Posted tagged ‘Karin Gustafson poem’

Moon

March 16, 2022

Moon 

After being woken early by the ring on a monitor
at the other side of a cancer patient, who is
in pain;
after the temp is taken, the meds given, 

I step into the slippery cold to see a moon, which is not floating
on the single dome of cloud that hugs, like a fantasy of snowcap,
a low mountainside
on the opposite half of this valley.

No, the moon does not float
on that cloud, above that mountainside, but seemingly holds
a fixed place, more solid than either cloud
or mountain, looking

as  if it were not suddenly full, though I swear
in the course of this one night
it has rounded,
and as if it were not setting, which it does,
on that side of the sky.  

Rather, it glows with certainty; it feels as if it were a sure thing, the one
sure thing,
even as I know that when I go out later, which is now, 
it will be gone.

Also not gone. 

********************************************************

I am thinking of getting back into poetry again.  Here’s a draft poem written this morning.  I’m not sure I have a great pic for it, the mountains in this pic based on a Chinese painting, which are a bit more vertical—have a great day—

(As nearly always, the illustration and text are mine. All rights reserved.)

National Poetry Month – Day 26 – Posting To The Other Side ( A Dog Poem)

April 26, 2011

Very pleased with my iPad 2 drawing above!  This one is of my dog Pearl, an old dog but very much extant.  Draft poem of the day below.

Posting To The Other Side

You talk to me of waterfalls.
I think not so much of spray–well, yes, I think of
spray, splash, droplets, glasses bespeckled–
but what I think of most
is this side and that,
the icy flow of everchanging wall, the stillness
behind that wall, and how,
as a child, when my dog died
my first beloved dog, that is, the first
dog who felt truly younger than me, needful of my protection,
I tried, like Demeter, to reach beyond such a wall, to
communicate, as it were, with the other side–no easy task with a canine–
and how, since I was already being mystical, I wrote the dog a letter,
and since I was desperate in my grief, I posted that letter
in one of my Junior Britannicas, a cherry red series of volumes,
under the letter D, praying that the Dog (Deceased)
would find it, and how, for many months afterwards,
I was afraid to open that volume, to retrieve that carefully
folded piece of lined notepaper,
in case it was still there.

All rights reserved.  Suggestions welcomed.  (One question – “retrieved”.  I like it because of the dogginess–but may be “seek” or “look for” would be better?)

St. Sebastian Poem – “Art Appreciation”

March 5, 2010

St. Sebastian

Art Appreciation

Sebastian run with arrows pierced the halls,
reaming eye and mind’s eye too
with piteous wounds, his pale trunk like
the finest china except it dripped.
The visitor, a child, struggled to replace him with
inspired skin, a hand around
a candle, glow within.
(Georges de la Tour plunged in.)
Farther afield (a continent and several galleries away),
she found a Joan of Arc, whose eyes beamed
kaleidoscopically against Pre-Raphaelite bark,
a silvered willow.  Caught
inside that psychedelic gleam,
she became a connoisseur.

(All rights reserved.)