If I could see horizon’s light at first dawn, Venus would greet me shining up the rising sun. But I live in darkness, almost-full moon suffused with secrets, luminous, surprising me–reflecting through my window, later, soon– casting shadowed leaves that shift, mesmerizing, absorbed in Van Morrison’s musical dance– hazy as to borderlines, transformed, entranced. Perhaps Diana orbits inside my dreams– I almost catch her in the wavering beams– and following the fragments, drift—caught between.
An eleventh power poem for the prompt offered by Grace for the dVerse 11th anniversary celebration, also in answer to this week’s W3 challenge, a response to Steven S. Wallace and his poem “Oh Luna” that contains three proper nouns.
but there is always another side– the one that is in our face seems real because we see it—the details, the form of its existence– but what of the side we do not see, what of the one that looks in a different direction? the one not evident, not the same? the one we must be careful not to leave behind?
As usual, Brendan at earthweal gave me a lot to think about in this week’s challenge post. His question–What does it meant to be open, unbounded, united and free in an enclosed world?–made me immediately think of this verse Woody Guthrie wrote in “This Land is Your Land”.
As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “No Trespassing” But on the other side it didn’t say nothing That side was made for you and me
Before me the world is clarified by a luminosity that consolidates all presence into chords of stillness. What song would this landscape sing?
Just a little green– color disappears into the air, glimmers in still lines across the meadow.
Like the color when the spring is born— the quiet is dizzying, embracing. All is solitary, complete. Waiting. For what?
The nights when the Northern lights perform— the hour is transfixed inside a secret whisper of pulsing breath. An alternate world, muted, mysterious, not quite real.
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow—shrouded in uncertainty, time has lost its focus. The land is primordial, inscribed with a narrative that has no translation into any language we are capable of understanding.
Just a little green—a vessel immersed in air, from the bottom up
earthwalkers– exchanging wonder there will be
italicized lines are from Joni Mitchell’s song Little Green
Carl Zimmermann, Deer in a Summer Meadow
Merril supplied five paintings as ekphrastic summer inspiration at dVerse this week. I chose Carl Zimmerman’s painting, above. Since I’m late, I’m posting on OLN, hosted by Bjorn.
Also linking to earthweal, where Sherry supplied the prompt of dreaming in green. A good color to dream in.
thrown into or carefully placed to sink or swim you can’t figure out whether to wade or walk upon these waves of mystery and missed fortune— who can tell what flies out the window and into your brainwaves? how do you carry all this drowning in destiny? you try wrapping it up but it only brings you down
the monsters seem familiar but where have you seen those faces before and why are there so many of you? each with its own refusal its own cuts and rearrangements of the narrative you have lost in the multitude of channels and static that keeps trying to tell you what you don’t want to hear—all this motion drains your energy
you wish you could become the water instead of being layered flat over its rocking curves– nearby you think you can see the desert, thirsty, a voracious patch of fire and land but you know it will not welcome you it will not open for a solid form even an imagined one
again and again you look for the part of you that will hold all those hands, that will gather the waiting cries into one sound riding the waves until they tire of the fruitless weight– all these journeys into the continuous restructuring of what is unknown– turn around a voice repeats inside each of your weary minds— the corner is just around the bend
At earthweal this week Brendan has asked us to consider “our wild dark brains”.
The Fashion Institute of Technology had only one dorm, reserved for out-of-town students, so I felt lucky to have been granted a room, even if I knew it was only for the first year of my two-year program. My roommate had sisters in the city, but had grown up upstate, in a Catholic group home, really an orphanage with all its attendant horrors. Nothing has changed about that since the time of Dickens.
Her mother died when she was very young. A family friend wanted to adopt her, but the Catholic Church refused to separated her from her two older sisters—the friend could not manage three more children. Her sisters married as soon as they aged out of the system, and now lived again in the city where they had been born. My roommate was a talented artist, and her high school art teacher encouraged her to prepare a portfolio and apply to FIT. She wanted to be a textile designer.
Her father had abandoned the family when her mother became pregnant with a fourth child. Unable to imagine being able to support three children, let alone four, on her own, the mother sought an abortion. It killed her.
Her daughters had no choice but to accept the fact that both parents were permanently lost to them. But there was a simmering anger in my roommate, a wound of loss and grief, that remained.
I lost touch with her—we both moved around a lot after getting our associate degrees, and the internet was not even a blip on our consciousness in 1973—but I thought of her again when the decision overturning Roe v Wade was leaked to the press.
