I spent the day pruning a tree,
its branches wild, a sprawling siege
that overtook my space of yard
and lorded all the plants, as liege.
And in this time reshaping a tree,
my thoughts, some bits of poesy.
Its limbs removed, the trunk is scarred,
and the lowest branches out of reach.
And after cutting this creeping tree,
now left with a perfect symmetry,
the sunlight’s glim now reaches far
with spacial perspicuity.
There is a secret around the corner
that the roses will be red instead of pink;
the sunset and sunrise will both illuminate
the dark moments – far more eloquently than any word.
There are remnants of language,
The laughter of loved ones and strangers
are beauty in a spattered world –
and strung-together notes of the discordant are melodious when unfurled.
There is a depth in every eyeful gathered from a window
and a coolness in the soil grasped by each hand.
You feel the heat that summer’s afternoon conceives,
and I hear the whiskers of October’s morning in the leaves.
There are shadows that crawl in the day
and charming smiles that ornament a night.
And this is truth’s impassioned plea to our humanity,
and affirms the secrets we sometimes cannot see –
perhaps, life is our communal way to share
and maybe, each one of us is rare.
******
The events of this past week have weighed heavily on me – the loss of two very successful, highly creative individuals to suicide, and the realization that this type of hopelessness impacts far more people than we know/understand. There is such beauty and importance in life, and each one of every one of us has a rare gift to share with others. Remember this.
Wishing you all a wonderful week.
Three of them, wandering off at the barbecue:
Jonathan, Allison, Rebecca Williston
didn’t remain for the hot dogs and chili sauce
wanderlust leveled a lure at this crew.
Sauntering off to the swing-set and whirl-around
all of them squealing with joy in the afternoon.
Allison yelled for the first swing and Jonathan
called for the whirly-gig-jumped with a bound.
Rebecca resigned then to pushing them both again.
First, she shoved Allison hard and with all her might
ran to spin Jonathan round and round – in a flight
back to the swing she indulged dear sweet Allison.
This storm continued for minutes and seconds
till Allison’s comment “I’m too high – the altitude!”
Jonathan’s face was awash in pea green –
Their mother called out-“Your birthday cake beckons!”
Rebecca took off – leaving the other two.
Both of them reeling and dizzy and tottering.
Neither felt well enough to eat their birthday cake.
A couple of pieces Rebecca could choose.
This is the tale of the Williston “triple-lets”
How they react and the things they indulge.
Jonathan, Allison both overdo things, and
Becca – Rebecca – she takes what she gets.
My words disappeared under the moonlight,
The sounds of dissipation fading fast
to quiet in a cavernous depiction,
a blank homage to the universal past.
Then, vibrations denigrated all the darkness
setting into motion light set free –
like a word spoken among the silence
resonating shift and change and deed.
The silhouetted shapes that give perspective,
colored vivid depth to pangs and shine,
a pulsing heart, a growing hunger
that extends from shadows unconfined.
To this, we owe our debts of salutation
the creative source we poets grace-
in the beginning there was nothing
but a word from which our imaginations trace.
Our one forever,
when it stole through the red gates of sunset
left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass
is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song you might have been.
No longer mired in waiting to begin.
They tell us the night means nothing,
and the candles their light the light.
Nothing is hid that once was clear,
then gone and then to come:
all the time, except the split
second, except—
What is there to say except to lament.
You live in the wrong place.
There’s no flowering time to come.
The hands fell off my watch in the night
and you counted the time
from this instant.
**********************
This Cento contains lines from the following poets:
Kenneth Rexroth, John Koethe, Lola Ridge, Brenda Hillman, Martha Collins, Melissa Kwasny, Katharine Tynan, Esther Louise Ruble, David Yezzi, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Jonathan Galassi, Michael Goldman, Robert Francis, and Lucille Clifton.
Coming now, in a swath of yellow,
this rising tide of dandelions.
Showing first in punctuated crowns
arriving signs of dandelions.
Golden plots among a fullness of green-
conspiring dandelion lines.
Amassed in fields and hills and mounds
collected dandelions upon inclines.
Rushing in from every side
waves of auric, common mind
Rising now, as I recline
on this tide, in dandelions.
It’s at times like this,
when morning slides across in its straw-yellow light –
that I am slow enticed to rise
and invite the day into my life.
Somehow its poetry comes upon me like I dial
digits on a rotary phone-
awaiting a cyclic return to home position before moving on.
It’s where the music of my choice plays from beginning to end,
with static embellishment reminding me of conclusion.
The ticks and tocks of the clock drive me forward in time,
It’s the moment of morning glory – once asleep in darkness,
then blooming in the day.
Beauty – she sits in moments, but grows in continuum,
and the anticipation at these time-points are like dust in the shifting light,
and my heart wakes in hues of endurance and tomorrow.
We played as we hopped on a path made of cobblestones,
working to miss tripping up on the wobbly ones-
teetering remnants of geological dawn.
With skips, our fortuitous leaps soon encouraged us,
daffodils blooming beside, on the precipice
jumping to miss the mud puddles along.
Darting and skipping on shiny smooth pebbles
No one would think less of us being rebels
while racing the sidewalks and adjacent lawns.
Falling about in the bluegrass and fescue
Speaking our dreams in expanse, what we cling to-
while bouncing, en-route, as the day lead us on.
Then, after our respite, we left hand-in-hand
Back to the fray of intruding demands,
the cobblestones under our feet level drawn.
And, clicking our heels in the dance of our sunset,
With light on horizons and tears in our sweat,
it’s like we were walking on air all along.
**********
Reworking an older poem from ca. 2005-6
It’s careful planning
in open seasons,
speeding on the highway-
none are most enchanting
than sultry evenings.
It’s dampening ground
then freezing compost-
warming to the sunlight,
glint and once again crowned
each day, sol profound.
It’s noisy joy
come silent druthers.
Minus equals pluses
and divisions are ploys
with burnished alloy.
It’s swaying elders
in the blue dimmet.
Twinkle and a glimmer
of days when he held her,
she’d swoon and swelter.
It’s now and tempted
cosset the twilight,
The token now doublet,
a bell sound presented
with geminate thread.
I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table,
A beggar shivering in silhouette,
with a splash of vinegar:
stoic, bitter,
strangely sweet.
It never stops still for a moment, so
I try to make it internal, and every wave is charmed.
How better to drift toward another world
but with leaves falling. The leaves, a modulation
of the accumulated darkness in which
two hundred million stars have wink and glimmer needles.
Soundless, their gaps in the dark
bless the traveler and the hearth he travels to.
All the blessings
for squash, apples, carrots, and potatoes,
the milk, the wine, the honey that night pours out.
The boy who lives inside me still won’t go away.
There was a gap in things and here we are.
**********************
This cento contains lines from the following poets: Andrew Motion, Langston Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Margaret Atwood, Donald Hall, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosemary Willey, Phillippe Delaveau, Luke Davies, Todd Davis, John Taggart, Bruce Weigl, Ron Padgett, Wendy Videlock, Howard Moss, John Hollander, Dave Lucas.
Taps and Ratamacues 