Lucky at Winter Solstice Speaks

I just found this poem I wrote and forgot December 2019 pre-pandemic. I find that entering darkness before the Winter Solstice welcomes the celebration of light to follow.

Wild Horse at Winter Solstice Speaks

Horse says, listen again.  Did you forget me?

And the dry bright summer of my dying?

Let the cold dark remind you how just now

 a smile passed your lips when you thought of us together. 

So little pain, loss gentled. Did you forget me? 

 And all the pastures before our story

where you yearned for someone like me, 

and whispered a call? Go again to a treeless field 

and look up: the stars spin around the pole again 

then comes a slow late sunrise.

Sunrise fires the stubble to gold at first light.

Invite the blistering light of loneliness to return

and bring you to your knees till you beg 

for someone to let themselves be loved 

as you loved me. Do not name this loss.

In the field, before nightfall, you may be found.

The Winter Solstice: Irish and Celtic Traditions, Newgrange

On the Occasion of an Art Exhibit on Bees

Invited by the Colorado Poets Center folks (if you publish poetry, register yourself here http://coloradopoetscenter.org and meet the welcoming Beth Franklin among many others) to join other poets presenting poems involving bees at Art Bar and Gallery, I thought about many bee cliches as in the 18th century poem “How Doth the Busy Little Bee” (Wyatt) and chose to resist those tropes. Ever noticed how we think all members of a species look alike until we finally pay attention? Ever notice how we sometimes project our own values onto non-humans (in that case, untiring industriousness)? One result of that projection is the current practice of forcing the labor of bee colonies. This isn’t a great poem, but a poem for the occasion. coloradopoetscenter.org

Against Wyatt’s How doth the little busy Bee   1715

We have seen in the bee ourselves unresting, 
our busy buzzing with business. We proclaim
hurrah workers! what helpers! what devoted underlings
to the Queen! And: poor drones, so strictly directed.

 If we have a day of rest we watch you unresting, 
clones, droids, tools.  Stop.  See now your trade in sweet beauty,
your stripey variations from wobbly to wide, 
from black to brown and golden, or green; 

how each wing’s gossamer net spreads, arresting in
your singular beauty, and how each of you is beautiful 
in humming, beautiful in interpetive dances,  
beautiful with your semaphores of fluorescence,  

each bee sky writing beautiful important arresting
poetry while your hive watches with their blazing dark eyes.
Very detailed macro portrait of bee Very detailed macro portrait of bee bee eyes stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images

Ode to the Future During the Pandemic

You’ve never actually been there, Future, your nitrile gloved hands beckoning,
a partner for a waltz we never learned how to lead or follow--
blue crocus underground and snow geese wintering in the south--
no part of you more than wishes or prayers to faithless lovers.
 
A partner for a waltz I never learned to lead or follow
you’re a dancer wearing a gown of milk jug silk and cornstarch shoes.
You’ve never been more than a ten-cent prayer, my faithless lover,
I scribed on paper and burned in winter, a summery green ash rising.
 
A dancer in a gown of milk-jug silk and thin-soled shoes
you won’t be recognized when you arrive.  It will be today,
scribed on burning paper, summery green ash rising
even though I saw you, our longed for Future running away.
 
We won’t recognize you when you arrive. It will be today.
What could you do to remind me I invited you to breakfast
(I saw you, hair streaming, running away)
when you come now in your goggles, mask, your smothered grin?
 
Could you remind me I invited you to breakfast,
blue crocus underground and spring geese restless, muttering in the south?
You approach now in goggles and secret smile.
You’ve never actually been here, your gloved hand beckoning.

Ode to Nostalgia

This rising mist, not dim, but light,

I bathe in Her more often

now that the Future (in her mask)

is running away

wobbling on bad feet.

This rising, mist, not dim, but light—warm,

every time She arrives this way

wrapping shining arms

around my shoulders

a feeling of light with different names

for the Past.  Story of a Day

when oyster middens

piled deep in their own memories,

still prodded our air with their past living

where we crunched along

finding every missing pearl

perfectly radiant as a touch.

How we hoped to hoard this day

the best of them in our pockets.

How many of these days were there?

Uncountable sea coves

where we sifted pebbles, shoosh, shoosh,

for agates, ambergris, smooth spheres

 while whales played out there

in their element, sea,

and where the hard wind sanded

our skin raw and made our sandwiches

crackle on our teeth.

                —-Ah, there I went again into Her shining arms

circling my shoulders

haloing me like Mothers

and again, instead, I go into

Her rising mist, not dim, but light,

a cloud, brighter than Now because the Future,

her hair streaming behind her,

runs away on wobbly feet

around a scorched bend and out of sight.

Oyster Middens on Tydbee Island Georgia

Zooming with the Horse

1. In profile, Horse shifts his dark
windowed eye a little down
and to the left to say scratch that
pull off that burr or tick
and I can’t see what it is, never
will know, anyway no chance
to pull it off, scratch
and after all he’s dead
as my vet said zooming in horse heaven
his sky legs regained.
 
