Love Poem In Filigree & Hickory

 

I was sitting on a filigree bench

on a balcony

with no building behind it.

Then I was dressed in black

at a funeral for my own loneliness.

The sun was warm

and the priest was a peacock.

My love, my love,

in your thousands of scarves,

you were there, and we slept in the sky--

your arms silver, mine indigo.

I wound rose stems around the filigree

at the balcony's edge,

red blooms seeking the sun, which was a breast.

Then I was wearing this poem

at a wake for my own loneliness.

There were little cakes

with icing as white as a page.

You were there, my love, each of us inside the other.

Then I woke, and wept,

the breath filling my body

like smothering smoke from wet hickory burning.

_______

for What's Going On? "Last Night I Had A Dream"

Music: Emmylou Harris Hickory Wind 

Sparrows

 

Love bloomed

like the green buds of the wild weeds

under the overpass.

She lost the thread

when her ears filled with dialogue

written by devils and idiots.

Her love, in wool socks and field jacket,

lost his libido in the war

but phantom desire lives in his memory.

It isn't being coy

to hold back what you cannot save

from the black nest of loss.

Is it dusk or is she going blind?

The robot doctor holds no cures,

just needles with tiny mouths, enthroned.

Under the overpass

there is a constant buzz of insects

who live in old yogurt cups

Singing their serene song

like an engine before the crash

lifting lovers into each other's arms

somewhere beyond the wreck, beyond reason, 

at the edges of sodium lights and night frights--

two sparrows sold for a penny

where crows and cats spend all night calling.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Music: The Doors Indian Summer

Crescent Moon

 

There is a crescent moon beneath my heart

and a thorn placed by Saint Genevieve

wrapped in tissue paper and delivered 

by her hand from a golden sleeve. 

The orchards stand a foot in flood

and the sun denies the vines

as crowns deny Saint Genevieve

to wander dumbstruck blind.

The crescent moon beneath my heart

reflects in switchgrass reeds

and rolls like fog across the stars

that sent Saint Genevieve.

______

unprompted but shared with Dverse OLN hosted by Linda Lyberg

Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris and her feast day was this past week, January 3rd. 

Mariana In The Morning

 Mariana in the morning

by Morning's light possessed

all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge

trying to forget.

Mariana by the window

in a yellow aster smock

She knows November brings the end

of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

they ask her for her anodyne

then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow

in Sorrow's cottage kept

She counts the coins the stars deliver

and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence

braids the horses' tails

She knows November brings the ostler

with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

asking for her anodyne

then asking nothing more.

_______

When The Circus Boat Sank

When the circus boat sank

there in the sound,

both schedule and physical limitations were suspended

and everything slowed down.

Children dove to us as falling leaves

with apples in their mouths for our horses; 
manes like the arms of women whose chests hum with lullabies 

remembered from the drowsy south.

The tiger and I dance as months go by

and rescue loses meaning, light its immediacy.

One child has kept with us, here,

and looks to me for starfish and story.

"Once upon a time," I say to her,

"there was blue tiger, blue water, drowsy you, dreamy me." 

And so the story goes,

ever blue,

ever more,

everlastingly.

_____ 

for Sunday Muse #4

Ease

More and more I have come to believe
that ease is where one finds it,
in quantities and dimensions
of one's own devise. 

Yes, things fall out of the sky
all the time--
flights gone from radar, fireballs from frozen space,
angels who whisper softer than morning dreams.
More and more I have come to accept all of these
with as much grace and courage as I can.

Gunfire, atrocities, sinkholes, hurricanes--
these exist, but must do so in the same world
with kindness, silver maple trees, dogs, weddings. 
There will always be
bills and break-ups,
jobs to go to, children to shelter, parents to bury, 
and only so many hours or heart beats for all of it.
There will be a shortfall,
and it will  break your heart in the end.

Still, there is balm in Gilead for gathering 
moment by moment.
More and more, I have come to believe
that ease is where one finds it,
in quantities and dimensions
of one's own devise. 
_______ 

Mourning Dove

 "This is what it sounds like, when doves cry" --Prince Rogers Nelson


The Moon, secretive and flighty,
turned her dark side and within that cradle I was born--
a dove of dust fed glue-milk and told to sing.

The Sky was not crazy but loved Crazy's eyes.
His silent daughter collected sand timers and seahorses because
all girls love horses; all girls hear ship's bells 
and can feel those same ships foundering.

The Moon kept two faces in a sea shell--
one for the Sky and the other to use as a trowel
to create The Sea of Suicide and The Sea of Insanity.

Every mother takes her child to the beach;
every keeper takes her doves to the temple with a good sharp blade
wrapped in her skirts for utility, for God, and for the fucking hell of it.

The Moon is dead now, dead before, dead always with only death to hand down,
but Mama, I breathe and I sing just to spite you
The Sky we both loved is gone and my heart is full of sea water and stones.

I put my song where the Moon was,  
as beautiful as I can make it, that it might shame you,
and bring you back just to die again
from the music of my mourning, the lightness of my empty bones.
_____

for "Where Do I Come From" at Real Toads. 

The Beauty of God

madmen in masks
suicide bombers
sunday saints
gay bashers
excluders
killers
liars.

my own life out of balance, too.

a spur of the moment stop,
no one else in the sanctuary,
I considered Christ on his cross,
poinsettias in profusion below his wounded feet.

the peace
and beauty
of God came into me
and it felt like love,
like respite,
like hope.

all motherless creatures will understand
why I cried, as a person can sometimes do,
when undone by the touch of silent kindness.
_______