The sky seems to have studied the history of art all night and has settled on Picasso’s Blue Period.
The mountains find the green darknesses of Courbet; the slate patio, though colorblind, contemplates Mondrian.
I look for the far hillsides of the Renaissance—mists that couple with the horizon—but the line of the mountains is defined, and there’s no Madonna on the Rocks, no Mona Lisa filling the frame, no soldiers on large-hammed horses whose lances cunningly re-direct my gaze—
But already, the sky’s flipped the page—this one a double-face of, I don’t know, Cezanne and Remington—that is, pearl finding blue, and now the clouds, the soft straight kind that seem to still stretch across their beds, pull clean sheets over their heads, and the field shows up in a zillion strokes of brush, dabbed by daffodil—
and I think of all those museums I have so missed during this plague, that communion with squares on walls that made me feel a part of human history, of how one sees the world, of how people people the world, trees too, and think that maybe I should just try looking around more, right here, right there.
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Good morning!Not a poem for Mother’s Day (although I snuck a little of that theme in my pic!)Do have a happy one!All rights reserved.
As she checked for my results, the woman on the other end of the phone line said slowly, ‘’m positive….”, perhaps purposely slurring the “I” (which was me),
“you’re negative,” and I wept in the dull glass closet of the phone booth, hiding my face in the side against a wall.
Many of you reading this now are lucky enough not to even know what I am writing about.
You wake to tell me of a dream in which the horse we are currently taking care of is the horse you had as a child.
In your dream, he was over sixty years old (far beyond the age of horses), but remembered you, whickering at your hip pocket for the apple you sometimes stuffed there, as a child.
You did not have an apple, so bent down to pull up grass, proffering the spring green strands in a flattened hand as if they were something he could not himself pull from of the ground and his horse lips rumpled softly, gratefully in your palm.
I listen in the pre-dawn gloom, wondering whether, if I dreamt at all, I could summon people from my childhood, and if I could meet them in some bright field, only it would be my childhood kitchen, and it would be my father, and he would be feeding me—what? Breakfast cereal—Special K— which he would pour out with a grin, saying, “say when.”
I too would smile then over the white bowl, only I’m not sure I could say “when” in a dream like that.
I think to tell you about it, you, the man actually beside me, but you seem to be sleeping again. Though later, as I tiptoe about the room, you whisper, “hello Sweetie,” here, now, another gift.
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Another draft poem! This one for May 1. The pic above doesn’t really fit, but is an illustration (with the text omitted) from my children’s alphabet book, ABC MOBILE, this one for the letter H.
There are mystery novels that may be read where all the unexplained will be resolved.
There are walks to be taken that may veer from the road.
There should be time to tease you gently, and, laughing, to be teased.
Recrimination just might de-crimp, given some room, and regret let itself go, at least a little.
As the work week cools, self-castigation dulls, like a saturated fat that turns solid at room temperature—solid and stolid, and relegated to some jar over there.
Outside, clumps of daffodils that have survived spring snow hold their heads sunny-side up.
Just writing that makes me hungry.
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Another drafty poem for April! I know the pic doesn’t quite go, but there it is! Have a good day.
PS – this post has been edited since first posting as I dropped the T from the Title!
She was not like other birds. She knew that, and knew also that it might be a problem.
So, before entering the greater world, she tried to signify that she came in peace, by wearing olive leaves on her brow.
Getting the leaves stay up there was no easy task. (Of course she could not just carry them, what with her wings.)
The webbed feet did hold the branches in place upon the ground, however, and her nose, though not a beak, was rather long for a nose—useful that.
And, of course, the teeth helped.
So she managed, amazingly, to tear the leaves from a handy branch, and to weave a little circlet, which, when she saw her reflection in her pond’s still surface, looked rather handsome, she thought.
But pride, perhaps, goeth before a fall. For though the crown stayed on well enough, it did not seem to get its message across so clearly—the message of peace.
At least other birds were flying straight towards her now with intentions she could not gauge.
Yes, she was big, awkward. So, she had been made. She worried that they would hold that too against her.
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A little illustrated snip of a story for April. I took down yesterday’s poem, as it just felt too grim and too graphic as the day went on. Crazy times. Stay well.
This is a poem I posted in April, but took down as some of the imagery felt too graphic, and (possibly) open to misinterpretation. I’ve changed and am reposting below. Sorry for the repetition.
Need
I need to get back to the belief that the universe loves us.
I also need to buy shoes.
I understand that the universe does not necessarily love us in the way that we want to be loved; it doesn’t care if we have a long life or suffer pain.
Don’t get me wrong—it doesn’t want us to suffer pain. It’s just that a universe in which trees split in the wind and stars are born and die with fiery outcries, may not understand pain.
I cannot think about those tortured in the Ukraine and I cannot not think about them.
Even when I don’t want the images—hands tied behind the back, and much more horrible things—bullets through eyes–
It helps to worry about shoes. Almost none of mine will work as warmth approaches.
It’s ridiculous. Still, I imagine trying to run after a young child in sandals, the young child someone else’s but in my care. and I don’t think I can trust sandals.
I dream about—I don’t want to write what I dream about for fear of imprinting it further—
How did people feel in the 1930s and 40’s, the Great Depression, World War II?
My mother, one of those people, once told me she kept wondering when it would all end— will this never end, she said she wondered, thinking that when it did at last end, she could finally start her own life, a life that was ongoing all the time she waited to start it, and is now (as we think of life) long over, always the universe loving her, us, in its way.
