(I know)
hours are not the apocalypse
(imagine)
I search their mists and dusts
for security
composting fair warnings
once again
I have searched the horizon
where sun blinks
this day into some montage
of time-lapse
(I know)
hours are not the apocalypse
(imagine)
I search their mists and dusts
for security
composting fair warnings
once again
I have searched the horizon
where sun blinks
this day into some montage
of time-lapse
I presume a four-leaved clover is the "symbolic/ Leaf" Glück is looking for here? Here's At's hand holding some luck he made himself: A four-leaf clover engineered with spit--he told me he tried sweat first, but it didn't hold. (circa 2008, SD's outdoor wedding in DC; Baby Nu in the stroller.)
I've loved this poem for years and am so happy for Louise Glück's Nobel--poets so rarely get big prizes; but are there non Eurocentric writers who are being overlooked? Absolutely.
So I'm coming back, I'm coming, I
run rabbit tongue 'neath rabbit teeth.
Sift half a laugh through salty hands.
Lift away grand new memories, but
only say: So-sorrySo-sorrySo-sorry.
Remember when I traveled--was it last
winter--and you said I'm with you, but
you aren't me, never will be. I still bring
prayers to this plague. Will sing through
whispering airways: O-stayO-stayO-stay.
_
In the beginning lives
a first flicker of flame
that lick of loneliness
lighting an underworld.
The sky may be still
dark with our leaving
life, it is difficult--all
tall ideas, left as yes.
My trunk like that of a tree trumpets
unexpectedly where before it had been quiet
and out of breath
My hand blooms open like a nest
busy and persistent, becoming in niceness
and folding to stress
So Too many meetings, an eternal leap--just so
But some things are useful; anyone could do this.
They say I mean a thousand things--warning:
I may have cried about it and made it important
but it's just the spin of the world, a spell shortened.
Doubts nest together like spoons--they question
smarts or scope or if I'm dope. I'll fiddle with my
mic, memorize hopes cresting the tip of prayer,
behind my curtain of tongue, my blanket of sleep
and an inevitably unreadable ticking to tomorrow.
(Here I am bundled up for sitting outside for hours in barely 60 degree weather, looking like a fool, and I kinda secretly love it.)
indefinite night-day-night / no insight
(Six months since our stay-at-home order and a six-word memoir inspired by the NYT pandemic poetry piece.)
Like siblings of yore on the landscape,
ribboned close always: rivers, railroads.
Playing--in plain sight, side-by-side, not hiding;
where you seek one--oh, look--there's the other.
Long, rowdy sibling things: one loud, one low--
now masked, now sparring--whatever--they are
like pandemic warnings, insistent--more forlorn by the day:
I think I'm meant to mourn, and--following them--get away.
_________________
Note 1: We live between the river and the railroad, so I have lived experience of course; but this insight is from Krueger's This Tender Land.
Note 2: Toddler Nu used to pronounce the open e almost as a schwa eg. "Natflix" (for Netflix), "grat" (for great, which we still emulate for cuteness on family chat).
Note 3: Things seem much quieter along the railroad these days--fewer goods traversing the continent or whatever--I don't know.
Note 4: I took this picture of the Red Cedar River last week; L claimed to be able to see hints of Fall.
--fare well, fare wonderfully.
Like strangers, like heartbeat:
"Thank you for my childhood."
"Thank you for being my child."
* I tried to tell Scout this isn't yoga, but he just pouted.
wait and know the coming / of a little love ~ Carl Sandburg
Beginning is quiet
a blink, a tap, then waking
our eyes, the screen, and yearning
I think about people
we used to know, used to date
how we lost them to love and--fate
How we used to see them
now and then in waning memories /
when tagged in other people's new stories.
I hug care's sharp blade
through tongue and thoughts
histories, our hearts; hear it whistle
where they're not, no return
Why? Asking did the virus happen--
Are they ghosts? Are they ghosting?
I mean to write of pomegranates
and roses in fairytales, how even
the pierce of your stare is a star.
You my child, have been puppies, tigers,
bees, snakes, and a praying mantis. You
say, today's animal: "sickly Victorian boy."
So pearlescent with scattered energy
stay stationed in understories of care
and humming to the surface, beyond
yes--the press of your face on my shoulder
but holding fast like the ink-paint-print-stain
koans growing on your arms for years.
carrying--valiant as ants--
relics of their fallen friends.
They see me turn muddy, as I
drink me (60% water, baby)
You'd think I am called grief.
I'm keeping an eye out for you
yearning for you for when you
are already inside (my head)
there is uncertainty: what to say even in the dignity of the world preserved in light, the lick of ...