The moon has risen on the last remnants of night– floating she brushes the heavenly stars. The lake has widened till it almost joins the sky and the mist rising from the water has hidden the hills. Far off the Dipper lowers toward the river. You’d think you’d left the earth– body and spirit for a while have changed place and open, open– the world’s affairs, just waves.
A cento poem for NaPoWriMo Day 30. Thanks to Maureen Thorson for once again hosting this wonderful month of verse.
poets in order of appearance Po Chü-i (title) Po Chü-i Li Po Po Chü-i Ou Yang Hsiu Tu Fu Ch’in Kuan Po Chü-i Li-Young Lee Li Po
I see you superimposed on the landscape, melting in to the shadows of buildings, sidewalks, trunks of trees–
woodfern sweetpepper bush cherry maple oak panicgrass fleabane hornbeam chestnut marsh blue violet–
I float on streams to the river– pickerel perch otter duck– climb paths up forested hills– bear fox rabbit deer–
My Lady of Mannahatta– swallowtail buckeye spring azure monarch–you gather me windwhispering
on hawkwings– full green animate, this island— return me to the timeless before, when land was shared, not owned
Welikia means “my good home” in the Lenape language. The Lenape tribe were the original inhabitants of Manhattan and the surrounding lands. Their main village was where Yonkers is now; they had temporary structures on the island of Mannahatta for use in hunting, fishing, and gathering.
The Welikia Project is an interactive map of New York City, where you can find out about the biodiversity and landscape of the island in 1609, before it was developed by Europeans. The idea that the Dutch “bought” the island was not one shared by the native peoples they then forced to leave the land.
Today, the NaPoWriMo prompt is “to write a poem that recounts a dream or vision, and in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area in which you live.”
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.
1 an enchantment spelled in the blue whisper of your voice disembodied in the dim light– a pretense of sushi and saki– a stolen hour
2 the stitches accumulate, suspended from needles awakening color and fiber into patterns, images, ideas, dreams
3 a glittering ocean of blue starlight afloat massive celestial waves unmoored no longer conjoined– an ancient sentient land
4 how can I remain here, undecided on the edge, an intruder seeking to override forces I neither recognize nor understand?
5 all tautness, the bow hovers between contingencies, conclusions, desires– I hold my breath inside the heart’s beating wings
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a poem in which you first recall someone you used to know closely but are no longer in touch with, then a job you used to have but no longer do, and then a piece of art that you saw once and that has stuck with you over time. Finally, close the poem with an unanswerable question. A prompt that seems ready made for a cadralor. The first four stanzas answer the prompt. Stanza 5 is the conclusion required by the cadralor form, the one that illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: “For what do you yearn?”
You think me a delicacy, braised and grilled with tangy sauce– raw, prepared as sushi– in a salad perhaps, tossed. You think my senses merely serve to aid in my survival– that my existence is secondary to what you deserve– a special meal without rival. And what of my disappearance?
My body is all potential, alien to your bones– my way of life, untranslatable as words or thought alone. I study you, your habits, both curious and sly– resisting my captivity, escaping from your limits– forcing you to abide with me if me you wish to study.
I am my own canvas, I paint colors with light and disguise– my form always in flux, I create patterns of magic, surprise. Once we were one, at home in the sea, the waters of birth– since opened by history, cleaved– now you claim land as your own, along with all creatures of earth– disenchanted inside your vast greed.
When I saw the NaPoWriMo prompt this morning, to write a poem that anthropomorphizes a kind of food, the first thing that came to mind was how I could never eat octopus again after reading Peter Godfrey Smith’s book about them, Other Minds. These paintings are from a previous post where I also used the voice of a cephalopod, though not from the point of view of being eaten.
I promised Muri I would attempt an Ode–just as difficult as I expected. And this one needs work. But the octopus is more than worthy as a subject for one
Feed your head they said—what does that really mean? How can any time be larger than now, more extreme than here, this cosmic habitat?
Microscopic, yet infinite– reflected, a mirrored convex lens—adjust, open, refocus your inner outer space—do you need to follow white rabbits to become unbounded—curious?
An espinela poem for Muri’s April Scavenger Hunt with vision as its subject, and following the NaPoWriMo prompt to write a poem that starts with a command. “Feed your head” was, somewhat strangely, the first command that popped into my mind (along with some Jefferson Airplane playing in the background), and fortuitously I had these cut up paintings from the Kick About prompt based on Marie Menken’s film “Lights”, which worked well with the words.
It’s all in context, perspective, how open your senses are to what surrounds you. What you notice. What notices you.
and could I be mistaken for a bird?– whirled inside an everchanging sky, suspended ocean-bound in waves of air and carried clear, aloft, bestirred– a vast and overwhelming need to fly above the trees, beyond and anywhere
like rainbows cast unanchored toward the ground my thoughts unravel, specters drawn and spare– I try to hold my occult gravity, but find the words, my wings, have disappeared without a sound
…and so it begins with essence—unmeasured, all-seeing, untranslatable, present.
What is really there–here? Everywhere. It gathers nowhere, takes all in. Releases the vast emptiness of center. Unpredictable but never random. Jumping through and crossing over. Falling down down down into the other side of what was never, into the opposite of what is.
Only the light. The compass that points in all directions, overlapping and then merging into pure vibration. A conduit of currents, waves with wings, voices without identifiable form or name. Pinpoints glittering against the darkness, floating on the gasp of final breaths, forever on the verge.
Belonging neither to man nor to god nor to anything in between.
Immersed in song.
This prose poem is a revision of a revision of a revision (no doubt to be continued). The art, on the other hand, was an experiment that exceeded my expectations. And so it goes.
For NaPoWriMo Day 15, on the eve of the full moon, where the prompt is to “write a poem about something you have absolutely no interest in”. To put it plainly,
I have no interest in writing a poem about something I have no interest in
But I’m enjoying reading the rants of my fellow poets on the subject.
K. 