church bell? Only constant gliding rumbles, impatient horns,
blares of sound, no suitable rhythm for a hill town life.
Where are the visitors? None inclined or left to come,
not family, not him anymore. Is he here too?
Years doing women’s work, all the time seeing color,
rearranging light, and wanting paint and brush
to show him what I saw, wanting to say his given name,
not Mister, nor Mister Baker darling.
Where is the promised release of death? I lie,
still in my stays, oh god for a knife to cut their
laces, walk and breathe unbound, not go about exactly as a man
but with a woman’s eyes, much better. Will he meet me here in moonlight,
pull my fingers to his lips, and say my name?
If mending is the only route
then hold it safe, to
dance its beat
against your palm.
To brace the fraying edge,
thread light with memories
and run their warmth
the whole way round.
Bottom up or top down,
the strongest strands of love
comprise the weft, running stitch
to running stitch.
Then left to right or right to left,
hope forms the warp
needled over, under
in between.
It will look different darned,
the rend lightly scabbed,
dozing as it heals, until the next
onslaught of love.
____________________________
NaPoWriMo Day 1 (my view of time being elastic), the prompt was to provide instructions on how to do something.
Absent the fury of those blue eyes
no afghan hills here no war only mourning doves call
I will claim peace never having fought
and watch round leaf cuttings reach for quiet morning light
Here the snow tunnels of red squirrels
many possible escapes but are there none for you
She pried my eye open, brilliant Venus did,
balanced just above the pine spikes, tired
of waiting for me to get on with dreaming.
Around her clear sky at last, meteor showers
done, still hours away from light. Deaf to her
message I went back to bed and snoring dogs,
to dream of love that would not hear my voice
leading me across a bog on floating stones,
until I balked, and jumped away to solid ground.
She knew this one was on its way, and did not
want it left benignly in the deepest part of sleep,
but felt vividly, and have me wake grateful for escape.
Each time I try to find
the edge of space, searching
in the darkest part of blue,
past stars and their hangers on
orbiting a single mote of dust,
it turns out I’m that bird
expecting infinity but
finding sudden glass.
For Mary Oliver.
The moon brought me a gift
last night, before the
solstice rain moved in.
I left the crispness
of my northern woods
to walk the dew off grass again
with you. It’s late, the
house lights dark, the night
all midsummer lushness,
bell buoys ringing softly.
We know the way by feel
across the lawns and
down the hill to home,
but cannot pass the garden
with its flat topped walls.
We sit, shoulders touching,
stone still warm, and let our
breath find a rhythm together
after days apart. Then on
our way again, to soft
lamp light on varnished
wood, and pick up where
we were before the first
mosquito bit.
This morning I still feel
your hands, your skin on mine,
and smile, not caring.
They called him Crane, not Ichabod
but the bird. I’d see him
Saturday nights at the tap room
where he won big money
throwing darts, bony fingers
on a different circuit
from the rest of him as he drank.
Never pretty in daylight — when
drunk, his angles seemed smoothed
out, almost vaselined. The dim lit
corners left the knife scar
on his neck alone, a dull flash
of on-off michelob blinking onto his baldness.
On this night college boys found the bar,
and while the rest of his townie pals
shunned the clueless preps, he
fought them at the dart board one by
one, with his dead aim, metal sinking
into cork almost soundless, like a perfect
dive knifes into chlorined blue. Always
left them broke, their egos bleeding out.
The drunker he got, the better he played,
groove sunk cheeks split by a grin.
He took them all, keening
Peggy Sue softly
between each throw.
Today they are still here,
and I am too, in late September.
My hummingbird pair. One darts in
to feed, the other perches
drinking deeply, tipping her head back
to let the nectar slide.
I feel that energy sweet and cool
down my throat.
Their absence looms, a large bell
with muffled clappers tolling
unopposed, reddening the trees,
exiling light, ushering in cold.
Lately the question, will they
visit me again, or will there be
someone else looking out my window
twelve months on?
Each year it is harder let them go,
as if there were a choice.
He sits behind the screen,
the sun’s minute hand
remaps his curves in warmth.
With not much else to do
his morning’s work is
out there, living traffic
he will watch and note.
Force marched ants in
single file, small brown toads,
leaf rustles out of sight,
the swooping zizz
of dragonflies.
A hummingbird returns
to drink, then preen. This
makes him smile. Even they
must stop and rest.
The small world quiets, starts to
wait for shade, when high sun
moves away, raptors drafting
on its currents. He sees
and understands. Feeling
stiff he’s up to find another
patch of sun. A whoofing sigh,
then head on paws he sleeps.
Some mornings
present themselves
before my second eye opens,
no warmth, flat light,
featureless gray untrimmed,
not even stray rain clouds.
Tight woven canvas
hangs edge to edge
at the top of the sky,
and the living world
makes a new plan,
carrying on oblivious.
My patient dogs
don’t care a fig about the sun,
arriving bedside to present
mouth-damp slippers,
and we go out
to open up the day.
The eye sees silk,
pale green perhaps,
hanging loose over oiled bamboo,
and waits for a breath to set it floating.
A sail slowly calling to the skin,
conjuring a weightless cover
settling without fanfare,
suddenly warm when it rests
on breasts, or arms, or flanks,
then sparking shivers as
a hand pulls it
slowly away.
Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
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