2.  Zooming with the rabbit, She
turns one ear back then her head follows, then
there is only her rear and that tell tale tail.
 
3. I never get Roadrunner on the schedule to zoom.
Too fast for me.
 
4. Zooming with your dogs, they get so close
I can read their brains through their noses,
all their thoughts breathing out
until they speak alternately saying
throw the ball or where’s the ball or
here’s the ball, then zoom away.
 
5. My sister writes about watching lizards
doing push ups on their fairy tale fingers
and if she zooms me
they too will have a chance to zoom
under a stone.
 
6.In Time Lapse Zoom, your dahlias bud, open wider, show their throats.
In Time Lapse Zoom margigold petals drop and drift like snow.  Then snow.
 
7. I never see it coming, the sadness.
Right when I am laughing to think of zooming
the horse, the rabbit, the lizard, tulip, dogs--
might as well be fishes below a skin of lake
too deep to reach and if
I should net one out somehow
to stream my fingertip across her silver slick side,
and took her home with me
she would likely die.
So with you in the time of La ‘Rona,
friend zooming Safer Far Away, seen
not even through a glass but pixelated in some way,
not really seen at all.  Only imagined.

			

A Trio of Pandemic Poems

Like many, after March sank into my understanding like a wildfire smoke plume during an ozone-thick inversion, I veered away from screens except for news and for “seeing” family and friends, and into the garden. As summer ripened into fall as it does, and I gathered outside a few times with poetry-writing friends, I finished these poems. These comprise the epilogue for my almost published third book of poetry Bright Path Dark River. More on that, soon. The pandemic poems are listed as separate posts: Zooming the Horse, Ode to the Future During the Pandemic (a pantoum), Ode to Nostalgia. May the last poem give you permission, if you need it, to spend a little more time basking in the lights of good memories. (I hope hope hope hope hope you have some. If not, maybe you will make some up).

Here are a mini-pumpkin that I did not plant seeds for (I have a basket now of the darlings) and a zucchini that seemed after it was mature to want to sprout a second zucchini out of itself. I shall call it “Still Life with Surprising Life.”

By the way, various events supporting publication of Chained Dog Dreams didn’t happen, for obvious reasons, but the book is still available at The Book Bar in Denver, Narrow Gauge Bookstore in Alamosa Colorado, The Boulder Bookstore, some libraries (you could ask them to order it from Ingram), Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Finishinglinepress.com. Or directly from me! Message me.

Poem for Isolation

to: prisoners, refugees, immigrants, aged infirm, quarantined, us.

What I need to write now

is a different sort

of poem, one that

dings like a text or better

rings like a phone

call and when you

answer it is

your best friend, brother,

child, something, someone like

that, and everything is perfectly

fine, they say, the night’s heavy

snow is melting under spring sun,

something like that happens, and

let it be a poem that

doesn’t surprise you

at the end of it

with some scary real

news or moment of existential

panic like we get

every day. No,

I will write a poem

that could be everybody’s friend, could be

a hug, a kiss, could be

the delivery of oranges,

or the neighbor’s plum trees

flowering with certainty

there will be no late frost

no kiss of death

so when I share

this poem, I will edit out

the kiss of death,

will cut it short, and the flowers

will ease into fruit in this poem

over several warm months,

and when the poem of your phone rings

it will actually be your doorbell

(you have a door and a bell in this poem)

and there will be your neighbor,

your best friend, your children,

something like that, someone,

this poem, a hug during

the time of waiting,

not a poem of longing. Why

must I always follow

the poem to there,

a sorry visit to my heart,

a shocking fact in my mind,

some science that insists

on being spoken,

that it may be a very long

time before you have a door,

or a bell or a door bell rings,

if ever, but still,

when you open the door,

let the poem of us

be surprised and wait,

cherishing the light in our faces,

then let us reach out

and touch each other’s hands

then step as close

and hold each other as close

as a clam to its shell

mud to a shoe

a cat on your lap

fish in water, carpet to floor, bird to sky, egg to nest, worm to dirt, tree to root, type to page, planet to gravity.

Then let the poem be with you

like you and it are two peas

in a pod, that is

as close as the you-to-me

you always are

wherever you are.

Let my poem touch

you till you laugh.

p.s. Peas come 6 or 8 to a pod.

The poem will have a party!

Edward Hopper, Sunday Morning, 1930

A death/geometry poem and a helpful editor at Barnstorm Journal

I neglected to keep a good record of some of my publications and need them now in order to apply for a particular grant. I wrote Barnstorm Journal because I had difficulty using its search function and overnight received a kind note, an apology for the difficulty searching, and the url to my poem from 2013. So here it is! What a professional and generous editor, Charlotte Gross, an MFA student at New Hampshire University