Copper Country

 It's beautiful up there, and you shone.

At home on the rocky shores of Lake Superior,

I was a smooth stone for skipping; you were sunlight on the water.

What I didn't understand was the night that far north.

Red-haired, speaking with a hint of Quebecois,

you drew me immediately, because I was little rocks beneath the tide

and mistook you for sunrise and a pleasant peninsula.

What I didn't understand was Gichigami's jealous nature.

Any geologist sitting on a stool in any tavern in copper country

can tell you that a rock can be both solid and fragile.

He could describe the smooth, sharp, shell-like fractures

called conchoidal. But he is drinking, leave him be. 

I brought heft with me, I thought, cases of books

and a hard restlessness, cold to the touch and longing not to be.

Laying eyes in you, I sensed your spark and mistook it for warmth.

Copper conducts, it borrows, it doesn't hold a damn thing.

I am a little of this, a little of that--a collector, I carry some of everything

that has ever touched me. I am worlds, a common rock, a human.

You are what you are, pure in your own denying way, charged but empty.

What I didn't see then was that I was seeking brightness down a shaft.

We lay together in the cooling nights, the snow came, ten-twelve feet.

I thought I was strong, and that you were worth every devotion,

but I was flint, cracking and stabbing as we loved, and you were 

never meant to be moved, turning weedy green in the northern air.

I miss copper country. It's real, though mined out now. I've moved south,

grown older, living alone, staring into the fridge at midnight as if at stars.

And you? You dug in deeper, a disused light on the shore, pretty and dark.

What I didn't understand was that we would hurt each other so much,

and that it would matter so little. The indifferent lake still shines and sighs.

__________________

for my friend Dora at Dverse Poetics: Lyric Petrologies

My father was fascinated with the history of our state, and took me with him all over, explaining and teaching as we went. There is nothing quite like being taught by a teacher who loves his subject. 

Michigan's state motto is, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you."

Lake Superior is vast, and always cold. The shores are rocky. Its wild, careless beauty is easy to fall in love with, and it does not care that you are there.

Music: Megan Dixon Hood "Drown"

Shanty

 

I had a planet,

just a little one

but still.

it had activities--

recreational

illicit

volcanic.

from a promontory above one of its seas,

I pondered what to do with a drunken sailor

early in the morning.

I had to rent out my little planet

due to the commute.

Years passed. 

When I returned and saw

what the renters had done,

I brought the flood in my righteous anger.

Things are better now,

lo these many months gone by.

I have a koi pond with native goldfish.

I sleep in until lazy o'clock

or until the stars wheel above my gingerbread cottage.

The sailor got sober, survived the flood,

and sings, "Weigh-hay and up she rises" 

when I stir

both my happy ass,

and the coffee he has kindly fixed

the way he knows I like it.

I have a planet,

just a little one

but still.

________

for What's Going On? -- "In Uncertain Times"

Music: Johathan Edwards "Shanty"

Iris Indigo

 

Iris Indigo used to sing on shore and shipboard

with the voice given her by some broken, incandescent god

now and in the hour of her death, amen. 

Loved by the moneyed and shanghaied, 

tuxedoed and tommyrotters,

Iris Indigo

indiglorious

into everything,

indi gone. 

_______

for dverse quadrille monday "indigo"

Music: Melody Gardot La Llorona

My Despair

—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,

the single secret will still be man  --e.e. cummings

I spoke to my despair

in a voice that October

wears around its injured throat

on a chain of dripping water.

Because the nights are too long,

I sew their darkness into a jacket

and on the sleeves are

embroidered golden snakes.

I sit at a table made of the world

with legs of heirloom iron and wind.

Young men run past, shouting

and dragging morning to her grave.

In evening, I speak to the cardinal

who comes to my window like a Gypsy.

I say, the dawn is still in love with you

but a snake strikes the cardinal

from my sleeves

and my despair.

______________

for Dverse Poetics "Reflections" The image by Andrew Ridley and the quote by e.e. cummings are required. 

Don't forget that Word Garden Word List remains active through Saturday. 

