The Poetry Marathon

Real

Science says other people see

with their eyes closed. Remember

Grandma’s house with the paint

peeling. See the green shingles.

See the stump of the tree (apricot)

she planted when I was born.

I only see in dreams.

Sometimes I can hear, which science

says others don’t. Music winds

like birdsong through ears and mind

and memory    the chords   I struck

on a piano    long since kindling

are playing now     I am 8 years old.

When you die

will I still hear your voice?

The soundtrack to these 40 years?

Will your face more familiar than my own

at least haunt my dreams?

How much of you will fade

when the tympani of breath & heart

cease? How will I reanimate this hour

you in the kitchen   me at my desk

and how will I know you were real

when I cannot see you…

Struggling (prompt 1) ~

My beloved struggles hourly, his life

parsed laboured breath by laboured breath.

I listen/don’t listen, struggling myself

wondering how long how long how long

Like a heartbeat I hear it, the refrain:

how long        how long        how long

3 a.m., and I listen, struggling

to separate the generator’s shush of air

in out  in out  in out

from his own knife edge breath

that oh so very slowly severs

all these years of threads

It’s been seven years since I first introduced myself to this incredible group. And I’m still writing poetry, still putting it out there, still finding (sometimes!) homes for what crystallises from my inner chaos. I love my annual participation in the Half Marathon: I’ve made so many friends! Not to mention that each year, at least a couple of the pieces I draft (in the 12 hours I suspend my disbelief that I can do this) are published.

I live in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We moved here 4+ years ago, to be w/ my son, DIL, and 2 grandsons. I’ve never been happier. I find myself writing about this new landscape, the foggy mountainscape, the different birds & chipmunks & voles… I’m very lucky we moved before last year’s madness.

Here’s hoping that this year is brighter than last, and that we all complete our work!

Piecemeal

So many of my friends     even my family

want labels. Want each part of me divided

parsed into neatly organised boxes

drawers     shelves    folders    trashcans

My hands should go into that grey box

marked in black letters   worker

My ears should go into a piano bench

tagged with a sticky note   where everything is music

My feet quiescent in an old shoebox

that bears the sticker runner. So many miles.

Nearby a roll of foamcore holds a collage

ravens and foxes and nautilus shells. Yūgen

haunter of woods who has no words for green love.

Into this basket woven by Rwandan women

I squish my ovaries    identified as    breeder

not to be confused with mother, safely stored

between the foxed pages of a thesaurus.

On an adjacent shelf, beside a scarlet chop,

my tattered heart nestles in a bird nest

barely large enough to hold its unnamed pieces.

Its wings are splinted now.

An arm is wrapped in a threadbare infant quilt

a cracked knee beneath a bronze tray

inside a lacquered box a teacup   stained

with tea leaves that knew the future once.

Somewhere among these scraps & shards

a compass might point north, and pieces

heed a lodestone’s call. But perhaps words

are not music, and pieces never make a whole.

But possibly… music is the skeleton of language

and song lives within each name. I sing myself,

gestalt of broken pottery, torn pages, lost ribbon.

I sing myself.

in the country of belief

In the country of

belief   old women read cards

draw them from pouches

embroidered with bronze and gold

offer ways to light the dark

****************************

I lost two cities, lovely ones

tight streets unfolding to the eye.

Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout

and the ports have names for the sea.

We look for communion

(there are easier ways of making sense)

any small thing can save you:

petals on a wet black bough,

the cold flash of the blue, unappeasable sky.

cento portion: Elizabeth bishop, Robert hayden, Pete Fairchild, Auden, Levertov, billy collins, mark doty, ezra pound, Stanley kunitz

“And if my colours all run dry…”

I’m being followed by a plague doctor

plague doctor   plague doctor

Fœtid breath of death

Slip of leather soles over stone

I hear him     creeping closer.

Behind his beaky mask

lurk no colours. His eyes as dry

as his clawed fingers, curled

into talons rend & tear rend & tear

leathery and skeletal.

I’m being followed by a plague doctor

plague dreaming    plague dreaming

all his teeth    north and south

rend & tear   rend & tear

caught between them, my skin

burns & withers

my lungs fill with fire

I can’t breathe

I’m being followed by a plague doctor

plague coming   plague coming

And if I ever lose my heart

if the plague tears it apart

it will not break. It will not.

‘summer night…perfection of thought…’

   with apologies to Wallace Stevens ~

Despite the rain, the fireflies flicker.

At the treeline, they hang in branches

diamante on blue so dark it burns.

Our house becomes a cottage

in the dark, shrinks strangely

in the summer heat, its recent build

only a mask for four walls and a fence.

A gentle lethargy falls on us – velvety,

still. Cicadas sing, moths dart into light.

The night descends.

Heart like a bloodred bomb ~

Oh love, oh love, oh red-blooded cliché

you are captain of my shipwrecked heart

Striped hep cats may burn like fire

in the jazzy night, but you? You burn

like cold cold ice, like nitrogen & glycerin

like a bomb, oh love oh love.

You are the bell tolling, that cracked

old bell of freedom from this island

we are cast upon. I want another ship,

captain. Death stalks us like a ninja,

and I want to go home.

But love oh love, oh bloodred love

you will not abandon ship. The ghost

of something dark beneath the sea

haunts you, and you will not jump.

You halt, you dance in ice cold fury.

You are the bomb,  my love. The bomb.

Seasons of Tea ~

Iced. With lemon, summer’s flavour. Sometimes honey.

And sometimes plain, hot as climate change.

Rooibos, Darjeeling – taste of muscatel, they say.

They’re wrong. Unless it’s a first flush private reserve.

Dragon pearl – jasmine leaves rolled into perfect green

globules of fragrance. Brew until liquid gold. Ice.

Hot. Lapsang Souchong, the drink of winter. Or mixed

with the bergamot of Earl Grey, summer. Hot or iced.

Hot with milk and sugar – Chinese Keemun. Ceylon,

in its name the whispered sibilants of Orientalism & its

colonial cousins. Assam, masala chai of spice & romance.

Iced. The fruit teas of the South: hibiscus, mango, apple.

The digestif ginger, mixed with pepper to augment the bite.

Thai iced tea, with boba – the bubbles of my childhood.

Creamy vivid orange, nothing I can make at home.

Hot. Verveine and linden flower, tisanes à la Français.

Verveine lemon verbena dressed in Chanel. Each scoop magic.

The tray: one my mother-in-law’s my 2^nd mother, who never

had to love me; one a sister gave me. One of wood and glass,

the centre embroidered by a friend I never saw again. Peter

Rabbit, his blue coat forever velvet. On it I place the teaset

I bought for my young sons, now the choice of grandsons.

Large pot, small pot. Creamers & sugars. Mugs, cups, saucers.

Cookies. A necessary element of the season of tea. Lemon bars

in warm weather, chocolate in fall. In the winter, scones laden

with cream & jam. At Christmas? Misshapen sugar cookies

torn from the mouths of metal cutters by hasty hungry hands.

The season of greed, of want, of tea and all its luxuries.

Its decadence.

Vacation before the time of plague

Outside the French doors, dawn stirs.

Tide is out. Sand stretches into the horizons

like Christmas Eve – filled with possibility.

From the kitchen, espresso’s dark fragrance

curls, floating on the breeze from the patio.

My beloved has made the trip to get coffee.

Pelicans soar through the panel of sky

between roof and balcony rail, silent silhouettes

against the cloud-brushed blue.

Soon the sky will dominate this cool tableau

vivid yellow shafts of hot light, scorching sand.

But for now, the day unfurls gently. The sea blossoms.