Gently Does the Night

Lately, I've allowed life to interfere with my writing, and as sometimes happens, living has chased away my muse and left me wanting. I've decided that I can't allow my living to define my life, so my new vow is to write every day, even if I write badly.
What follows is my first completed product of this vow.

This poem began with a few lines rolling through my mind, as my poems often do. The problem was that nothing further developed, so I decided to help it along by writing to form; hence, the sestina. By conforming to a particular pattern, I forced myself to extend my thinking. At least I am writing.


GENTLY DOES THE NIGHT

Gently does the night go into day
Like lovers parting lips  and giving way

To old familiar, tender pleasures.
Then boldly rising, Sun thrusts the moon

Careless from his bed into a weary world
Where nightime treasures end,

As all soft loving dreams will end
When shown beneath the harsher light of day.

The risen sun looks down on this cold world
And calls us forth to go about our way

And busy our time with no thought of the moon
Or other of those softer natural  pleasures.

Our days we fill with things that pass for pleasures --
Getting, spending, working with no end

Until the shly shining rising of the moon
Parts herself again to gentle out the day;

We live our lives of busyness this way,
Worn out and wearied in a wondrous world.

Our artificial, busy, concrete solid world
We fill with artificial, solid, concrete pleasures --

While harshened, hardened hearts along the way
Pull us only to a solid, hardened end,

Baking us with fire and heat like day
Solidifies his hold on earth and blurs the moon

Until the moon herself forgets she's Moon
And is subsumed into the brighter world

And blotted out by day.
Were there not times when natural pleasures

Triumphed in the end?
Were we not made to live another way?

The night herself can light a better way
If we would pause in wonder at a moon

That shines past concrete to the end
Of this harshened, heavy-hearted world

Devoid of pleaures.
The gentle light of night can blot the day

And put an end to life's unnatural way,
But only if each day we choose the moon's
Sweet sleepy treasure over a concrete world devoid of  pleasure.

Oh, Martha!

I feel compelled to put an asterisk beside this one and say that the "you" is not meant to be Jesus, although the story of Mary and Martha did spark the poem. While listening in church, I kept thinking that I know the better part, I just can't do it. I'm Martha through and through. (Working on the resentment thing, though. I promise.)

AND...I considered passing this off as an official Poetry Bus poem for the week, but I'm far too superstitious for that. The Puritans did a job on my head, apparently. You know, Sinners in the Hands, and all that. You might want to go to Rachel's place for this week's riders. Meanwhile, I'm counting on God's keeping his/her sense of humor!  ;-)






OH, MARTHA!

They tell me it's the better part.
     We're not supposed to think,
           Just sit there at your feet,

But try as I might, I can't
     Make my hair ripple
          Waves of welcome.

No, look hard enough,
     And you'll find me 
          Beside an open door;

I'm sneaking a smoke
     And thinking about the weather
          And what they'll want to eat.

I'm waiting for the microwave to beep.

the visitor

a hulking thing
breathing fetid breath
sits on my shoulders

even in my heart
even in the dark,
it does not bear thinking 

it is an unseen monster
under the bed
reaching for an ankle

it is the other, 
the visitor
living in my house

Glow of God

The Poetry Bus prompt this week from Dragonfly Princess Marion is to write about a color. My poem is about the color of light, a glow from God given to creatures here below. It was prompted by a story on the news.

Just when I thought I had nothing to say about color, this...




GLOW OF GOD

In the bay, neon blue trails
sway with the stir of tides,
signaling some secret
shared by those who know
its conscious cosmic flow.

In the fields, fireflies spark and fade,
flushing from the grass,
unaware that rushing children seek
to catch the magic as it passes
through their hands.

They call it bioluminescence,
this blooming internal glow,
light without heat, a pulse of God
beating in small creatures
here below.

And in a story on the news today,
a famous General holds his breath
while science strives to catch
this marvel, magic cosmic glow 
and make of it a thing to use for death.

Transformations

TRANSFORMATIONS

Last night while we raged
in blankets of sleep,

Scattering shreds of ourselves
through boardrooms and city streets,

The wind wrapped its coaxing cloak
around the branches of trees

And whispered, “Come with me.”

While we twisted
in our cotton shrouds

And dived beneath the day
like sailors on the way

To Davy Jones's locker,
the wind took planters by the hand

And led into the field,
leaving roots and stems strewn

Like dance cards dropped on chairs
by twirling girls.

This morning, the yard is transformed
into a labyrinth of scattered things --

Like the edges of our dreams,
like the blankets and cloaks

We've forgotten on the morning floor.

And we find our way through the day,
grasping the saving string of dreams

To dodge the scattered limbs
the world so often places

In our way.

Teenager, On the Way

Teenager, On the Way

to school, at the light.
The bass beat rocks the car
and hums the street.
Behind me, two girls
in an old Mercedes,
in front, unabashed
by the taped taillight,
and hanging half out
the open window
in delight,
a jaunty salute
over the hood of my car.
A crinkling of eyes
the buzz cut hair
the muscled wave
of a tee-shirted arm
before the light changes
and he is off,
a blast into the ether
of the curve out of sight,
as quick as that.

