Caprice

 

A strange bird rests on the corner

of my roof.  His shadow angled

at the five minute interval  

between something after and something before.

 

This is my time out

from worrying about the house

and other issues.  The small force of energy         

               I've forgotten to free, animate.

 

The wind knows the bird ( a winged harlequin)

and what I'm talking about -

as it shakes a few twigs in its palm

               tossing them like jacks across the sidewalk.

 

They spill randomly and wait

to be picked up with other whims

before the sun bounces

this day downward; and the sky carries dusk

                heavy  on its shoulders.

 

 

 

 

A Building On The Waterfront

 

It's now a condo. Swank and sweetened

with upgrades: chrome, granite and laminated wood.

Outside, it's vintage brick with black-painted shutters,

scuff marks left by the heels of age and climate.

They  walk  along these walls still waiting

for others to come back who will never return.

The upper half was a loft where a woman

illustrated stories for children.  Bench and drawing board

became the polished harbor where her ideas

docked in the evening hours. A  tide of lemon oil

 and  lamplight flooding the room. The bottom half

her book shop where antique volumes

lodged haphazardly on oaken shelves.  A china bull dog 

lingered near the window, ready to bark

if any of  the characters should whisper or shout

from their spine-sewn books. And once-in-awhile

a stray bird would fly through the doorway

looking to land someplace quaint. Like that corner

where  cobwebs and ivy tangled in a space

left  for harbingers of classic things --or trends to soon occur.

 It might have been the yellow finch

Hester  saw flitting among her garden plants, the mocking bird

Scout heard in a magnolia tree - or what I remember.

The swallow pecking at the casement's chipped paint

as if morse-coding a message of how the house

 of narrative would fall.

_______________________________________________________

 

Notes -- Hester alludes to Hester Pyrnne, the adulteress, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel about sin and redemption in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter.. Scout refers to Harper Lee's tomboy in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Standards

You learn about this strange place

from  birth  -- journeying there

through the  middle earth  of yourself.

 

Not the topography

of muscle and sinew, tissue and tributaries

of veins or nerves. That reef of growing bones.

 

No,  this about the green hill

with sea winds surrounding its henge.

A girdle of standing stones

                     ( too large to wear

except for the mother goddess)

 

and how it holds in

what is sacred, durable

               despite tremors or storms.

 

How light enters on a slant

blessing each slab with a perspective;

and how the girl wears its shadow

 

having been inside, having felt

the weight of  her wilder will

           lighten, lift as mist

toward the ocean. The tide rampant

with  scavenger birds  pecking

at  what floats in the shallows,

 

what slimes in the pearlessence

of a shell.

 

                 

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem For The Women Of The AWWP

                   I

The  Invocation

 

I have become this poem

and before this poem,

I became Arifa, Zarmina, Amail

Sweta. Safar  and Lima --

 

their tongue, their pen, their leaf,

their scrap of paper

veined in writing,

mottled with tears.

 

Something:

 for the pocket to hide,

the firewood to shun

the wind to carry west.

 

       II

The Stone

The river is dry.

I steal a stone

from its bed of clay

and will cast it back

when the rains come

 

or at  him

when he turns mad

moving  to flog my body

as if its slight bones

were a stack of grain

 

My burqa is torn.

I pull a thread

wanting to unravel

this blue shroud and lift  my hair

in wind, in light

the plumage of a  bird.

 

A long-tailed bird

hanging loose in the air,

absorbing the ripe scent

of  almonds --

 

the black gravel beneath

(grave of my sisters)

marked with its shadow.

 

The house is bare.

I blow out its breath

and unlatch the door.

The lamp sends its snuffed flame

to the sky, a ghost of smoke

but then my hope

with only this stone, this staple,

wanders into exile with it.

____________________________________________________

 

I love the concept and the need of writers to give voice to the voiceless. As Alison Hawthorne Deming states --

"The grief we feel at abuses of human power is the first positive step at transforming that power for the good." And art allows us to accomplish that goal in certain ways; especially through the expression and recognition of our humanity; its suffering, its injustice as well as its compassion, strength and dignity. This brought to mind Marsha Hamilton who started the "Afghan Women's Writing Project".

 https://womenwordswisdom.com/2013/09/08/kamilah-on-peace-the-afghan-womens-writing-project/   I

Envying Saint Hildegarde

I want to know her kind of green -

the shade she discovered

alcoved in vine leaves, feeling

 her  soul make chlorophyll.

 

Light and rain

left on the foliage

converted to a divine sense

of verdancy

 

that haunted her awareness

of  Life in all places.

 

Even the rocks jutting

over the sea Their bare shins

scraped by wind and salt,

 

the shriek of shorebirds

echoing through pale bones

of driftwood and  split-open

ribs of the clam.

 

Their lament drawn

by everything lost and hollow.

 

And here, too, where  her Rhine

is a hose trickle in dirt

the spigot grudgingly  gave;

 

and her abbey's portico.

the stem work of  hedges

half-shaven by rusty shears,

 

she would find spring

calling her home, cascading in bright

syllables on the desert's tongue.

 

 

We're still greening, rooted in the sun

she would say -- but I have yet

to unhood this shadow

and feel such leafing in my veins.

 

The Missive

 

 

Your letter was there

among other documents

in the safe box -- to be given

as the first rites on Mother's Day.

The script like the script

of your face - beautiful and perceptive.

Written ten years before your death,

you somehow knew

which words needed to fly

in the evening sun , the blue shimmer

of swallows circling round

the uncertain child.

The Mochu

A woman leans

over the mountain bridge

watching her own body curve

                       around the fir trees.

 

Full & clear. Stone-hipped & capillaried

in moss. She is the river

 

who has left the river

to contemplate why - her water will weaken

and her journey change

 

over many days

and many crossings taken

by villagers & livestock, glacial mist & birds.

 

Something monks have foreseen

praying in their temple. Housewives have felt

in the warmer-than-usual wind

drying turnip leaves on the floor. What their carved gods

know hanging on the  kitchen wall.

 

Prayer flags bloom on the railing

asking to be healed, helped or forgiven;

and she wonders which sins

are left unspoken. What penitents may come

 

asking  to be cleansed

as her body thins

to a trickling shadow. A scarf of purity

                     in the mud.

_________________________________________________________

The word, Mochu,  is the Bhutanese  for female river. In the culture and religion of people from Bhutan, a small nation on the eastern slopes of  The Himalayas,  all aspects of nature are spirits from the flowers to the wind. This also includes rivers; and they are also given genders depending on the shape, texture and movement of the terrain. The softer more curvaceous course  is considered feminine/female and the more rugged, muscular one is deemed masculine/male. And that river is an entity ranging in perspective from a sacred spirit to a minor goddess/god.. The rivers are known to be clear, cold and pure, a major source of inspiration, drinking nourishment and irrigation for their fields and gardens. Yet, even in this remote and isolated part of the world, climate change is occurring along with the introduction of modern technology and the influx of tourists. The old ways are changing; and so is the pristine face of the landscape. This poem is the river contemplating the future and its ecological effects. Like all of us, who metaphorically leave our bodies during meditation or dreaming, so does the mind/soul of  the river.