memento mori

The following poem is written as part of the TFE Poetry Bus Tour, a Monday poetry challenge that this week is a response to Krzystof Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims (of Hiroshima).

The challenge was to write as we listened to the music without knowing anything about the piece. In the spirit of the challenge, I did not even look at the title of the composition as I wrote the following poem, which I think has a strange synchronicity with the inspiration for the music:




Memento Mori

Moving, moving,

Roundabout,

We’re in, we’re in,

We can’t get out;

We’re held too long

Inside the song.

Hidden passage,

Many doors,

Stairs to nowhere,

Many floors,

Boarded windows

To the world,

Hiding, dodging

In a whirl;

Sliding slowly

Down the wall,

Head in hands,

We hear the call

To take up arms

Or else we fall.

The train we’re on,

The train is gone.

Looking back,

Grey and black,

Crowds of people

On the track.

Doors not opened.

Empty chairs.

Empty rooms

Inviting stares;

All is loss.

Lost is all.

We’re going,

We are gone.

enough

Perhaps

it is enough

that the sun

streaks silver

as it crosses

leaden skies,

enough

that trembling leaves

let go their bonds

and sail

before they fall.

Sometimes,

I think

perhaps

it is enough

that the heart

expands

over and over

of its own accord

before it finds

its rest.

Sylvia Rising

Sylvia Rising

History on her rosy northern skin

had traced with pain the crossed, fine

lines of vain attempts and vanished

tears, of long endured days and years and deaths

that marked her like a line of graves

waiting for the art within her charge.

Through too few years she bore the charge

of creation; from her fragile bones and skin,

and from her mingling with that grave

poetic man, the mixture of her own fine

poet’s blood with mud made life from death

and dreams that from her heart would vanish

only as the storied, vanished

bird that falls beneath the charge

of purifying fire and defies its death

to leave the self and rise within new skin,

all loss and pain ground down to fine

thin ash that blows across the useless grave.

With art unconquered by the grave

attained, she spins the words of never vanished

heart; beyond the veil of night on strong, fine

winds, she sends her poet’s charge:

Be fire that frees these words of their fine skin

and burns them to the ashes of a death

that is a rising up, the death of death.

With spirit breath, she mocks the wished-for grave,

and putting on a pure new feathered skin,

soars forth upon the wings of her vanished,

but unvanquished heart, from which the charge

of beating with too fine

a beat – hoping with too fine

a hope to find the pall of death

no longer is her calling or her charge.

Her spirit heart takes flight beyond the grave,

bearing through the cast of this dark night the vanished

hopes and dreams of verse and skin,

delivering the poet’s charge beyond the grave,

to mingle with us in a living fire and vanish

from her death into this fine new skin.

the land of me

The Land of Me

I wish I were the red balloon
Of a hurdy gurdy man
Whose little monkey set me free
To sail across the land

To places that I’ve never been
And times I’ll never see;
I’d float beyond this Isle of Man
And to the Land of Me.

A stranger to this foreign shore
Where one can think all day
About the things she wants to know
And what she wants to play,

My red heart would then swell with joy
To very nearly pop
As I pull my own strings along
And never, ever stop.

I’d float just where I want to go
Without a hand to hold
And sail away on fresher air
Than I ever breathed of old.

Word of the Lord

Do you remember the day

we ran like conspirators

when young men in white shirts

came calling?

I laughed when you said

we were hiding from

the Word of the Lord

and rocked the baby in my arms

so she wouldn’t give us away

with a cry.

I remember that day

as I stand like a lone penitent

while you call upon

young men in white shirts.

I remember that day as I fall upon

the Word of the Lord

and rock myself like a baby,

trying very hard not to give way

to my tears.

Consider the Lilies

Consider now the lilies of the field

And then consider, too, the field itself,

The coarse high grasses wet with rain that catch

Against my calves as I pace the path to the pond.

Consider, too, the dark filled pond, the just passed rain,

The smooth-slipped rocks that line the muddy banks,

The slippery mud that sucks at toes

Of shiny frogs that jump and plop at my approach.

They neither reap nor sow, these lilies nor this field.

These frogs that hop at my approach, kings of this small pool,

They neither reap nor sow. The floating moon,

Only floating, shines up on me as light from some

Unseen deep new world. I must consider then the moon,

This same, riding gently on the ripples of the startled frogs

And glittering jewel-like on the rain stained grass.

I must consider then and hold this moon, this night, this field,

These lilies closed in prayer, these creatures deep.

I must consider what I did not sow and wonder if even Solomon

Could know what it is I reap from this array, what it is I reap

From this deep new world, this bright and shining deep new day.

autumn haiku

autumn’s distinction

reigns sovereign in subtraction

nectar gone to seed

lost haiku

I lost a haiku.
Somewhere on the way to work,
It flew from the car.

Somewhere on the way to work,

Between the dashboard and the zigzag lines,

I dropped a haiku from my mind.

I said it to myself and to the air

And to a clutch of crows

Astretch the power lines,

But somewhere on the way to work

Between the dashboard and the clutch of crows

Sitting on the power lines

Like exclamations on the sky,

I dropped a haiku from my mind.

I searched for it along the power lines

Between the dashboard and the hanging leaves

Bowing with the morning trees,

But somewhere on the way to work

Between the dashboard and the hanging leaves

Bending with the trees

Like supplicants to sunrise,

I dropped a haiku from my mind.

I hoped to find it caught among the boughs

Between the dashboard and the hills of green

Climbing to the rising sun,

But somewhere on the way to work

Between the dashboard and the climbing hills

Escorting me through morning

Like ushers garbed in green,

I dropped the haiku from my mind.

I sought for it among the climbing hills

Between the dashboard and the parking lot

Swallowing my car

Like an open mouth,

But somewhere on the way to work

Between the dashboard and the workday world

Waiting to devour my life

Like an eater of rhymes,

I dropped a haiku from my mind.

going home

You can’t go home again, Thomas,

You can't go home again.

Too many things are at end, Thomas,

Too many days and too many nights,

Too many hills we’ve had to climb

And too many times descend.

We’ve too many stories lived and told

Then placed up on the shelves;

Crossed too many windows and too many doors

To go back where we were before --

You can go home again, my love,

You can, of course you can!

The apple tree’s grown bigger now,

With branches spread for reading;

The berries bear the scars of birds,

And grapes boast in their swinging.

The childhood circled magic ring

Stands open as it did;

The little house where we first met –

And yet,

Too much has fled our grasp, Thomas,

Too many things have gone.

Too many days and too many nights,

Too many lives and too many doors

Are ashes of what went before.

You can't go home again, Thomas,

For all your words can say.

No matter that it breaks our hearts,

That life has passed away.

Leaving Dreams

These nights, rising softly from my solid bed,

I leave you to your even rise and fall

and pillowed burrowing in dreams

to follow the moon’s long reach

that gleams along the grass and mutes

the nighttime feel of cool dew crushing underfoot.

In the moongold glow, small creatures

sleek as seals swim across the dampened field,

startled from their peace by one that steals into their world.

They run, these families of skittish mice,

to hide among the garden vines, deciding

here or there to test a bite, and leaving ruined fruit

as if it has no use to them at all.

These nights, when I trade my solid bed

and the solid rise and fall of breath for cloudless skies,

I push into the moonshine meadow light, stealing

to the edges of the woods, searching

here and there for fruits to test,

and discarding pillowed dreams

as if they have no use to me at all.