Saturday, April 25, 2009

Before He Fell

But still, he blames

The Flemish

For the reviews –

A splash unnoticed,

Not even front page news,

Just drama in an empty house,

Tragedy undetected.

While ploughmen

Plod along the pit,

The player is neglected.

His ears still ring with hisses;

His neck still feels the cane.

In muffled wet soliloquy,

He soggily declaims,

“Remember, master Bruegel

And your ilk, before you

Stroked me dead to please a guild,

Before you made me food for fish

And fixed my legs in blue,

Commanders of opinion, think on this:

Before I fell,

I flew.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Gleaners

From my window

I watch her work,

muttering as she stoops

and rises, rises and stoops,

methodically, relentlessly,

bending and pulling,

filling her bags slowly

in the weak morning sun.

Through crumpled cans,

old papers streaming ink,

thick bricks of refuse,

covered with a clotted

melt of cream, she threshes

until finally she discovers,

imprinted with deliverance,

her happiness.

Against the pane,

my lips intone with hers

as we breathe out

the mantra of the poor

and offer up our thanks

for daily bread.


Monday, April 13, 2009

matryoshka

a jewel in the forest

placed high on a mountain

at rest in a sepulchre

over the town

home for a princess

russia’s daughter

send him your dowry to

purchase your tomb


enter the west door

people who loved her

enter the west door

under the domes

enter to see matryoshka

your mother

enter to see her eternal home


brought as a child bride

niece of tsarina

fleeing the famine sunk deep

in the bones

hailed by the peasants

duchess of nassau

nineteen years to

remember their song


enter the south door

sisters and brothers

enter the south door

under the domes

enter to see matryoshka

your sister

enter to see her eternal home


lost to her young man

grief poured in building

a gem in the forest

high hidden in hills

five fiery domes under

five southern crosses

a tomb for his young bride

his child’s only home


enter the west door

people who love her

enter the west door

under the domes

enter to see matryoshka

your mother

enter to see her eternal home


mother and infant

both shells of each other

lying in state there alit

by the flames

worshipped as royals

loved as no others

lost to their homeland

before they were gone


enter the south door

sisters and brothers

enter the south door

under the domes

enter to see matryoshka

your sister

enter to see

her eternal home

Friday, April 10, 2009

revolution

all of time

hangs in place

Dark skies spin

a holy fire

of nativity.


all of life

bows its head

A lamb turns

on the spit

of divinity.


all the earth

holds its breath

Grace ignites

a flame

of revolution.


Thursday, April 9, 2009

Telling Tales

This is a departure from my usual poetry posts, but with Easter's arrival, I've been thinking about Tales from the Holler, autobiography, I swear.

I call this one Animalosity...

Most of my friends are animal people. They wax poetic about their dogs, their cats, their birds. They mourn the fish they flush, the geckos that escape. I, on the other hand, have no affection for furry, fuzzy friends. Let me tell you why...

In 1958, in Appalachia, at Easter, every little girl wanted an Easter dress, a pair of patent leather shoes, a little straw purse with silk flowers around the top, an Easter basket, and a multi-colored, dyed in the fluff Easter chick.

I can still remember following the peeping sounds down the wide tile stairs of G.C. Murphy’s to find the cardboard box teeming with chicks. They were green, they were pink, they were yellow. They peeped and pooped and climbed on one another’s backs, trying to escape the confines of those boxes. And for twenty-five cents, a girl could put her hands into that box, encase a body light as fluff, and give that chick a home.

And so we did, my sister and I. We cupped our hands round the fast-beating hearts of Pinky and Greenie. We took them home and put them in our own cardboard box to keep them safe. They were our Easter chicks!

Now, in 1958, in Hughes Creek Holler, folks lived in what my dad called “wall to wall poverty.” Our family had three rooms and a path. Literally. Our bathroom was the kitchen sink, where Mother filled a washtub for bathing, and our outhouse was, well…out.

It didn’t have a moon on the door, but it really was a little brown shack out back, and believe me, there was nothing cute or romantic about it. Anyone who is nostalgic for that sort of thing never had to go outside and sit in a dark little building on a wooden bench with the hole cut in. They never had to smell the stench of the muck below. They never had to watch the spiders crawling up the walls or fight the wasps that came inside.

They never had to track the peeps and peeps of a missing chick, and they certainly never had to say goodbye to a little green ship afloat… well, I think you get it.

*****

Another Easter, a few years later, the whole school is having an Easter egg hunt, and the prize for finding the most eggs will be a real-live EASTER BUNNY!

With Timmy Proctor’s love offering (he of the f-e-a-r on every knuckle) and with the eggs I found on my own, I won the prize!

I can only imagine how thrilled my mother must have been when I came home – somehow – with a rabbit, a real live Easter rabbit: Thumper.

Did you know that rabbits scratch people? Neither did I, but WonderBoy, my little brother, found out after three short days! And so, after just enough time to for me to bond with Thumper, I had to GET RID OF THAT RABBIT!

At school, I asked my first love, Miss Haygood, if she would take my rabbit, and she agreed enthusiastically. Problem solved! Thumper would have a good home. My bunny and my teacher -- what a perfect match!

Okay. I’m sure you can see this coming. But it’s true.

A few days after giving him away, I innocently asked Miss Haygood, “How’s Thumper? How’s the rabbit?”

She must have misheard. She must not have heard the present tense. She must not have heard the plea in my voice, because she uttered a word I’ll never forget as long as I live, a word that hardened my heart against animal love forever.

“How’s Thumper?” I asked with childish innocence.

Her eyes rolled heavenward, her hand clutched at her middle, and a smile crept into her voice.

“Delicious!” was all she said.

Never again.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

perspective

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'


in memory

you stand

an abstraction

of sensuous delight

however

reverie out

of all proportion

with grim reality

does not withstand

a detailed scrutiny

i write to invent

not re-create

therefore

i must

state

you

are

a matter

of perspective