Now, as then in the 1950s, our government blames the poor for their poverty, penalizing most of all the living mothers and their living children, abandoned by fathers, or forced to flee abusive husbands and partners, condemning them to hunger and homelessness as a punishment for not being born lucky, for not having friends and family who have enough wealth and stability to pick up the pieces when they need a helping hand.
another grey sky– spring comes late this year—crow calls inside the graveyard
For dVerse, where Lisa asks us to consider the topic of grief.
The shifting mirrors contain contradictory and ethereal messages, as if hidden in the center of a missing source of light. Where are the currents located? The rays seems to come from an absolute stillness embedded in the fraying edges of circles that no longer move.
Once we were seekers, following the contours of the channels that held rivers and oceans, sailing the shorelines, harvesting in abundance the rewards of departure followed by return.
Now we have only illusions sinking into the periphery of fading dreams, scattered like the ancient remnants of empyrean spirals, the movements of mythical stars, the mysteries of a consciousness that once made its home inside a biological form.
bare silence– human remains lost, fossilized
Off prompt for NaPoWriMo Day 29. I wanted to do something for this Redon collage.
The world remains heavy.
Yea, we all could use a little mercy now I know we don’t deserve it But we need it anyhow We hang in the balance Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground Every single one of us could use some mercy now –Mary Gauthier
The day feels as limber as a body carved in stone, and yet time remains elastic. A Möbius strip to which I cling, never certain if I’m inside or outside or whether, in fact, I’m located anywhere upon the twist of fate at all.
Dylan sang it simple, but simplicity in his mind means traveling on a roller coaster through an arcade of hallucinatory smoke and funhouse mirrors blindfolded and bound by myriad inexpressible desires. “A little confused”? That statement is not only under, but buried so deep beneath layers of denial that the concept of clarity no longer exists.
We are all born too late, really, searching over and over for the lost eternal beginning, the still center, not the unmappable edge we cleave to, against all reason, with the desperation of an addict looking for a permanent fix.
So which way does this finite world turn? Does the Universe have its own compass, or is it, too, like humanity, lost in space?
plus, minus—neither more nor less than tomorrow, yesterday, today
The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. I’ve also used Muri’s Scavenger Hunt words, limber and elastic.
when you leave yourself behind, where do you go?– clouds a shimmering path
blue like a robin’s egg– this liquid sky, darkening into shadow– when you leave yourself behind
does the mirror look back like a lake regarding the sky? where do you go?
do fish see themselves in the stars? do birds ride feathered waves?– clouds a shimmering path
The prompt for NaPoWriMo today was to write a poem that uses repetition. That prompt was made for me. I had been working on and off all week for a poem for Sherry’s prompt at earthweal, to write from that place of holding onto wildness of soul. I thought that today, Earth Day, would be the time to post it.
So I took my ideas and made a cascade, but there were ideas left over, so I did a pantoum too. You can never have too much repetition in my poetry world.
when you leave yourself behind (clouds a shimmering path) where do you go?– windsong the surface
clouds a shimmering path, the lake regarding the sky– windsong the surface displaced by light
the lake regarding the sky– as it hues the reflection displaced by light, does the mirror look back?
as the earth hues reflection, do fish see themselves in the stars? does the mirror look back when birds ride feathered waves?
do fish see themselves in the stars on the remnants of moontides? when birds ride feathered waves, do they flow into calligraphy?
on the remnants of moontides, where do you go? will you flow like calligraphy, leave yourself behind?
As I’ve noted before, I attended the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 in Washington DC. Not too much has changed since then. We can do better.
My life– How much more of it remains? The night is brief. –Masaoka Shiki
My hand traces invisible lines through each day. Life has its endings, but I wonder again why and how do we create so many boundaries? How much do we know of what we call ourselves? And what more is left, at this late date, to be discovered there? Of what am I really thinking when, with sudden fear, it seems that everything is impossible, that nothing remains? Have I used it all up–the synapses firing, the cells’ ability to regenerate rather than destroy? The night and the day and the sky and the land? Why is it so difficult to relocate the silence, that interlude of brief completion when everything is being born again?
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is a reverse Golden Shovel poem–instead of placing the words from the selected poem at the end of each line and writing around it, the words are placed at the beginning. Either way, it’s a good way to approach writing when you’re stuck. I’ve chosen a haiku from Masaoka Shiki for my poem, but I’m adding a little afterward from Joan and Bob.
Tears of rage, tears of grief Why must I always be the thief? Come to me now, you know we’re so alone And life is brief –Dylan
Also for Muri’s prompt of a Golden Shovel poem with the theme of change.
K. 