Despite, and Still (for J.)

 

I said to the trees

                                                --the birch, the pear, the maple--

"How can my heart be anything but an empty cup

Now that your leaves have all fallen

   like the handsome musician from Heaven

   or funeral cards from the hands of old women?"

"Look at you," replied the trees. 

                                                                                     "We have spun you

from the loom of our beauty and the cruelty of our silence.

Just as you did in summer, you stand looking

   as Jason did in the grove, when our fleece was 

   golden in autumn and stolen away in November."

I stayed for a long time,

                                                               so long that the snow 

became hands on my shoulders like a mother's or a healer's.

The sky is as gray as cold water, the trees' bones

  stand right to left like verses across a page,

   antique, dignified, turned to benevolent mentors.

_____________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Despite & Still" where Dora is hosting.

Music: Fleetwood Mac Bare Trees

And Judith Durham All My Trials

I Linger In Dreams

I linger in dreams,

large as unspoken devotion,

warming a small world from its center with my body.

Brenda Lee, "Little Miss Dynamite"

whispers sweet nuthin's in the bowl of one ear,

her body a soft jukebox, my tongue coated with quarters.

Billie Holiday, "Lady Day"

sings desires, a pigfoot and a bottle of beer

to the spoon of my other ear like a sweet poppy mother. 

Above, jostling spheres, circular activity, temples, threnodies.

I linger in dreams, a small world warmed from its center 

with hallucinations, 

hagiographies,

harmonies.

_________

for Sunday Muse

Deaf Angels

"He's an angel, not a saint." --Michael

Deaf angels aren't much for music.
No matter the beauty of the harp, 
they're oblivious
and bored.

Deaf angels aren't much for prayer.
Unaware of kneeling priests in robes,
lofty Ladies, 
loquacious Lords.

But when you find you cannot speak--
the break too ragged, raw and deep--
Deaf angels come with silent arms
and balm not found in notes nor words.
_______

For Rommy's challenge at Real Toads.

The Wax Angel

In the widow year of the bootleg bible,
seven plagues were worn in the hatbands of devils.
In the fortune cookie of the palsied calendar,
these were read--
fear, death, murder, disease, hate, horror and waste.

In summer, I planted a window box;
in autumn, a stripe of leaves on the sill,
and in winter, the pretty almost-weightless tail of a sleeping beast.

In our bed that November, you left me your bones
and gave your body to the noisy starlings.
Each evening, I wait for them in the dusk--
they assemble and there you are, whole again;
watching me cry over impossible things.

In the widow year of the bootleg bible,
a man selling loosies was killed right there on the public sidewalk.
His killers couldn't see him, and so they felt for him with their hands.
He said he couldn't breathe, but they wouldn't spare him any air,
because he was not a bird, and they were not the wind.

My love, survivor of the funeral year,
I bought you an angel carved from wax,
a pretty thing from a funky little shop before they lost their lease.

I will place her carefully between your ribs
to help you re-make yourself when you return.
Until then, I have my crystals, a Magic 8 Ball, and my Catholic faith,
a mighty fortress against the vagaries of life in your absence.
________

Death In Early Spring

I was born on a Sunday in late spring, nearly summer,
into a world already in motion,
just another new leaf alive in the daylight.

I will die on a Thursday in early spring, barely gone from winter,
and I will leave a world that remains in motion,
expressing itself in all the wings and blooms that take my place.

I regret the things I longed for that did not, or cannot now happen.
There will not be another love,
or any of the new beginnings I always depend upon
to assuage the losses and disappointments.

Still, I have lived pretty bravely.
I haven't been afraid, in the end,
to put all my colors on the canvas.

All of my life, I have felt the lack of something or someone,
always hidden around some corner I could never negotiate,
just out of sight,
too far to call.

In a little while,
I will find myself the one called,
by a voice so beloved and remembered
that it will astonish me--
so much, that I may hardly notice
that I have left,
and the world goes on.
_____