Tribute to New Songs (for Carol)

I wrote this poem about ten years ago for my sister Carol. Time hasn't diminished it's meaning for me.

For the girl you once were, the music
That got lost in the wilderness of your mind.
Returning again and again to the lost images
Of your own youth, you learned everything
The hard way. Your singing voice
Longed to stretch out
Under this night-painted sky, but
How could such a sleep be sustained
Where time knew nothing but time
In the distilled center of anticipation?

And now it’s the children, offspring
Of some unlearned delight
Of planting heart-seeds
(how you heard that first cry so deeply),
Their hearts full of beginning, worlds
Unfolding in their eyes,
Faces intent on blossoming a flower
Far beyond infancy, drinking from your lips
The one phrase that even your smile
Could no longer contain: everything is possible.
Small fingers poised to grasp this strange fruit
That you tasted and expected to find
Almost too sweet.

It was no single incident.
Couldn’t you put your finger on it?
Their laughter open to the air, every song
Was completed within them. Listen;
It awoke the trumpets in your blood.
Hidden behind petals of sleep,
The forgotten murmuring garden
Where statues play shadow-tag,
And the rain sounds like applause.

Pines of Home

I wote this poem for my sister Diane, who was living far away from our childhood home at the time. I recently received a postcard from my friend Leann. On it was a picture of this poem secured with twine around a pine tree, nobly weathering the frost and snow. Leann has vision.

“… a darkness shining in brightness
Which brightness could not comprehend.”
James Joyce, Ulysses


The night ate their shadowsAs fingertip feathers
Of girlhood birds
Startle them out of their firefly dreams.
The pines of home always
Manage to creep inside my ribs,
And you must listen hard
To all the things they don’t say,
While they stand firm,
Sometimes huddled close,
Arms loosely springing out
Like hopes, as they declare
Their deep, wild smell of green embers
To the young moon.
The pines of home
Used to tug at my hair
In turbulent girlhood games
As the mist moved through me
Like a dream within a dream
When sleep doesn’t come easy.

The war on dirt

In every home décor magazine, there is an ad of a woman lounging on a sofa with the sun filtering in from the billowy curtains behind her. She is pretty, but never beautiful; she may have a mohair throw over her shoulders. She is reading a book or a magazine with the serene expression of a woman who knows her house is clean. I have never been that woman. I dream of being that woman.

We were taught as children that ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ making a clean home a moral imperative. It doesn’t help if you live in an 85 year-old house. Or if you cook. Or eat. Or have a cat that uses a litter box. Or have skin and hair. Mind you, I have an arsenal of cleaning supplies, tools, and machines; enough to fight the entire civil war on dirt. When I hear that bed bugs have made a comeback because we have ceased to use the harsh cleaning agents that kill germs and bugs but are not easy on the environment, a shiver runs up my spine. Here is where my vacuum comes in. I vacuum my bed. I vacuum the curtains. I vacuum the cat. (By some freak of nature, my cat has decided in his fading years that the carpet-sucking machine is his friend. Perhaps it is because of his failing hearing, or perhaps he has decided that to be closer to me, he must make friends with it. Either way, whenever I fire up the vacuum, there he is, tapping me with his paw for a good going-over.)

Before I make myself out to be a suburban mom from 1950, I might add that my home is not magazine-perfect. But we are a nation obsessed with the fight on dirt, and I am one of its soldiers. And like all dedicated soldiers, I am always looking for the secret weapon that will end the war forever. But there’s no end to this war; there will always be a dust insurgency in the living room, or a germ skirmish in the kitchen. I imagine that when I am able to bring my home to that glittering state epitomized by the ad with the woman lounging on her sofa, for one day my life will be in perfect balance. And I will lounge on my sofa with a book, and a mohair throw over my shoulders.

I bought a fig and made five small paintings of it, turning it just a little for each painting; one for myself and one for each of my lovely sisters, each unique and special. I like things that come in fives.

My husband says this landscape painting with an Adirondack chair is lonely, but I consider it contemplative.

Plums on a gold background are for me reminiscent of the longing for the rituals of my childhood. The Renaissance painters placed their saints against gold as a gesture of reverence. Today we turn to the fecundity of nature to give us that hushed awe.

For Grace

Modus Vivendi

Beyond the peripity of fortunes, you were born,

Rich in time and love, your seasons framed

By the twin thrones of Sun and Moon,

By the intimate discovery of butterflies

In the green heat of wild fields,

Episodes of laughter and fireflies on a summer night,

The wind's rustle of dried leaves on autumn roads,

And the filigree of frost on a windowpane.

Linga Imperfectus

Your tongue will learn the rapture of syllables,

Anxious to describe the movement of things.

Puzzled by words that won't fit, how can you hold

A mirror up to the feeling of water slipping

Through your fingers, and the quality of air

After the rain? We will grasp your meaning

If you let it suffice to praise everything

Around the one thing that holds you in ecstacy.

Tempu Fugit

You cannot be the passive witness of time's march.

Already, the procession of days have caught

You up in their swell. Time's hands start slowly,

Gathering speed and grace as they go, and you too will learn

To avert your gaze as the hours pass, one by one,

Irretrievable, into oblivion.

Leann on the shore

Barefoot and alone, she stood,
An element among the shining
Rhythms of water and sand,
Where the waves move into the shallows,
Edged with lace and salty sound.

She knelt in the pale sand,
Her sea-filled eyes lowered
From the new light moving,
Weightless on the heavy water.
Her finger wrote as she waited,

Not in vain. The gull flew beyond her,
Mastering his meaning in the morning air.
Her mind roamed over the lavender haze
That rose and fell over the dappled water,
Waiting for a silence that could endure
The gull’s cry.

The End of Rush Hour on Summer Solstice

The sound of passing traffic,
If only for a moment,
Resembles waves rushing to sand,
As Mozart’s only violin concerto
Chronicles the pointless excesses and austerities,
And the flame fades into the cobalt hour.

Always, the traffic moves like a hinged serpent,
Against constellations of blue cornflower,
And the sky hung like an unfulfilled prophecy
Over cityscapes and graveyards, waiting.

The bright song of swallows,
The ripe fruit uneaten.
This is the center of the year
From which the days pivot
And the months turn
into past and future.

An occasional car splits
From the group onto an exit, into a slender life,
As clouds gathered as on a dark stage,
Releasing raindrops in a chaos of rhythm.