The Blind Doves

 

We are the blind doves

as bright as bells in our tree made of moonlight.

In the morning,

children find silver apples which redden with the rise of the sun.

The old priest comes out with his broom,

and the church steps stay still like ponies for the currycomb.

A young woman comes in the evening.

She holds an apple in her hand and cries because she has no child.

There is a pie cooling in a window.

We can feel stars appearing and hear the howl of the lonely dogs.

We are the blind doves in our tree made of moonlight,

silent as spirits, and bright as brides.

________

for Sunday Muse #206. Birds are the theme.

I was keen to use the painting "Moon Over Harvest Village" by Amy Scholten, but it is copyright protected. You can see it HERE.

In The Garden Of The Moon

 

In the garden of the full moon

the pregnant moon

the mother-moon,

a silent copper bell rests its eyes.

Bronze from autumn evenings

gives the silent bell

a voice to pray with,

asters to sleep with, and deep red Malaga wine.

Outside the casement windows

which look out on the garden,

the Seasons argue

in voices poured from porcelain ewers.

Do you remember the crows

who ate the pears that hung 

dark and shy like lost children

in the garden of the Moon?

The mother-moon gathers them

with a thimble on her finger

stitching them into tomorrow and tomorrow

while the copper bell and the quarrelsome Seasons sleep.

The child we might have had,

is curled in the casement window

where crows bring silver stars from indigo nights

and a bell rings in prayer and sorrow.

_______

for Sunday Muse #171

Moon Men

You bring in Moon Men to take your side, the way you always do.
They seem unaware of their own absurdity,
and miss the irony when I offer them cheese and a jaundiced look.
Martians, Venutians, your whole catalog of 1950's movie space-crash schlock
take up for you and goggle at me with their several eyes, some on stalks.

I've had enough. I'm going to swing away on the rings of Saturn
and land on a moonless world, where everyone is courteously silent.
But just as I start to unclench, here you come, with Moon Men to the right and left,
charting my shortcomings, agreeing after much discussion, 
and then stuffing me into a sock to be swung like a cat until dazed, dented, dead.

Data Not Commonly Known

Neil never came back.
What is she supposed to do now? Dust?
She can't--
the task seems too monumental, 
and with him gone, who cares anyway?

He came out of the blue, fell from the sky,
a knight in shining armor.
She should've known he'd have a wife.

He went home to get some things
in 1969.
Now, here she is alone--
losing her mind,

getting older,
and wearing his stupid flag around her face
like a wedding veil.
______

Younger Woman

I want to be a younger woman in a former time,
working in a clock shop,
living upstairs with my nine-lived cat.

As a baby, I was dusted with shine from the moon,
refracted through my window at a different angle for every dream.
Mama said, dreams are nonsense
and life is mostly duty and a difficult business.

I want slender wrists and a silver watch;
hips as round as the bend in a river stream,
and my hat piled high with blooms and feathers.

Mama's half dead now, not remembering what she said five minutes ago.
I say, "Mama, look at the moon, changeless, ever the cool Mistress
of outward sky and inward seas."
At last, mama doesn't contradict me. She has forgotten how.

I want to be a younger woman in a former time,
wearing deep blue dresses flared at the shoulder and cinched at the waist,
with white lace at every edge.

"Pussycat," I will ask, in the night quiet above the clock shop,
"What do you suppose we were, when we were older?"
Her attention will stay on the skylight, and the moon beyond, 

as if there were no answer there;
or as if there were, and what foolish girl could fail to see it?
______

for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads: "Youth & Age"

Sunday On The Moon

When Easter came,
we were still on lunar mission.
The men laughed, but we women
wanted new dresses so badly we could taste it.

How to know the winter and its heavy silent snows have gone?
The mild air on our legs.
The light material on our skin.

Ashes to ashes,
as last month the Wednesday came and went.
Dust to dust,
and that we have plenty of,
but here, there is no resurrection,
just craters
and our restlessness made worse by proximity to The White Lady.