Pomegranate & Oleander

 

I traveled through an arid land

where pomegranate trees bent like new widows

to find myself in a room with white stucco walls,

an almond in batter, with oleanders in a vase. 

Scarlet oleanders, delicate and bright, fragile

pages of dawn in a book of finite days.

The windows are narrow and look out on the bay

blue with white edges, sewn for a tide that never stays.

White boats like a spray of Nerium oleander

on a blue-edged plate set in a shifting hutch,

or whites of eyes from evaporated dreams

of a lover on an iceberg, things slowly lost and such.

I traveled through an arid land

a museum of what not to become,

born from a pomegranate seed,

fed on oleander, a gull duty-married to a setting sun.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Joy School.

The Dark Bird

 

Behold the dark bird,

new as a fresh injury

old as antiquity

spreading its wings 

bespangled with collected eyes.

Millions cheer the dark bird.

empty sockets over their grins

like twin red suns

over a planted scythe.

Behold the dark bird

in all its majesty and power,

its feathers tipped with blades

and blades are most of what it is,

wounding all, even itself.

All hail the dark bird

whose spread tail obscures

the east, its head devouring the rest.

Kneel to the dark bird

and behold in its bones

your own grave.

_______________

Music: Cream Deserted Cities of the Heart by Jack Bruce and poet Peter Brown

Poem For Those Trying To Reach Me About My Car Warranty

 "I found that just surviving was a noble fight" --Billy Joel

If you're bleeding on my block

I'll call an ambulance.

If you're hanging around the kebab truck looking broke

I'll spring for some kofta,

but I can't carry the world's weight--

my own is enough.

It's September and once again I take stock. 

My trees are a little bigger--

I touch them with the flat of my hand as I pass

wishing them prosperity.

Sometimes a limb will fall;

I can see where the woodpeckers have been.

There are two different ones who visit--

are they the same ones as a year ago? Two years ago?

Am I the same as I was then? 

Will someone call an ambulance for me one day?

One night driving home I ran over a skunk.

My dog killed a different one on a different night.

I felt bad, but kept my car, bathed my dog.

He is my seventh dog. This is my only life. 

I've told it all, about the PTSD, the alcohol, the depressions,

and also about recovery, coping, finding joy where I can.

You want to talk about wars and rumors of wars.

Whose side am I on? Aren't I outraged? Don't I care? 

It's September and the sky is that glorious rare blue.

The jays have been by, and the grackles.

I did not drink today or wake up screaming. 

I did not consider methods of suicide.

I wish all of this for you, too, but peace

is too precious a thing and I'll only give what I can spare.

________

for What's Going On? --"Finding the Balance"

Ten Years In Five Lines

babe, around my heart

a rusty saw tooth of words

both spoken and unspoken

venoms the sugar core--

the magnolia darks to blackthorn.

---------

a Wayra for Dverse Poetry Form.

note-the berries of the blackthorn (sloe) plant can be eaten, but the seeds are toxic.

August & Crickets

 

As a girl, I carried the cage I was given

and searched for the bird with the duende call,

its heart spread thick by a grandmother's hand,

there in each prayer and then not there at all.

As a girl I was given soot in a basket

and told not to sift but to husband it close

then sent to a seaside cliff via landslide

where the mayor of filth gave himself the last dose.

O bird! O sky! O flesh made of lilies,

grow light on the bones of the bird on the stalk

of my sorrow, my bloom made of August and crickets

transformed in its throat to an arcing flock.

As a girl I was given a purse with a ticket

to a room with stucco walls and a bed

where a woman crawled from the wreck of the fire

and stood by the window, my bird on her hand.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #172.

Aphelion & Perihelion --- A Child's Anthem

I was a wall-walking ballerina 
dancing in an incinerator,
arms out, bending each way,
light as ash but not consumed.

Now I'm heavy as an old oak clock,
creaky as a forgotten stair,
yet somehow, I know the language of birds.

I'm hard to see in bright light
~always was~
but I shine continuously, weightless.
_______

for Friday Flash 55 at VerseEscape.

Photography by Christine Kapuschinsky Johnson.