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.

Cricket

 A bold black cricket came in from the night

with a message wrapped around his leg

I offered him bread, my body, my bed

and an indigo blue Russian egg.

He had only the song that crickets know

taught them by their dying mothers

He played it on the silk and scar of my skin

and told me there would be no others.

My hair is blond, his body was black

and hard as the truth in a mirror

The night was warm, the dawn too quick

and the last time drew one season nearer.

_____

for dverse creepy crawlies. 

Mermaids

Mermaids sing but do not stay

and I have always been partial to them,

perhaps because they do not stay.

I take to sea in a skin of metal and wood

to look for mermaids diving, vanishing.

I throw my heart over like an anchor,

heavy odd thing, inflexible,

not the sort that mermaids love at all.

-----------

written during the Wordcrafters on line meeting.

Confession

There is a man in the foam of a wave
and he watches for spirits
who can never be saved
I leave him a loaf on the edge of my skin
though he knows by the Moon
he can never come in.

The reeds are rotten with whispering wrecks
that cradle the sailors
who've broken their necks
in lonely dawn when the candle is gone
they sing to me softly
their odd borrowed song

To search for the man in the foam of a wave
who constantly calls me
by another love's name
and in his pocket he carries a spoon
to measure my sorrow
by the phase of the Moon.

Come Winter, come Summer, come judgement, come Fall,
come whispering spirits,
come nothing at all,
I'll take off my clothes and my garland of snow
and call him to come
where he already goes.
____

Pharos

There has been terror, walls of water, nightmare monsters!
Our hands around splintered oars.
Our hands around twisting lines in desperate storms.
Our hands around our bodies in the freezing nights.
Our hands around each other's throats in frenzies of despair.

There has been light, safe haven, mighty walls!
Light from a sturdy tower.
Light revealing gray-white gulls.
Light in our captain's steady eye.
Light at dawn, on a rocky shore.

Strange, the solid ground our legs shift upon.
Strange, the women bringing children to the docks, who call.
Strange, the endless streets, the many doors, odors, sounds.
Strange, the urge to sail again, to leave this tranquil harbor.

No wonder we stagger in the street, thought mad by both priest and whore.
We are mad.
Only the swell and fall of the sea can receive our pitching souls.
_______

for camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

"Pharos" image created and provided by the mystic and magnetic Kerry O'Connor.

In The Time Of Dinosaurs

In the time of dinosaurs,
we were happy.

In the nights of silent spinning planets,
you could reach for my hand,
and it was there.

Since then, the sun has risen a thousand million times,
and has set as many, 
less one.

Now they have discovered
that monsters are more than bones--
we knew
that they were birds all along.

This afternoon, a comet will come, in all its rarity--
then a cloud.

Who knows what happens after that?
But, until then, 
before I turn to dust,

Here is a sound I call a song
in a language we called ours.
_____ 

The Smugness of Sirens

The smugness of sirens
is both heavy and intangible.

Easy in their enormous house,
they sing and sailors fall.

What do they want with me, a woman,
surely a sister of sorts?

The mother of mermaids
is the moon, and though all her tears have settled on them,

She still commands.
They have everything except authority.

The sirens smile
and beckon me down to join them--

It is a casual cruelty when they invite, saying,
"Please sing with us, sister,

Sing like anything, the way you've always longed to;
it won't kill you."

(It is the instinct to breathe again, after,
that will.)
______

For (Non--)Fireblossom Friday with Hedgewitch, at Real Toads.

Image: Moonrise, Beaumarais by Clarice Beckett.

 
 

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Don't worry, Pookie.
There are no dinosaurs on the beach here,
no longboats crammed with Vikings,
no Roman legions trying to conquer the sea.

Wear your flip flops.
Take your paperback.
I made you coffee, because
I am as loyal as Sancho Panza, and as unobtrusive as Dulcinea.

I'm glad we came here.
Once, as a child, I went rolling down the dune--
someone took a picture, and in it there is nothing but me and white sand,
so that I seem to be falling through pure light.

Emily Dickinson is dead, though she's spoken to me since.
John Lennon is dead,
and my favorite dogs, too.
My mother is dead,
but Pookie, there's me. There's you.

No pterodactyl will come pluck us from the beach.
My brother won't come, and make it up with us.
No old lovers will rise out of the surf and say they're sorry,
but there are starfish
and a nice sunrise.

Here is your coffee. Your book. Where is my beach hat?
Let's not miss another wave.
Let's get out of here, like flirts in an old movie.
Let's be silent, let's do Pure Michigan.
Let's hold hands and make out and not act our age.

Let's BE HERE NOW.
Let's be beach bums, feeding the gulls;
forgiving how we got here,
forgetting the way back.
_______

for Susie's challenge at Real Toads. Photo at top by Douglas Salisbury.