Another draft poem for April. Sorry I’ve missed a few days, crazy internet issues that knocked out my momentum (such as it was!)
Note that all these poems are drafts of a sort–of course, I’ve re-written them some, but they are poems that can probably benefit from more thought! And more thought might actually cause me to put them in the recycling bin! I appreciate your understanding!
You’d think that the butterflies would be disturbed by the hover of her broomstick, but the witch had good opera glasses, and so, could spy the butterflies out from even a relative high distance.
She caught them with something akin to a fishing net, wide and slightly weighted. She was never sure if the mesh were gentle enough, but tried to make up for this by pouring or patting the butterflies into the large bell jars she carried and never actually handling them.
She carried the bell jars in little thatch baskets that were hooked like saddle bags upon each side of her broom, and though they were big jars, she tried never to overcrowd them, even in those days when, for some strange reason, butterflies are magically plentiful.
Once she had an assortment—she called whatever she collected an “assortment, though they were often just swallowtails, she would re-charge the broom stick, meaning she would put her mind to re-energizing its float, and putt putt it back home. This was a decayed tree in the center of the woods that she had outfitted as a studio apartment.
It was, admittedly, a small space—oddly shaped as well—the hollow trunk more like a collapsed column than a room. It was hard, from the outside, to imagine anyone could be very comfortable inside. But the witch was not just anyone, not at least a human anyone. She could, for example, adjust her size quite easily. So, once she squeezed the bell jars in the trunk, she miniaturized herself, and easily stepped in too. There, she settled herself on a little divan made of twig and bark, upholstered with moss, and basked in the beauty of the bell jars, whose glass caught the light through the breaks in the dead tree in the most marvelous way. She gloried too in the beauty of the butterflies.
You could call it an immersive experience, though she never actually entered one of her jars.
She did not mean to be cruel. But there was something about lounging beside the glossy curves of glass and the velvet curves of wing that she could not resist.
You might ask why she didn’t simply miniaturize herself in one of the gardens she poached—why she didn’t settle herself down besides a host of stems or leaf.
But she also loved the element of control—the fact that she had captured the butterflies, arranged the jars, made the whole tableau.
You could argue, quite reasonably, that she had not made the butterflies, or, for the matter the jars. But she was a witch and you would not be wise to make such arguments.
Of course, it is possible that she would answer that she had made her tableaus as much as any artist makes anything—a collage or a painting—
But she might not think to offer such counter arguments.
She might point out that she always tried to return the butterflies, that butterflies did not live long in any case.
But she might not come up with such justifications either.
It’s possible that she would simply become very angry.
And it never does to make a witch angry. Especially not a witch with a net.
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Here’s a little story today in place of poem! As always, pics are mine. All rights reserved. Thanks for your visit! Have a good night!
The first lines are: “when you asked me to marry you, you failed to mention the igloo.”
Igloo doesn’t really scan, still the poem goes on, describing how the igloo owner promises to keep the other always warm with the fire that he carries in his arms.
They sleep, this couple, under a throw of caribou, and depending upon whether the dream poem is written in the first or third person, a further cover of “me and you,” or a “tangle of each one’s sinews.”
See what I mean about scanning. Though I know when I wake, that I could make the couplets work, in the same way that the couple makes the cold work. Words can certainly be made to fit together as well as blocks of ice, or arms of warmth.
Except that the meanings might get skewed.
For in the dream the frozen house does not symbolize distance between the couple, or an attempt to freeze out the world.
Mainly the igloo is just where the couple ends up, and though they do feel the cold more as they age, they still love the blue that radiates from the ice bricks, like bits of preserved sky.
They stay warm enough too, as long as together.
In fact, the dream poem tries to end on that note—hoping to God that they “go out as two, beneath that throw of caribou,” when, of course, the way they really hope to go is as one.
But it’s hard to rhyme lines about dying with words like “fun” and the various other choices.
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Another slightly weird poem for April! Have a great weekend.
It was a strange cell, with only a bucket, two cots and a piano.
I can’t say why the two of them were there, the young man, young woman, only that they were. With a piano, a bucket and two cots, and no common language, no common spoken language, but they were each aspiring concert pianists, so music was a shared tongue.
It quickly, almost accidentally, became how they spoke for the cell was frightening and cold, what with the concrete and the iron bars, what with that bucket.
So, after all footsteps faded down what passed for a corridor, and silence grew thick as a wall,, one and then the other would play.
At the beginning, that is, after they were brave enough to try a few notes and no guard shouted or appeared—they only played songs they knew. Luckily, there were many—far too many in some ways, as once they began to play, each itched to occupy the bench.
But almost as soon as the trading of songs became their method of communication, they knew they needed to improvise.
For the pieces they knew only seemed only to get at certain things— longing, yes, but it was a longing for something deep and emotional, not, for example—“I’m longing to use the bucket, could you please turn your head.”
Some songs (surprisingly folk dances and polkas worked well) could be played with great urgency; these were easier to mold into some insistent pass of why in the hell this cell? And, I think they may be bringing the food, better be careful.
But, soon enough, hands that lived to fly, birdlike, over the pale keys, needed to gesticulate—
Their fingers felt, at first, ridiculously bared, mid-air. It was only when the other’s face softened into comprehension that the humiliation lifted.
There was never complete darkness in that place, but little light, when the sun set, and it was in the near-darkness that each placed a hand on the other’s arm, breast, thigh, tapping out this song, and then another.
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Here’s a long, but I hope interesting, draft poem, another written for April. Poem and pic are mine; all rights reserved.
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