Out of Gas

amazed, appalled, amused,
befuddled, bewildered, confused
the ride that we took to the past--
so glad that we've run out of gas




I knew everyone would be able to write about schools or schooling; I just had no idea how many of you would have such vehement dislike of those days! As a teacher, I loved a good challenge -- a kid with a different kind of thinking, one whose previous teachers had warned me to watch out! These were the thinkers (yes, and often the stinkers) with whom I developed the closest relationships and respect.

I have to admit, though, that it saddens me to know how many of the smart, talented, creative, funny people here had such bad experiences with school. I feel a gigantic apology is in order...so, on behalf of those witless wonders of wisdom who lacked the vision to connect or protect or promote you...I am sorry.

The Bus stops here.

Catch the Big Yellow Poetry Bus

THE BUS STOPS HERE!

After all these weeks of running to catch the Poetry Bus, I'm finally at the wheel, and what do I bring?  It's the Big Yellow School Bus!

What else would I drive?

I'm what you might call a Schoolmarm. Counting this school year, which began for me this week, I've been in schools for fifty years as a student, teacher, school leader or district level administrator. It's as natural as breathing for me to plan a field trip!

So....sharpen your pencils, kiddies! Grab your papers and your lunch boxes, and come along! We'll start here in West Virginia, head north for Professor Semi-colon, then make our way across the country, picking up a Bug or two along the way. We'll make a brief detour to pick up some Canadian Kats before we reach the coast. After we fuel up on Enchantment, it's back to the Atlantic, by which time the TFE should have solved the Problem of the Day: How do we get a big yellow bus full of poets across the sea to London and Dumfries and Dublin and highways and byways between and beyond?

Well, that's the magic part of our art! I promise this bus will go as far as your words and imaginations can travel. Just meet the simple Poetry School Bus challenge for this week: write a poem about school or schooling. Leave your URL in my comment box, and I'll link it in the sidebar below my profile-->

The bus runs on Monday. Don't forget your permission slips, boys and girls!

* New Passenger : Judy Clem at http://www.judyclem.blogspot.com/
Welcome Aboard, Judy! 


Just for a warm up, here are a couple of mine:

SCHOOLMARM (that's me)

At three o'clock
When school is out,
She gathers up her things.
If she had an old hat,
She'd jam it on her head;
If she had an old horse,
She'd plod down country lanes,
Stopping here and there to pick tall stems
To take with her on her calls.
She'd sing along the way.
There would be dinner with the families,
A different one each day.
They'd watch their grammar,
Put out their better plates,
Offer her the choicest cuts of meat, good bread.
Later, they'd stand on the porches and wave
Until she was gone from sight
Before the washing up.
If she had a hat, a horse,
A country lane
At three o'clock --
If she had a hat and a horse
In her life.

This next one is dedicated to a wonderful poet friend with whom I survived the messed up college years. Her K is Name Lawson. Or something like that. She'll recognize herself here, and you can find her outstanding poetry here:

WHO WE WERE

I still recall your stance
before the class,
so compact,
thick black curls
around your head,
eyes big as china saucers.
You're telling tales
of cars and barracudas
and mixed up names.
At night we pick black circles
from our eyes and rub them
on the smooth white page,
drawing lines round truth and beauty,
knowing it for what it (is) (is not).
At eighteen, we think we know
who we are.
And youth.
We drink our wine
from plastic cups
and sleep with youth
between us,
tangled in our separate dreams,
riding who we (are) (are not)
to places where we'll someday
know our names.

Milkweed

Milkweed

Why did it take me
          so many years
                    to know

that it is the milkweed,
          before it bursts
                    with sticky fluid,

          before it pops
                    its silky pods
                    of fluff,

that fills the nights
          with heady,
                    heavy Heaven?

Georgia, Your Hands

Chris at Enchanted Oak is taking the Poetry Bus on a tour of sunny California this week, and she has given us a pictorial challenge. Georgia O'Keeffe's hands are the subject of both the picture and my poem.

O'Keeffe was married to the famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and they both scandalized society by some of the photos of her that he took and displayed (not to mention their unusual lifestyle). Stieglitz photographed O'Keeffe off and on for years, so we have a wonderful chronicle of her changing landscape as we see the progression of her subjects and her art.

One of my favorite photos of O'Keeffe shows a young woman, her hair loose around her shoulders, clasping a white silk gown at her breast. This is the first time I've seen the picture of her hands.

Georgia, Your Hands

When you stand so solid in the light
your hands crossed over your heart,
hair around your shoulders, Georgia,
white silk robe clasped loose across your breasts,
coal black eyes  held tight into the lens
like the eyes of the night,
it is your hands,  your long lean fingers
that crush and mix and brush the pigments
against the smooth white canvas
caressing it like silk, your strong, bold fingers
opening  yourself like an iris or a  poppy
or a white trumpet flower
that  feel deep into the yellow white of bones
that stroke the browns and lights of desert shadow sun;
it is your hands prying and pulling at their own skin
peeling away the layers of faraway city and desert,
your eyes, your hair, your white silk robe
until you too are nothing but bone,
bone and bone and stamen and sepal and sand.