Jen began to speak more and more often of apple trees.
Our spartan quarters, the view out the window,
were all white, like blossoms in April.
When she began to laugh for no reason,
and to see snakes in the electrical,
we knew she had crossed, retrograde, into some uncharted sector.

We had only two males on the mission,
now just one.
Jen planted a root-blade in the other,
dreaming of a man-orchard instead of wasteland.
She has undone her own purpose,
and gives her scented wrists indefinitely to the soft restraints
so reminiscent of passing clouds.

Jen-bird, we call her,
Sylvia and I.
Stephens just calls her "that fucking bitch".
It is Easter Sunday on the moon,
and we haven't got even the trappings of religion--
no statue of the Blessed Virgin,
no candles,
no censer.
It is a little shocking how important those trappings become
when they are absolutely, irretrievably absent.

This mission is like hearing an endless, hollow busy signal from hell;
There is hopeless, and then there is hopeless from here.
Sylvia and I made apple blossoms from anything white we could find,
and created a coil tree to lean in a corner of the med lab.
Jen-bird, we said.
Call the snakes, call down temptation--
God knows we could use a little more of it.

Stephens hates us for comforting the murderess,
and for not letting him fuck us.
"The nuns" he calls us, sneering, frustrated.
Jen-bird is the one who would have,
but he is afraid of her now.
Our one joy is offering to turn her loose,
just to hear him call us mad.
We are, oh we are,
and we were, long before we ever saw his face.
________

for Kenia's Sunday challenge at Real Toads!

Herd Memory

HERD MEMORY

The moon is nothing but a dusty ball of rock.
Men were made to go and find out for sure,
flung there like a little handful of rice
at the wedding of desolation and ruin.

The bride wore a white dress
and her chalky carriage was pulled by moon horses,
made from pale stones and solar winds.

When the astronauts came home,
one of them married an albino ticket taker
from a traveling circus.

Their children were wild--
with black hooves hammered from the spaces behind the stars,
and their bedroom shelves filled with rows of Mane N Tail,
they were vain, high stepping Gypsies.

Farmers wanted to shoot them
for eating all the clouds after midnight
because they wanted to see the moon.

"Grandmother," they said,
"Look at us. We are beautiful."
The kin tie pulled them toward the sky like kind redemption,

Where each night they hovered half-way,
hooves up, heads down, arrayed across the sky
Shining Brightly.
________

This poem is for Real Toads mini challenge #24, featuring a collection of amazing dolls. The one I have written about here was made by Junsung Lee. I think it's gorgeous.

Cycle

(For G.)

When you were little,

Did you ever walk out in a summer field

In the morning?

Were you ever just a wet-sneakered girl

With your shins in the shadows of the tall grass

And your face loving the warmth of the early, angled sun?


Did you smell the earth,

Ponder a cloud,

Or discover a ladybug and hold her in your hand?


You knew that home would still be there behind you, later

When you were ready to go back.

You were not going to live among the grass stalks forever;

You were only a little girl

Wandering through a single day in June.


Sweet woman,

Long before these foundations were laid,

You were loved.


Do you ever wonder

Where is the one who cares?

Will they come?

Will they stay?

Will they not turn away again and leave?


It's just a summer day, Sugar.

You are here only for a while,

And home will still be there ahead of you, later

When you are ready to go back.
________

For G.

A tree decides not to hate the ground.

"She could not have received you, my straying leaves,

Had you not let go of me first;

Not once,

But a thousand times.

You spread yourself over her as if she were precious,

But I think

She was just close by

And besides,

You had already fallen as far as you could go.

What good does it do me

To be so constant?

My arms are full of emptiness

All the same."

A tree decides not to hate the ground.

After all,

Spring, and fullness, will come again in time--

Still, each ring

Leaves her older

Though stronger,

And at night, in Winter,

She dreams of bending without a care,

Green again in a sweet breeze

Of June and the way things were.

_______